In a move that encourages Nevada’s growing tech scene, AI cloud platform TensorWave announced today it has secured a statement inducing $43 million in SAFE funding. The largest of its kind for a Nevada-based startup, the funding highlights the increasing attractiveness of Nevada as a hub for tech innovation, with the state’s favorable business environment and growing talent pool drawing significant attention from investors and entrepreneurs alike, supporting strong growth in sectors like cybersecurity, aerospace, and logistics technology

TensorWave aims to address a typical bottleneck: access to powerful and affordable GPU resources. The company offers a compelling alternative to the existing options currently available, leveraging AMD Instinct Series GPUs rather than siding with NVIDIA, to deliver unparalleled scalability and performance – a strategy it recently discussed with Dataconomy. 

By eliminating the wait times and complexities associated with on-premise server management, TensorWave aims to democratize AI compute for startups, enterprises, and researchers alike.

“We are thrilled to have the support of such esteemed investors, partners, and the State of Nevada as we embark on this next phase of growth,” said Darrick Horton, CEO at TensorWave. “This funding allows us to significantly scale our team and deploy thousands of AMD Instinct AI accelerators to empower the startups and enterprises shaping our technological future.”

The funding, led by Nexus VP, with significant contributions from Maverick Capital, Translink Capital, Javelin Venture Partners, StartupNV, and AMD Ventures, will fuel TensorWave’s expansion plans. The company plans to bolster its core team, significantly increase capacity at its primary data center with the addition of thousands of AMD Instinct MI300X GPUs, and prepare for the integration of the next-generation MI325X GPUs. Furthermore, TensorWave is gearing up to launch Manifest, an inference platform designed for handling large context windows with minimal latency, enabling advanced document analysis and accelerated reasoning.

“AMD Ventures shares TensorWave’s vision to transform AI compute infrastructure,” said Mathew Hein, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and Corporate Development at AMD. “Their deployment of the AMD Instinct MI300X and ability to offer public instances to AI customers and developers positions them as an early competitor in the AI space, and we are excited to support their growth through this latest round of funding.”

TensorWave’s strategic deployment of AMD GPUs positions the company at the forefront of the rapidly expanding AI market, which is projected to reach a staggering $1.81 trillion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. Investors have recognized the company’s potential to become a key player in this burgeoning sector.

“TensorWave has impressed with their mission, vision, and rapid execution. We’re thrilled to support this dynamic startup, which is poised to lead AI cloud computing with AMD GPUs,” says Brendan Walsh, Venture Partner at Translink Capital. “Their deep expertise in both the physical plant and software elements of cloud compute and artificial intelligence, along with their commitment to fostering a competitive, open-source future for AI, makes them an exciting company to watch as they continue to scale.”

With its focus on accessibility, performance, and innovation, TensorWave is set to make waves in the AI industry. The company’s commitment to providing a robust and competitive cloud platform powered by AMD’s cutting-edge GPU technology has the potential to reshape the AI landscape and accelerate the development of groundbreaking applications across various sectors.

For those who work in the space world, you’ll know only too well about the growing demands for precision and reliability. This goes for every aspect of production. To meet such challenges, space startups are turning to specialist software to keep on top of things.

These tools offer a wealth of benefits. From enhancing precision required in spacecraft production to elevating efficiency across the board.

Let’s take a look at how integrating manufacturing management software into your operation can help you stay ahead and ensure projects are completed successfully and on time.

Excellent precision

Manufacturing management software is a game changer in achieving the precision required for spacecraft production. As a startup, you’ll know how the smallest errors can lead to significant setbacks. Therefore, maintaining this level of precision is critical. Manufacturing management systems let startup owners monitor and control every stage of production.

Quality control is paramount in space manufacturing too. These software solutions make it possible to uphold the necessary standards consistently.

Boost efficiency

Operational efficiency is a must in the fast-paced world of space manufacturing. Thankfully, advanced software solutions can help in reducing manual errors and automating routine tasks. By using manufacturing inventory management software, business heads can manage their workflow more effectively and increase productivity.

This increased efficiency translates directly into better performance on the production line. With everything running as it should, from inventory management to final assembly, space businesses can meet tight deadlines with ease.

Maintain complete traceability

Traceability software for manufacturing plays a major role in space manufacturing. This helps companies monitor and manage every stage of production. From raw materials to finished products.

There are stringent guidelines you must follow to guarantee the safety and success of missions. Companies are able to track every detail but also ensure every aspect of production aligns with the required quality and safety standards.

Guaranteed quality and compliance

Compliance with industry regulations and maintaining high-quality standards are non-negotiable in space manufacturing. The ability to monitor compliance in real-time means you can address any issues immediately. This prevents problems from escalating and ensuring the final product meets all required standards.

Picking the right software provider matters. Providers like manufacturo.com understand the unique challenges of space manufacturing. Using a provider with expertise brings peace of mind, knowing you can maintain the high standards necessary for success in a demanding space sector.

Investing in advanced manufacturing management software is a no-brainer. Doing so guarantees precision, efficiency and compliance in your operation.

Featured image: Pixabay

Norwegian startup Factiverse, a self-proclaimed antidote to the ongoing battle against fake news, and the growing epidemic of “AI hallucinations,” announced today it has secured €1 million in funding to expand its AI-powered fact-checking platform. The investment comes as the world grapples with the double-edged sword of artificial intelligence – immense potential marred by the occasional tendency to fabricate information with the casual confidence of a seasoned con artist.

Unlike many AI startups riding the ChatGPT wave, Factiverse has been quietly refining its patented technology since 2016. Its platform isn’t just another chatbot; it’s designed to be a discerning judge, scrutinizing everything from news headlines, verbal claims, articles, and AI-generated content for accuracy, with the latter going through its API and other integrations, sniffing out those pesky “hallucinations” before they cause too much trouble.

AI hallucinations and errors have already shown themselves to be costly. During a promotional video, Google Bard (now Gemini) made a factual error about the James Webb Space Telescope, leading to a significant drop in Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) stock value. CNET faced scrutiny for publishing articles written by an AI tool that plagiarised content en mass and contained multiple factual errors, raising questions about AI-generated content’s reliability and ethical implications. And ChatGPT keeps landing in hot water with the EU due to its inaccurate responses. 

The company claims its technology outperforms even the latest AI models like ChatGPT and Mistral-7b in detecting factual errors and sourcing reliable information, and it does it in 100 languages. While these models have captured the public’s imagination with their impressive language capabilities, Factiverse argues that accuracy and trustworthiness should be paramount, especially in a world where misinformation can have dire consequences.

The company’s peer-reviewed research paper, penned by cofounder and CTO Vinay Setty, boldly asserts its superiority in both claim detection and sourcing credible information across multiple languages.

The funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Murshid Ali, founder of Huddlestock and Skyfri, Johann Olav Koss, investor and four-time Olympic gold medalist, Yasmin Namini, former C-level executive at the New York Times, Herfo, a privately owned investment firm in Norway and China, and Valide Invest, a Norwegian pre-seed investment house, as well as other angel investors from the USA and UK. 

The funding comes after Factiverse’s early traction and impressive results, which include winning both the Best AI Startup award by Nora AI and the Digital Trust Challenge by KI Park Germany in 2023. Both the funding and the awards underscore the growing urgency to address AI’s credibility problem.

