2019: Week 2

CES 2019 Highlights:

Techcrunch did an amazing job with coverage, but highlighted are some tech trends I personally found interesting

Wearables –

Motiv

• Bringing NFC-based payments to its fitness ring

North

• Aesthetic AR glasses, but $$ and still clunky in my opinion
• Corrective lenses only available if vision is in the range of -4.00 to +2.00

Aftershokz

• Launched successful bone conduction headphone line, now sunglasses

UrgoNight

• Wear 20 minutes a day, three times a week for three months and uses positive feedback to show you what brain processes and mental activities work best to produce the brainwaves associated with better sleep
• Claims to help you fall asleep 40% faster and reduce how often you wake up in the middle of the night by 53%

Ellcie Glasses

• Lets you know when you’re falling asleep when driving

Muse Headband

• Sleep meditation headband help people meditate as they fall asleep (Softband)
• Alexa enabled
• App tracks sleep, as well as see improvements in sleep behavior

Nura Headphones

• Adaptive to how you listen to music, now both in headphone and earbuds

In Automation / Manufacturing –

LG CLOi SuitBot

• Connected exoskeleton allows you to life heavy boxes, assisting with manual labor at factories and warehouses

Samsung Gems

• More info TBD but supposed to be an exoskeleton targeted toward athletes

Continental (Robot Delivery Dogs Deployed by Self-Driving Cars)

• Last-mile deliveries through robot dogs, transported first through CUbE (Continental Urban Mobility Experience)

Smarthome / Voice Assistant –

Meural

• Showcasing artwork, working on bringing more art collections to its subscription product
• Rendered life-like and textured
• Initial cost of good + membership plan of $50 / year

Ikea smart window blinds

• Kadrilj and Fyrtur battery powered shades that can open and close using Alexa, HomeKit, and Google Assistant
• Ikea’s ingenius plan to dominate the smart home market (link)

Ring

• Owned by Amazon, so everything is Alexa enabled, huge growth platform and ability to tap into new markets because of appeal of one platform, complementing existing lineup
• Door View Cam (in addition to doorbell)
• Ring Alarm Security System (CO listener / smoke; flood / freeze sensor; siren when alarm goes off) – all for $35 a pop
• Smart lighting for outdoors / porches, sheds, etc. “Alexa, turn on the porch light”

Basically everything from Sony headphones to your toilet is Amazon / some (if not all three major) smart-assistant enabled. Google expects Assistant to be on 1 billion devices by the end of this month, up 400m devises this time a year ago (link).

In Other News:

Who wants a market downturn? These investors do (link)

• Past few years, Silicon Valley tech start-ups have been awash in stream of cash that has allowed them to expand quickly and sell or go public at high valuations
• Drives up cost in deal making for venture capitalists who prefer to invest cheaply in young companies in hopes of making big returns later
• Sandy Miller, IVP, projects start-up valuations will fall by 10% to 40% this year, firms setting aside “meaningful reserves” to do more deals and put more into companies it has already invested in
• Not all VCs want a downturn, esp if they are heavy investors in Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Slack, etc. to go public this year
• In downturns, less serious entrepreneurs disappeared, leaving the most committed ones

Amazon’s new ad strategy: Free samples based on what it knows about you (link)

•  Let brands like Maybelline and Folgers pay to send free samples to consumers based on what the retail giant already knows they’re likely to buy
• Amazon has the purchasing data and logistics infrastructure to offer samples of actual products, which could be more effectively used than display ads or search ads on CPGs
• Fb and Google built ad empires through precise targeting and platforms where companies can spend millions without dealing with a human salesperson. Amazon could leap-frog its competitors by combining that approach with its delivery prowess, bringing samples, and data-based ad targeting, to doorsteps in a visceral way

NBC will use AI to match advertisers with programming (link)

• Live TV viewership on the decline, ad sales reflective of it, down 7.8% in 2017 to $61.8bn. Sharpest decline in the last 20 years, outside of recession
• On aggregate, TV commercial loads increased to 11 minutes per hours in 1/2018, up from 10.5 mins/hour in January 2017
• NBC’s reduced ad loads will meet consumer demand for fewer ads, but enhance the remaining inventory i.e. to keep revenue sustainable, these ads will be very expensive
  • Uses a script to read content from program/show, allow ad buyers to select what content they would like to be advertised around – programmatic TV advertising through NBC 

No tuition, but you pay a percentage of your income (if you find a job) (link)

• Student debt is $1.5 trillion. Typical student will have $22,000 in debt by graduation
• Lambda School uses Income Share Agreement (ISA) to fund school – instead of charging tuition, students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation
• Received $30mm in funding from Geoff Lewis,  founder of Bedrock, Google Ventures, GGV Capital, Vy Capital, and Y Combinator
• Values the school at $150mm
• Payment structure at Lambda: Pay nothing upfront, but 17% of salary to Lambda for two years if they get a job that pays more than $50,000. Payments are capped at $30,000. If student loses a job, payments are halted
• Incentives finally aligned. School wants students to find a job, succeed, and will only admit those who are likely to do so

Meet Caper, the AI self-checkout shopping cart (link)

• Startup (raised $3mm from First Round Capital) scans items you drop into the cart with image recognition and weight sensor
• Three main benefits to merchants:
  • Repurpose cashier labor to assist customers / keep shelves stocked
  • Ease and affordable cost of transitioning means businesses recoup investment and grow revenues as shoppers buy more
  • Share data that its carts collect (i.e. routes through the store, shelves customers hover in front of, etc.) to optimize layout
  • Note: Perhaps frequently purchased-with build-ins as well?

Flexit lets you pay for gym time on demand (link)

• Pay for gym time by the minute, allowing you to walk to a local gym when you’re traveling. “Uber” for gums, except you pay only for the time you are inside the gym and not the monthly fees or a flat rate per visit (usually at a high premium because gyms WANT you to
  • Statistics Brain survey shows of 5,315 Americans gym members, 63% of memberships go completely unused
  • 82% of gym members go < 1x a week
  • 22% stop going after 6 months
  • 31% said they’d never paid if they knew how infrequently they used it
  • If gyms operate more than 5% of their memberships, no one would be able to use the machines (Golds, etc. generally sign up 5-10k members, but can’t house more than 300-500)
• Great idea coming from consumer, but as a business model could run into several problems
  • Business model systemic risk in gyms being amenable to this idea of people pay per minute, but incentives are not necessarily aligned i.e. brand dilution – why let them pay per minute when the unit economics of sign up costs + fees / usage is in our favor? i.e. all of the profits go into our bottom line?
  • Only upside would be the unique data you receive re: customers and their potential WTP (willingness to pay) for minutes. Perhaps data to optimize gym pricing (i.e. more expensive if you only go weekends, weekday nights, etc.)