“We are thrilled to announce this new round of funding,” exclaimed Maria Amelie, CEO and co-founder at Factiverse. “This investment will allow us to accelerate the development of our now crucial fact-checking solutions and empower even more businesses to leverage the power of AI with confidence.”

Amelie herself is no stranger to accolades. She was recently named one of the “50 Women in Tech” by the prestigious network Abelia and Oda. Selected from 700 nominees, and following a rigorous award process, the honor is a clear testament to her leadership in the AI field.

With fresh funding in hand, Factiverse plans to add new features to its platform, including a political bias filter for sources and an “explainable AI” function that will break down the fact-checking process in plain language. It’s a move aimed at transparency and empowering users to make informed decisions in an increasingly AI-saturated world.

As the AI arms race heats up, Factiverse positions itself as the much-needed referee, ensuring that the quest for artificial intelligence doesn’t sacrifice accuracy on the altar of innovation. 

In the words of Espen Egil Hansen, Chairman at Factiverse, “instances of companies facing legal repercussions for factual errors in their chatbots are already a reality. As AI becomes more deeply ingrained in our daily lives, ensuring the accuracy of AI models isn’t just about good business; it’s the bedrock upon which democratic values are built.” 

Factiverse’s mission, it seems, is nothing short of upholding the truth in the age of AI.

Move over, Dr. House. There’s a new medical genius in town, and it doesn’t even have a stethoscope. Spike, a Silicon Valley startup that focuses on data technology and artificial intelligence (AI), just landed $3.5 million in seed funding. Its mission? To give healthcare AI, which is set to reach $148 billion by 2029, the brainpower it needs.

The oversubscribed investment was co-led by Practica Capital and TheVentureCity, and a who’s who of tech investors joined the party, including CEAS Investments, Plug & Play Ventures, Geek Ventures, and Axel Springer Porsche (APX). Spike is ready to supercharge product development, expand into new markets, and cement its status as a medical director in the AI health technology field.

So, what’s Spike’s secret remedy?

Its B2B solution allows developers to add AI superpowers to their healthcare apps. Spike aims to cut development time and costs to a fraction of what they used to be and connect to the data collected by hundreds of medical, wearable, and IoT devices.

Think of Spike’s API as a health data buffet, offering insights from over 300 sources – from your trusty Fitbit to high-tech medical devices. It’s the fuel that powers Spike’s AI algorithms to deliver personalized healthcare solutions smarter than a med school grad (well, almost).

“Advancements in retrieval-augmented generation AI mean that LLMs are no longer taking a ‘best guess,’ but are now able to seek out specialized context, producing outputs that are much more accurate and considerably less prone to hallucinations,” Povilas Gudzius, CEO and co-founder of Spike, said. “By incorporating this technology on top of Spike’s high-quality health data API, we’re enabling our clients to easily leverage these tools and improve the health of millions of end users.”

Spike vs. the Goliaths, with a RAG, not a Stone

Sure, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have their AI health data solutions. But let’s be honest: They’re like old-school doctors who still use pagers. Spike is the young, energetic upstart shaking things up. 

Google Cloud Healthcare API provides access to healthcare data and offers AI and machine learning tools for building healthcare applications. Amazon HealthLake is a HIPAA-eligible service that helps healthcare organizations store, transform, query, and analyze health data. And Microsoft Azure API for FHIR enables the exchange of healthcare data using the FHIR standard and offers AI tools for building healthcare applications.

So while the megaliths in the room are busy managing massive cloud infrastructures, Spike is laser-focused on healthcare. They’re not just aggregating data; they’re curating it, ensuring it’s top-notch and tailor-made for the unique needs of the medical world.

And Spike uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a technique for enhancing the accuracy and reliability of generative AI models with facts fetched from external sources. RAG helps AI models avoid embarrassing “hallucination” moments by cross-checking their answers with real-world facts. Think of it as a reality check for AI, ensuring its answers are as accurate as a doctor’s diagnosis.

This makes AI more reliable, less prone to making things up, and ultimately, much more useful in the healthcare world.

“We are utilizing health expertise networks and curated in specialized context databases in RAG AI infrastructure,” Gudzius said. “RAG AI allows us to incorporate these problem-specific sources effectively and makes the LLM responses more grounded. The design of the RAG AI infrastructure and domain-expert curated medical content allows us to further innovate in developing the ‘Trustworthy Health AI.'”

All of this technology doesn’t mean Spike can scrimp on security and privacy. Like the Big 3, it has to make strong commitments to regulatory protection, especially with searches for AI in healthcare being orders of magnitude higher than searches for AI safety.

“Spike takes data security and privacy very seriously, so our infrastructure products follow strict GDRP, HIPAA, and CCPA regulatory guidelines,” Gudzius said. “From the technical perspective, we are also adopting specific techniques to prioritize data privacy. For example, we have built our data access layers that provide limited control to the LLM agent while handling data acquisition logic and complying with regulatory requirements. As the quality and volume of individuals’ health data grows, there’s a huge need to develop and innovate regulatory-compliant techniques for private health data-to-LLM interactions like that.”

The Future of Healthcare: Spike’s Prescription

This $3.5 million isn’t just pocket change; it’s the catalyst for Spike’s grand vision. They’re not just building AI tools but trustworthy AI tools that are as reliable as your favorite family doctor (but hopefully with a better bedside manner). They’re expanding their reach to include everything from electronic health records to genomics data.

“We believe in a future where health data volume will grow exponentially driven by the improvements in sensor hardware,” Gudzius said. “These sensors include optical, electrical, and electromechanical sensors from wearables, IoT devices, and other sources like EHRs and lab tests. We are well positioned to capture this potential because our team has extensive experience working with data acquisition and a scientific background in Health AI. Our edge is ensuring we provide the capabilities of these emerging non-diagnostic technologies to our clients in a safe and regulatory compliant way.”

Spike imagines a future where AI isn’t just a buzzword; it’s an integral part of healthcare, improving patient care and making those dreaded doctor’s visits a little less dreadful.

Where artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in various aspects of our lives, ensuring that AI systems are safe and reliable is more important than ever. That’s why Microsoft has introduced the new Azure AI Studio tools.

These tools are designed to be easy to use and help Azure customers make sure their AI services are trustworthy even if they aren’t hiring groups of red teamers to test the AI services they built.

How can Microsoft help you to build your AI service?

The new Microsoft Azure AI Studio tools provide easy-to-use features that help Azure customers improve the safety and reliability of their AI services without needing to hire specialized red team testers. Here’s how these tools can help:

• Prompt Shields: Azure AI Studio’s Prompt Shields feature acts as a robust defense mechanism against prompt injections and malicious inputs that could compromise the integrity of AI models. By automatically detecting and blocking unauthorized prompts from external documents, Prompt Shields ensure that models adhere to their intended training objectives, thereby minimizing the risk of adversarial attacks.
• Groundedness detection: This tool is instrumental in identifying and mitigating hallucinations within AI-generated content. By leveraging advanced algorithms, groundedness detection can distinguish between genuine and spurious information, thereby enhancing the accuracy and reliability of AI outputs. This capability is particularly crucial in preventing the dissemination of misleading or false information.
• Safety evaluations: Azure AI Studio’s Safety Evaluations feature offers users a comprehensive assessment of their AI models’ vulnerabilities and performance. By simulating various attack scenarios, including prompt injection attacks and the propagation of hateful content, users gain valuable insights into potential weaknesses within their models. This proactive approach enables users to address vulnerabilities preemptively, reducing the likelihood of unintended outcomes or controversies.

• Content filtering: Azure AI Studio provides robust content filtering capabilities to shield users from inappropriate or harmful content. By allowing users to customize filtering settings based on their preferences and organizational values, Azure AI Studio ensures a tailored and inclusive approach to content moderation. This feature empowers users to create safe and conducive environments for AI development and deployment.
• User monitoring and reporting: Additionally, Azure AI Studio facilitates user monitoring and reporting, enabling administrators to track and analyze user interactions with AI models. By identifying potentially problematic users or behaviors, administrators can take proactive measures to mitigate risks and maintain the integrity of their AI ecosystems. This functionality is essential for maintaining accountability and transparency in AI deployments.

In summary, Azure AI Studio tools offer accessible solutions for enhancing AI safety and reliability, making it easier for Azure customers to deploy AI responsibly. However, these new features are not the only help you can get from Microsoft! Azure AI Speech feature is also here to streamline the avatar-making process.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformative potential. But as with any potent technology, the data quality of its input directly impacts its output.

Foundational, a company recently out of stealth mode, understands this crucial point.

Armed with $8 million in fresh funding, they’re aiming to tackle the often-overlooked problems of data quality and AI readiness.

Why data quality is a big deal for AI?

We’ve all heard the adage “garbage in, garbage out“.

This applies with special force to AI models. These models learn from vast datasets during the training process. If the data they’re fed is inconsistent, incomplete, biased, or simply wrong, the AI’s output will likely reflect those flaws. In high-stakes fields like healthcare or finance, inaccurate outputs due to poor data can have disastrous consequences.

Foundational’s approach focuses on improving the reliability and integrity of datasets used for AI training and operation. This is vital work, ensuring that AI models produce the best and safest possible results.

Getting data AI-ready

“They will see our insights or warnings or suggestions directly in the interface that they already have,” explains Foundational’s CEO, Michelangelo Nafta to VentureBeat. Importantly, the platform works by scrutinizing the metadata within the code itself. It sidesteps direct contact with the sensitive data, reducing privacy and security risks.

The Foundational platform integrates seamlessly with tools like GitHub, offering developers actionable feedback within their existing workflow.

The power of analysis

Foundational harnesses a combination of techniques to build a detailed map of an organization’s data flow:

• Static code analysis: The platform dissects code structure to uncover relationships and dependencies
• Dynamic runtime analysis: Monitors code execution to identify real-world data patterns and potential bottlenecks
• AI-powered techniques: These help to make connections, spot anomalies, and identify optimization opportunities

This comprehensive understanding becomes the foundation for powerful automation. “Once we have this full map of your data ecosystem, there are all kinds of powerful automation we can apply on top,” Nafta states. Notifications about potential downstream disruption due to code changes, performance optimization tips, and even automated generation of documentation and data catalogs are all within reach.

Streamlining more than data

Foundational’s approach offers advantages beyond data quality alone. It targets potential problems like circular references and cloud-cost spiking queries, addressing cost efficiency alongside accuracy. Additionally, by identifying unused fields, the platform promotes leaner, more maintainable data pipelines.

The people problem

Foundational recognizes that technology alone won’t solve AI’s data woes. They offer a strong focus on collaboration with domain experts. It’s these experts who understand the nuances of their field’s specific datasets; this partnership allows for fine-tuning solutions and ensuring they align with real-world needs.

Governance by design

Foundational positions code analysis as a pillar of proactive data governance. In an era of ever-expanding datasets and increasingly complex AI, a tool that helps maintain data health by design is a valuable asset. The company’s emphasis on developer-friendly integration and focus on metadata privacy are also shrewd moves, likely to build confidence in their approach.

The road ahead is accepting data quality as a baseline

The emergence of companies like Foundational signals a welcome shift in the industry. It highlights an increasing awareness of data quality as a non-negotiable prerequisite for effective AI deployment. As organizations grapple with growing volumes and complexity of data, services facilitating accurate and trustworthy AI models will be in high demand.

Foundational’s entry into this arena is timely. Businesses can no longer afford to treat AI projects as purely technological endeavors. By placing data quality at the forefront, Foundational is poised to make a meaningful impact on the success, and safety, of AI applications across industries.

Featured image credit: rawpixel.com/Freepik

Software businesses are unique in the way they serve their customers. As their value proposition is usually multifaceted, ranging from human traits of company representatives to more tangible things, like technology stack or delivery methodology. With that, it is difficult to tell what exact aspect of a company’s activity makes it stand out from the competition and launch into its upward momentum.

MobiDev could be just a regular technology startup, as it was back in 2009. But since then, the company has grown into an established software development company operating across Europe and the US. Now with a diverse portfolio of projects, MobiDev demonstrates its capabilities to implement complex solutions. But its success is barely related to the expertise in cutting edge tech like AI, AR, or VR. Because MobiDev’s growth is fueled by its dedication to customer success and the focus on long-term relations.

The person standing behind the scenes is Oleg Lola, Founder & CEO of MobiDev who had years of experience in software development before the company’s founding. However, in the role of CEO, creativity, and vision were the primary things that helped MobiDev to stay diligent with its customer’s objectives. With that in mind, we’re going to look at MobiDev from the perspective of how the success of its clients made the company evolve, and how exactly.

Building long-term relationships

The portfolio of MobiDev’s innovative projects can be traced back to its decade-long partnerships with POS industry leaders like ComCash and SmartTab. Surprisingly not, these clients stay in close connection with MobiDev even today, while its tech stack became wider and transformed.

ComCash, a well-known US-based B2B product company, started to work with MobiDev in 2013 to create a comprehensive ERP system tailored for the retail and restaurant sectors. The system went live in mid-2014 for its first retail chain after a year of intensive development with 80+ retail chains adopting the product shortly after. Since the very beginning, the MobiDev team has become a key partner in the development of ComCash’s innovative ERP software suite, so that the company could concentrate on strategic decisions and business growth. This cooperation brought success to both sides, with ComCash’s acquisition by POS Nation in 2022.

Similarly, a startup led by CEO Daniel Baron approached MobiDev for developing a premium POS system, which is known by the name SmartTab. The company covered the needs of high-volume bars and nightclubs, which implied numerous operational challenges and technical solutions. This resulted in SmartTab being an industry leader, serving over 700 venues and chains in the US today.

Besides all the work done with conventional programming and hardware to develop SmartTab POS, MobiDev made its first large steps into AI. As the system received a comprehensive demand forecasting module and a set of analytical tools as a part of POS modernization with AI. This has widened the capabilities of MobiDev to deliver complex solutions for years ahead, covering different aspects of business activities, as well as boosting their own performance with AI.

Employing the power of innovative AR/VR  technologies

As time goes on, AR and VR have become more common and popular in the tech world, and MobiDev didn’t stay aside from these technologies. Nowadays, the company has years of experience developing high-end Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) solutions that fuse the physical and digital worlds with an immersive experience.

In 2016 MobiDev started its collaboration with a startup that is involved in the travel industry being an official partner of such giants as AirBus, Kiwi, and OAG. This project included the creation of mobile applications with augmented reality features to engage travelers and increase retention. The delivered iOS product was launched as a pivotal part of the client’s marketing campaign. Not only did it attract new users but a lot of media attention that was transformed into business opportunities. Having this project in the portfolio allowed MobiDev to expand AR/VR expertise and level up within this technology stack.

Another  AR/VR project involved helping the client adopt a future-oriented technology in plant construction and mechanical engineering for heavy manufacturing. MobiDev created a solution for supporting engineers in fully automated factories with VR tutorials for employees to make processes more secure and easy.

Helping businesses focus on growth while adopting innovative technologies was always a priority for MobiDev. Talking about MobiDev’s approach to projects and partnerships, Oleg Lola says:  “We will continue to adhere to MobiDev’s philosophy and take care of technology and project management down to the smallest detail, allowing our customers to focus on business strategy and product vision. While we take care of the implementation details, constantly shipping our consulting and engineering resources for mutual success…”

Boosting AI expertise for the сontinued development

The partnerships with ComCash and SmartTab have not only solidified the reputation of MobiDev as a trusted technology partner but have also significantly bolstered the company’s expertise in AI.

One of the most interesting projects in this regard started in 2014 when the company partnered with CUJO, a recognized leader in utilizing AI for the security and privacy of connected devices. The role of MobiDev was to develop mobile applications that allow users to manage CUJO devices seamlessly, prioritizing simplicity and user experience. That collaboration was the next step in growing AI experience and gathering domain expertise for the company, according to Oleg Lola. Commenting on the importance of such projects for MobiDev, he adds: “Projects like CUJO are the lifeblood of our company, as they bring us two important things: the experience to carry out large ecosystems that require a lot of strategic planning, as well as deepening our expertise in machine learning. That’s why, we turned to our own transformation by adopting AI for our own operations, delivering faster, without losing quality”.

The growing stack of AI proficiency also made an impact on how MobiDev operates on a daily basis. Starting from a security office system, based on facial recognition and voice verification built in-house, to automating development processes in DevOps cycles. This allowed the company to scale its delivery capabilities and step on even larger projects. This allowed MobiDev to take on more complex projects in the future, backed by years of experience and an approved delivery pipeline.

Versatility and flexibility fuel growth

At MobiDev, success is driven by the skillset and adaptability of the team. With an average employee tenure of over 5 years, the MobiDev employees have a diverse skill set and domain experience, allowing them to tackle large-scale projects across various industries and geographic regions.

One of the multinational projects of MobiDev involved an engagement with a customer operating in the supply of green energy for over 20 years across North America and Europe. With over 1.6 million private and commercial customers, the cooperation resulted in the development of several mobile and web applications for energy consumption management, demonstrating the ability of the company to deliver custom-made solutions to meet the unique business needs of the clients.

The partnership with multinational corporation Verizon, which later became part of Yahoo, highlighted MobiDev’s ability to handle the needs of global organizations. MobiDev joined Verizon to bring AR expertise to the client’s products, using ARCore, MLKit, and Android SDK tools. The challenge was to take into account all possible scenarios, as we were a part of a bigger product build. The solution had to be not only tech-savvy but also easy to integrate with an existing ecosystem. By leveraging its expertise, MobiDev provided an innovative approach that met Verizon’s evolving requirements, further cementing the company’s reputation as a trusted technology partner.

The collaboration with Verizon was a significant milestone for MobiDev. “Verizon, which was eventually purchased by Yahoo, created a really brilliant product, and we are proud to be part of it. For us, this is proof that we are moving in the right direction with our services and solutions.” — Oleg says. — “And this shows the level of MobiDev as our company is steadily gathering experience and expertise in various technologies year after year.”

Furthermore, the product for LMN (Landscape Management Network) from Canada demonstrates MobiDev’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions to industry leaders. The mobile CRM application, seamlessly integrated with LMN’s existing web CRM, empowers landscape contractors to manage leads and clients in their sales pipeline efficiently. This collaboration has not only helped LMN to get acclaimed as one of the Best Workplaces in Technology for 2022 but also firmed the MobiDev position as a key player in the B2B landscape business management software industry.

Tech services for visioners

MobiDev invests a lot in technology research to provide clients with the smartest ways to achieve their business goals. Commenting on the current situation in the tech world and how MobiDev fits in, Oleg Lola adds: “As AI becomes a usual thing among software developers and product owners, we use our in-house expertise to consult companies who start their own innovative projects and support them with tech implementation.”

Sports tech start-up BeONE Sports and software engineering company MobiDev have joined forces to launch an AI-powered comparative training platform. BeOne Sports brought their mission of revolutionizing the world of professional sports training by implementing human pose estimation technology for “comparative training”. The innovative solution leverages cutting-edge movement tracking through AI to elevate athlete performance. With an advanced training methodology and computer vision, they provide data-driven training programs for athletes and coaches. MobiDev covers a full cycle of iOS app development, which includes processing data received from the existing BeONE Sports ML models, video rendering, and in-app purchases. Continuing to talk about the mission and vision of MobiDev, Oleg Lola commented: “We are proud to partner with BeONE Sports to develop this game-changing platform. As we support visionaries of various domains in implementing advanced ideas into apps popular among users.”

The work on the sports initiatives continued with the project for the leading golf organization, which has connected thousands of golf experts since its foundation in 1916. MobiDev was engaged in creating multiple interconnected products that turn into the ecosystem for training process optimization. With the importance of sports in mind, these projects also play a significant role in making sports activities more accessible all around the world.

While reflecting on the MobiDev history and how the development of the company is tightly connected to the clients, Oleg Lola remarked: “I’m really proud that through the years our team can deliver for large-scale projects, because we have all the required knowledge and human resource. This is a thing about building not a single product, but an ecosystem with innovative approaches. Whether it be AI, AR, or anything else, I truly believe that the experience we developed through long-term partnerships and years of stable delivery, brought us here today. Where we can guarantee adherence to customer expectations in shortest terms.”

Featured image credit: MobiDev.

Welcome to the exciting world of 2024 where the startup ecosystem is buzzing with an unprecedented level of innovation and challenge. For startup owners navigating this vibrant landscape, understanding the key success factors is not just a beneficial practice—it’s an essential survival strategy. This blog post aims to serve as a comprehensive and insightful guide, shedding abundant light on the essential elements required for not just surviving but thriving in today’s fiercely competitive business environment.

Understanding the 2024 market dynamics

The business world in 2024 is characterized and driven by an era of rapid and groundbreaking technological advancements. Concepts like AI, machine learning, and blockchain, which were once buzzwords, have now become a part and parcel of everyday business, turning into necessities for survival and success. It’s vital to understand how these technologies impact your industry and the way your business operates.

Regularly conducting market research will help identify shifting consumer behaviors and preferences, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve. It’s important to keep a vigilant eye on your competitors, but also to seek out underserved niches that could provide unique opportunities. This knowledge will not only help you survive the challenges but also thrive amidst them.

Strategic planning and vision

The success of your startup hinges heavily on clear, achievable, and strategic goals. It’s important to develop a business plan that’s not only realistic but also flexible enough to adapt to market shifts and changes. Ensure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Your unique value proposition (UVP) should be designed to solve a specific problem for a targeted audience, which will differentiate you in the crowded marketplace. Always remember: a strong vision today leads to a prosperous tomorrow.

Financial management and funding strategies

Efficient financial management is an absolute necessity for any startup. It all begins with a robust budget, keeping overheads low without compromising on the quality of your products or services. Explore various avenues for funding – each has its own set of pros and cons. Crowdfunding can help validate your product in the market, while venture capital offers significant funds but often at the cost of equity. Cash flow management is a critical aspect; always maintain a buffer for unexpected expenses to ensure financial stability.

Building a strong team and network

The right team can make or break your startup. When hiring, look for attitude as much as for skill; skills can be taught, but attitude is inherent and can significantly impact your startup’s culture. Networking is equally important. Attend industry events, join relevant online forums, and engage with mentors and industry experts. These connections can provide invaluable advice, support, and opportunities that could be pivotal for your startup’s success.

Embracing technology and innovation

In 2024, technology is not merely a tool but a strategic advantage that can set you apart from your competitors. Implement technologies that streamline your operations, whether it’s cloud computing for storage needs or CRM systems for customer relationship management. Invest in R&D to keep your offerings fresh, unique, and appealing. Remember, innovation is a continuous journey, not a destination, and staying innovative is key to long-term success.

The importance of business insurance

In today’s fast-paced and often unpredictable market, having adequate business insurance is an absolute necessity. Insurance in its various forms serves as a safety net, shielding your business from potential risks and unforeseen incidents that could otherwise have devastating financial consequences.

Liability insurance, for instance, can offer valuable protection against potential legal actions that may arise from accidents, injuries, or claims of negligence. On the other hand, property insurance is designed to shield your physical assets, such as buildings, equipment, and inventory, from damage due to incidents such as theft, fire, or natural disasters. And as businesses are increasingly reliant on technology and online platforms, cyber insurance has emerged as a vital component of a comprehensive business insurance portfolio. It is specifically designed to protect your business against online threats, cyber attacks, data breaches, and other digital risks.

Effective marketing and brand-building

Digital marketing in 2024 is diverse, dynamic, and indispensable. SEO, content marketing, and social media are crucial to building an online presence and reaching out to your target audience. Use data analytics to tailor your marketing strategies to ensure they are effective and deliver results. Brand-building goes beyond creating attractive logos and catchy taglines; it’s about creating a deep and lasting emotional connection with your audience. Tell your brand’s story in a way that resonates with your target market and makes them part of your journey.

Customer engagement and experience

Customer expectations have never been higher than in 2024. Engage with them through multiple channels – social media, email, and even in-person events. Personalize the customer experience using data analytics to provide a superior and customized experience. Regularly seek and act on customer feedback to improve your offerings. Remember, a delighted customer is your best marketing tool and can become a powerful advocate for your brand.

Navigating legal and regulatory challenges

The legal landscape for startups can be daunting, but compliance is crucial. Stay informed about industry-specific regulations and changes in the law. Protect your intellectual property – it’s a valuable asset that can give you a competitive edge. Ethical business practices aren’t just good for avoiding legal issues; they build trust with your customers and partners, which is invaluable for your business reputation.

The role of resilience and adaptability

Resilience is your startup’s lifeline in the face of adversity. View failures as valuable learning opportunities that can guide your future strategies. Develop a culture that encourages innovation and isn’t afraid to take calculated risks. The business landscape is constantly evolving; your ability to adapt quickly will define your longevity and success in the market.

In closing

In 2024, the path to success for startups is multifaceted and requires a blend of various elements. Strategic planning, financial acumen, embracing technology, and fostering resilience are more than just guidelines; they are fundamental necessities for survival and success. As a startup owner, these elements form the pillars of your entrepreneurial journey. Embrace the challenges, and you’ll find that entrepreneurship is not just a career but a thrilling and rewarding adventure.

Featured image credit: rawpixel.com/Freepik.

As a seasoned consumer, I’ve encountered my fair share of customer service nightmares that have left me questioning the very fabric of corporate empathy. Whether it’s airlines that won’t accept you paid for extra services and make you pay again at check-in, products that don’t work as advertised and need returning, or getting refunds on food that was never delivered, I’ve been subject to some of the worst customer service I’ve ever received over the last year.

Allow me to share my personal journey through the treacherous landscape of customer service, where nightmares often outweigh pleasant dreams, and the one Finnish startup that provided solace.

The Customer Service Outsourcing Maze

One of the first challenges I faced was the prevalence of companies outsourcing their customer service to various teams, each handling different channels like social media and the company website. It’s like dealing with a hydra – cut off one head and two more sprout in its place. These fragmented services often left me feeling like a lost traveler, desperately seeking assistance in a foreign land.

To make matters worse, these outsourced teams seemed disconnected from the decision-making powerhouse within the company. My pleas for a resolution often echoed through a labyrinth of scripted responses, leaving me in a loop of frustration. The lack of a direct line to someone with the authority to make decisions only intensified the nightmare.

The Dreaded “NoReply” Email

In the digital age, companies have embraced automation, leading to the rise of the dreaded “noreply” email address. My inbox became a graveyard for one-way communication, filled with automated responses that did nothing to address my concerns. It felt like I was shouting into the void, with my cries for help falling on deaf, automated ears.

AI is Making Things Worse

In my journey through the customer service maze, AI emerged as a potential solution. However, it became evident that while AI has strengths, it may not be the ultimate answer for the challenges ahead. In fact, for those companies that don’t embrace genuine customer service, it’s just another tool to reduce costs and push customers to the point where they give up on their claims.

AI struggles to replicate human empathy, which is crucial for handling complex and emotional customer issues, and it can’t yet handle complex scenarios that demand human critical thinking and creativity. While there have been considerable advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU), AI grapples with nuances in human language, risking misinterpretations.

Customers seek solutions, human interaction, and reassurance, areas where AI may feel cold and automated. While AI enhances certain aspects of customer service, a balanced approach combining AI efficiency with human empathy and adaptability is essential for a truly exceptional customer experience. In the ongoing journey through customer service complexities, it’s evident that the future lies in a harmonious collaboration between AI and the invaluable human touch.

Better Business? Maybe Not

Some friends told me to go through the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to resolve my US-based issues, but I found it ineffective and troublesome.

Firstly, it operates on a voluntary membership model, meaning not all businesses are listed, and accreditation is optional. The pay-to-play aspect, where companies pay fees for accreditation, has raised concerns about potential biases in ratings. The BBB’s subjective rating criteria, lack of regulatory power, and inconsistent handling of complaints are additional factors to consider. 

With the rise of online review platforms, consumer reliance on the BBB should be accompanied by an awareness of its limitations and the broader landscape of available information.

NoNoNo: A Finnish Savior in the Darkness

In my quest for resolution, I stumbled upon Tampere-based startup NoNoNo, a service dedicated to recovering refunds and compensation on behalf of frustrated consumers. I no longer had to endure the pain of navigating customer service mazes or wrestling with automated email systems. NoNoNo became my advocate, sparing me the agony of handling disputes myself.

I spoke to CEO and founder Jaakko Timonen to gather his thoughts on the current situation and why consumers like me are disenchanted. 

“I created NoNoNo because there are many businesses that have made it too hard for customers to get human customer service,” Timonen said. “I think that C-level executives are too focused on short-term financial results. Technology has made focusing on savings and implementing AI and bots attractive instead of investing in human customer service that would pay off in the long run.”

A Call for Change

As consumers, we deserve better. The nightmares of navigating through disconnected customer service channels and facing the cold shoulder of automated replies should not be the norm. Companies must reevaluate customer service strategies, fostering transparency, accessibility, and empathy.

While some businesses have embraced customer-centric models, others still have a long road ahead. Until then, startups like NoNoNo provide a much-needed lifeline for those drowning in customer service despair. It’s time for companies to wake up from the nightmare and realize that a satisfied customer is the best business strategy for retention and repeat purchases.

This article original started in ArcticStartup and is reproduced with permission

Get ready to embark on a two-day journey into the heart of technological innovation at the inaugural Future Go Tech Summit, scheduled from October 6-7 at the vibrant Das Das in Istanbul. This groundbreaking conference promises to bring together thought leaders, government representatives, business luminaries, consumers, and entertainment industry visionaries to explore the ever-evolving landscape of technology.

With an extensive program designed to cater to diverse audiences, the Future Go Tech Summit is set to ignite discussions, unveil opportunities, and tackle the most critical challenges facing the tech world.

Diverse perspectives, common goals

At the core of the Future Go Tech Summit lies a commitment to fostering collaboration between individuals from varied sectors, including consumer, business, management, and entertainment. The summit’s organizers understand that technology touches every facet of our lives, and as such, it is crucial to engage with different perspectives to ensure its responsible and effective development.

Speakers and thought leaders

The summit boasts an impressive lineup of speakers and will be emceed by our very own Editor-at-Large, Stewart Rogers. With leaders from renowned companies such as Mohammad Nur-A-Alam of Nokia, Nainan Shah from Playstation, Kristina Lucrezia of Cointelegraph, and Sharon Epskamp of House of Flux, among others, these industry authorities will not only share their insights but also provide a glimpse into the future of their respective fields.

In-depth exploration of tech trends

The program is structured to provide a comprehensive view of technological trends from various angles, ensuring that all participants can grasp the significance of these shifts. Some key topics will be covered, including digital citizenship and privacy, biohacking and business, blockchain, and emotional AI. These discussions will accompany hands-on keynotes, sessions, and roundtable discussions, encouraging lively discourse and knowledge sharing.

Infotainment events

Beyond the traditional conference format, Future Go Tech Summit 2023 offers a range of unique infotainment events designed to foster community building and add fun to the proceedings. Stand-up evenings, cocktail parties, business runs, and more will ensure that engagement at the conference reaches new heights. These events will not only provide networking opportunities but also create a sense of camaraderie among attendees.

The Future Go award

One of the summit’s highlights is the Future Go Award, which recognizes tech and blockchain leaders driving progress and innovation. Only projects that have made a tangible impact, solved real-world problems, and improved our lives will be considered. A panel of 12 experts, well-respected in the tech community, will carefully select the winners. The award ceremony and afterparty promise to be a memorable culmination of the summit, celebrating the brightest minds in the industry.

Transforming DasDas

During the two-day event, DasDas will transform from a concert hall into a hub of technological energy. Participants can connect with tech leaders, gain inspiration, stay updated on the latest tech trends, and participate in hands-on keynotes that can revolutionize their businesses.

The Future Go Tech Summit 2023 is set to become a pivotal moment in the world of technology, bringing together diverse voices to shape the future of innovation. With its impressive lineup of speakers, in-depth discussions on critical tech topics, and unique infotainment events, this conference promises to leave a lasting impact on attendees. If you’re passionate about technology and eager to be part of the conversation that will define our future, mark your calendars for October 6-7 and join us in sunny Istanbul for this unforgettable experience.

Sure, running a startup is a dream of every entrepreneur these days. A startup provides entrepreneurs with a chance to explore their ideas and challenge their business wit and savvy every day of the week. One of the most complicated challenges people face when running a startup, though, is organizing their trusted, ground-floor staff.

Cloud storage is one solution and if you are intrigued by this option, consider Managed SASE for your needs.

To help you get started and get all the information needed, here are the essential tips that will definitely help you do just that.

Cloud storage

Cloud storage establishes a centralized hub for all your critical files and documents, eliminating the need for scattered storage across various devices or physical mediums. It streamlines access and management by consolidating everything into a single location.

Additionally, cloud storage facilitates seamless collaboration among your team members. Multiple individuals can collaboratively work on the same document simultaneously, enhancing the ease of sharing ideas and cooperation. This eliminates the necessity of back-and-forth file exchanges via email, effectively reducing confusion and time consumption.

Centralized cloud storage

Centralized cloud storage bolsters the security of your data. Leading cloud storage providers implement robust security measures like encryption and regular backups, ensuring your files are shielded from unauthorized access or potential loss. This assurance affords you a sense of tranquility, recognizing that your essential data is safeguarded comprehensively.

Moreover, cloud storage offers scalability and adaptability. As your startup experiences growth, you can effortlessly expand your storage capacity without the need for physical hardware upgrades, reflecting the inherent flexibility of cloud-based solutions.

Daily meetings

While you needn’t channel your inner Michael Scott, incorporating daily meetings into your routine can significantly enhance your organizational prowess.

These gatherings ensure that every member of your team is aligned and actively pursuing shared objectives. Daily meetings serve as a platform to review advancements, exchange updates, and tackle any obstacles or thorny matters that crop up. They cultivate unity and synchronization among the team, anchoring all efforts to the startup’s collective vision.

The benefits of daily meetings

These morning coffee sessions facilitate seamless communication and collaboration. Regular interactions enable team members to pool ideas, furnish feedback, and collectively brainstorm solutions. As a result, you get an environment of transparent communication and spurs collaboration, both of which are pivotal for troubleshooting and sparking innovation during the nascent phases of a startup.

Daily meetings play a pivotal role in early issue detection and resolution. Through consistent discussions on progress and hurdles, the team can promptly pinpoint areas necessitating improvement or extra support. This enables timely adjustments and corrections, curtailing the potential repercussions of setbacks and heightening the prospects of triumph.

The wrap-up

Cloud storage, exemplified by its centralized approach and enhanced security, offers a streamlined solution for managing critical documents and facilitating collaborative efforts. The practice of daily meetings, akin to a compass for alignment and progress tracking, bolsters team cohesion and proactive issue resolution.

Featured image credit: pch.vector/Freepik.

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, startup companies face the challenge of maximizing their efficiency and productivity to gain a competitive edge. Fortunately, advancements in technology provide valuable tools and solutions that can revolutionize the way startups operate. In this article, we will explore how they can harness and leverage technology to streamline operations, optimize workflows and drive productivity.

Here are some ways startup companies can use technology to improve efficiency and productivity:

Streamlining communication and collaboration

Effective communication and seamless collaboration are essential for any startup’s success. Platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams or Zoom provide real-time messaging, video conferencing and file-sharing capabilities. This allows startup team members to connect and collaborate effortlessly.

These communication platforms also offer dedicated channels for different teams or projects. Additionally, there are Cloud-based document collaboration platforms like Google Workspace (formerly G Suite). By using these platforms, multiple team members can work simultaneously on the same document. This eliminates the need for back-and-forth email exchanges or version control issues.

Automation and task management

The significance of office automation in improving efficiency within startups is massive. By leveraging automation tools, startup owners can streamline their operations. This includes data entry, report generation and customer support. By automating these routine tasks, startups can free up valuable time and resources, allowing employees to focus on more critical responsibilities. Popular task management tools startups can use for this purpose include Asana and Jira.

Data analysis and insights

Data is a valuable asset for startups, providing insights into customer behavior, market trends and operational efficiency. Using data analytics tools, startups can extract meaningful information and make data-driven decisions. Startups can implement some of the best customer relationship management systems, such as Salesforce or HubSpot.

Risk management

While discussing technology, it is worth mentioning how certain systems or strategies can be applied in diverse contexts. One example is Oscar’s Grind betting system used in casinos. The Oscar’s Grind system is a progressive betting strategy that aims to maximize winnings while minimizing losses. The system is based on a simple principle: when you win, increase your bet by a predetermined unit, and when you lose, maintain the same bet size. By doing so, the system seeks to capitalize on winning streaks and limit losses during losing streaks.

The essence of Oscar’s Grind system lies in managing risk, optimizing outcomes and maintaining a disciplined approach. These principles can be applied to various aspects of startup operations. In a startup setting, managing risk is crucial for sustainable growth. Startups often operate in a highly competitive and uncertain environment, where risk management is essential for survival and success. By adopting a mindset similar to that of Oscar’s Grind system, startups can strategically allocate resources, take calculated risks and maximize their chances of success.

Conclusion

In the competitive landscape of startup companies, leveraging technology is crucial to boost efficiency and productivity. By embracing cloud computing, implementing tools and automating routine tasks, startups can optimize their operations for efficiency. They can also maximize resources and achieve sustainable growth. As technology continues to evolve, startups must stay agile and adapt to new tools and trends to maintain a competitive edge. By harnessing the power of technology, startup companies can thrive and fulfill their missions and goals.

Why is OpenAI recognized for changing the industry? OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company, and the OpenAI startup funds are one of the drivers. Vicki Cheung, a computer scientist who founded OpenAI, set out to develop technology with a significant social benefit without considering how well it would perform commercially. However, it appears that things are also going well on the business front.

The company’s vision was so compelling that Microsoft invested $1 billion. This was only the start of OpenAI’s rise in the AI sector. OpenAI establishes a $100 million startup fund, and Mem, the last business chosen for financing.

OpenAI Startup Fund led a $23.5 million investment in Mem

The OpenAI Startup Fund, a channel through OpenAI and its partners, including Microsoft, are investing in early-stage AI businesses tackling significant problems, was introduced last year.

Mem, a work-focused app that uses AI to arrange notes automatically, received a $23.5 million investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund, it was announced today.

Mem is now valued at $110 million post-money thanks to the investment, bringing its total funding to $29 million.

“Mem uses powerful AI to make knowledge workers more productive by removing the tedium and drudgery of organizing and accessing information, ultimately allowing people to focus on the parts of their work that matter. Their vision aligns squarely with our goal at the OpenAI Startup Fund to accelerate companies using AI to enhance productivity and, more broadly, human potential.”

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, who also manages the OpenAI Startup Fund

But how does the OpenAI startup fund work?

What is OpenAI Startup Fund?

To empower AI startups to have a significant, beneficial impact on the world, the OpenAI Startup Fund will invest $100 million. The business seeks to collaborate with a select group of early-stage startups in industries where artificial intelligence can have a transformative impact, such as health care, education, and climate change, as well as in industries where AI tools can empower people by assisting them in becoming more productive.

The fund is run by a committed group that includes leadership and technical staff from OpenAI and has experience in investing, machine learning, engineering, talent, and operations.

Microsoft and other OpenAI partners are among the fund’s shareholders. Companies in the OpenAI Startup Fund will also receive support from the fund’s staff, credits on Azure, and early access to upcoming OpenAI systems in addition to funding.

Is it interesting? The good news is that applicants for the OpenAI startup fund are very accessible.

How to apply OpenAI startup fund?

Email hello@openai.fund if you think your startup is going to the moon. A special welcome is extended to founders from underrepresented communities.

Check out the OpenAI startup fund website for detailed information.

Is the fund the only reason why OpenAI is recognized for changing the industry? It is powerful but let’s take a closer look before we decide.

What is OpenAI?

A for-profit company called OpenAI LP and its non-profit parent company, OpenAI Inc., make up OpenAI, a research facility for artificial intelligence (AI). The organization, which is viewed as a rival to DeepMind, carries out research in the area of AI with the declared objective of promoting and developing kind AI in a way that is advantageous to all human beings.

Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others created the group in San Francisco at the end of 2015, with a $1 billion US commitment total. In February 2018, Musk left the board but continued to give money to the organization. Microsoft invested one billion dollars in OpenAI LP in 2019.

The majority of OpenAI’s research focuses on reinforcement learning. These are products and applications that OpenAI developed:

• Gym
• RoboSumo
• Debate Game
• Dactyl
• Generative models
  • GPT
  • GPT-2
  • GPT-3
  • Music
  • API
  • DALL-E and CLIP
  • Microscope
  • Codex
• Video game bots and benchmarks
  • OpenAI Five
  • GYM Retro

These initiatives powered most trending AI applications, such as DALL-E 2.

We have already explained some of the best AI tools like Stable Diffusion along with DALL-E 2, Midjourney, DreamBooth AI, Wombo Dream, NightCafe AI, Make-A-Video, Chai App, AI Dungeon, and NovelAI. Do you know there are also AI art robots? Check the Ai-Da.

Don’t be scared of AI jargon; we have created a detailed AI glossary for the most commonly used artificial intelligence terms and explain the basics of artificial intelligence as well as the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. 

Among the deluge of major tech companies entering the artificial intelligence space, OpenAI’s strategy is distinct. The operating business model is solely motivated by the need for advancement in the field of digital intelligence and is fully unrestricted by a requirement to create a financial return.

So, let’s go back to our question; why is OpenAI recognized for changing the industry?

Why is OpenAI recognized for changing the industry?

The company’s goal is to develop the most remarkable AI systems yet. In the long run, this technology might even be more advanced than humans in terms of intelligence and capabilities. And to be honest, this era is not too far off.

Robots with extremely high intelligence are no longer the stuff of science fiction movies. They are a fact that enhances human existence. The mission of OpenAI is to ensure that all of the humanity gains from the development of artificial general intelligence.

Besides improving artificial intelligence’s capabilities, OpenAI has also built an ecosystem of apps to help with this endeavor. In the long run, this new ecosystem will provide new jobs and improve the global environment.

OpenAI has launched a charter establishing a project timeframe and pledged to maintain long-term safety and security. The business was invited to the renowned award event because of its dedication to public safety.

The prime aim of OpenAI is to develop systems that can perform certain functions in challenging circumstances.

What distinguishes OpenAI from other AI startups so significantly? To address existential questions surrounding AI, OpenAI was founded. Existential worries about technology abuse drove the creators of OpenAI. Instead of focusing on making a profit, OpenAI’s business strategy is to develop technology that benefits society. In other words, OpenAI’s goal is to develop an AI that helps society fairly while also not harming it.

“OpenAI aimed to develop artificial intelligence and apply it to [OpenAI’s] significant goals, such as bringing benefits to all humanity and not being bound by the requirements to generate financial profit.”

Elon Musk

Why is OpenAI recognized for changing the industry? When we add other initiatives like the OpenAI startup fund, we believe it is not hard to find the answer anymore.

What is Mem?

Mem users can use SMS, messaging apps, and the platform’s mobile client to take brief notes, send links, and store photographs from any location. Teams can share, modify, and comment on notes using collaboration tools and easily connect those notes to shared calendars for quicker reference.

The search function in Mem uses AI to look through notes to determine which notes could be most pertinent to a specific individual at a given time. According to Moody and Xu, the platform is made to help knowledge workers with their everyday tasks, such as skimming through pages of information, extracting the information that applies to a certain query, and turning it into an answer or a report.

The amount of data we create is increasing by the hour, which has resulted in organizations struggling to deal with data accumulation and analysis. Things can get chaotic pretty quickly with IoT devices, applications, manual entry, and many other sources constantly generating data with different or no structures.

Anyone who has had to deal with data knows that good data architecture is crucial for the correct functioning of any system. No matter how much data is being dealt with, implementing the right models, policies, and standards will directly impact how successfully information is used from the moment it is captured to the decision-making process.

Databases: The Heart and Soul of Data Architecture

When it comes to dealing with data, file systems have long been the preferred tool to deal with data storage, where databases are the preference for querying and using that data operationally. Unfortunately, legacy database models have struggled to keep up with the increasing need for real-time data ingestion, immediate and low-latency queries on that real-time data along with historical data, and handle increased demands from a growing user base for quick access through interactive cloud-native applications, SaaS and mobile apps, and APIs. The industry’s response has been the creation of highly specialized database engines, which break this workload challenge into parts to that each of these can have the speed and scale required. The unintended consequence has been an increase in the complexity of these applications due to the multiple underlying database technologies which are stitched together to serve as a data system for an application. 

With applications becoming increasingly reliant on connecting to multiple databases, the existing overspecialization had become a significant problem, eroding its initially offered value. Unfortunately, the shift to cloud-native architectures and the growing demand for more efficient data management is not going anywhere, meaning that if the paradigm doesn’t change, problems will ensue.

SingleStore’s Approach

The developers of database management systems are aware of the problems plaguing the industry, so most of them are looking to find new ways to move away from nuanced, specialty databases. Take SingleStore as an example. The company aims to harvest the benefits of elastic cloud infrastructure to create an integrated and scalable database that supports multiple types of applications.

With this goal in mind, SingleStore has designed multiple features to change how businesses access and use their data. These range from using Pipelines to ingest data from any source to the distribution of the storage and the execution of queries.

By developing a distributed framework for the creation, upkeep, and use of databases, SingleStore has built a new paradigm for database management.

Using Distributed Architecture to Improve Performance

SingleStore distributes its databases across many machines. By distributing the load in this way, SingleStore seeks to put performance first while facilitating online database operations and providing powerful cluster scaling. As single points of failure are removed by adding redundancy, any data in the database is accessible at all times.

Continuous Data Loading with Pipelines

SingleStore also uses its native Pipelines feature to allow users to perform real-time analytical queries and real-time data ingestion. By providing easy continuous loading, scalability, easy debugging, and high performance, Pipelines effectively acts as a more than valid alternative to ETL middleware. 

The fact that popular data sources and formats are also supported makes the feature easy to integrate. These include:

• Data sources: Apache Kafka, Amazon S3, Azure Blob, file system, Google Cloud Storage, and HDFS data sources.
• Data formats: JSON, Avro, Parquet, and CSV data formats.

PIpelines can be easily backed up and used to restore a state at any given point, which further adds to the stability of any database.

Bottomless Storage for Additional Durability

In addition to dividing the load between nodes and facilitating real-time data ingestion through Pipelines, SingleStore has also developed a great way to separate storage and computing: Unlimited Storage. With Bottomless, long-term storage is moved to blob storage while the most recent data is kept in the SingleStore cluster, resulting in higher availability and flexibility.

Some of the benefits of this approach are flexibility when scaling up and down, allowing for the addition of reading replicas, low recovery time objectives, and read-only point-in-time recovery. 

Distributed Infrastructure is the Future

Distributed technology has become increasingly relevant over the past years. Blockchain, distributed ledgers, distributed computing, P2P apps, and many more use cases have caught the attention of investors worldwide.

In the case of SingleStore, its approach has been attractive enough to raise over $318 million in funding from names like Khosla Ventures, Accel, Google Ventures, Dell Capital, and HPE. What started with a $5 series A round back in 2013 grew to raise $80 million in Series F funding in 2021. 

This success has also seen the platform’s user base grow and the industry is recognizing its contributions. Such recognitions include being listed in Deloitte’s “2021 Technology Fast 500™ Rankings”, San Francisco Business Times’ “Fast 100”, and INC’s “5000”  2020 awards.

A few months ago, Gartner also added SingleStore to its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, one of the most trusted reports in the industry.

“The Olympics of Tech,” Web Summit, took place 1-4 November in Lisbon, Portugal. Despite Europe being in the middle of a pandemic, the world’s premier tech conference gathered 42,751 attendees. At a time of great uncertainty for many industries and, indeed, the world itself, “the grand conclave of the tech industry“ as the New York Times has named them, gathers the founders and CEOs of technology companies, fast-growing startups, investors, policymakers, and heads of state for an exchange. 

Web Summit is a company from Dublin, Ireland, that holds events worldwide: Web Summit in Lisbon and Tokyo, Collision in Toronto, and RISE in Hong Kong. No matter who was the speaker, no matter that COVID  is in the air, for most attendees, just being back at a big tech conference in person was a celebration in itself. Which testifies again that the human need for connection is as significant as the desire to live, and bigger than the fear of dying from the virus. 

Dataconomy belonged to the risk-takers and was present for four days to see, speak, observe, talk, feel, and connect with those redefining global technologies using data science and AI. Read on as we contextualize this for our audience, whether these startups are making good use of data or if they abuse our information. 

We met some fascinating startups advancing the human race by using data science. They all have three things in common:

1. They ask for your data, sometimes without clarity on how they’ll use it
2. They ask for permission to use your data 
3. They ask for permission to share your data with third parties (for a greater good, or maybe just to make money)

Dashbike is a german startup that has developed Dashcam, a crash detector and distance measurement device for bicycles. In cooperation with the city of Leipzig, the urban data platform Dashtrack was developed. On a voluntary and anonymous basis, cyclists can now make the sensor data of the Dashbike available to their city. The cities can use the data for their planning purposes to improve the infrastructure for cyclists in an efficient and determined way. This is an example of data used for the greater good.

Radix wants to decentralize the $360 trillion global financial market. They have been working on a DeFi solution since 2013 and have built a core network, Olympia, which already has over 200 million of its tokens staked. According to the founder Dan Hughes, Radix has launched and built a network that is already faster than Ethereum.

The question raised is where they got the 200 million tokens because a token is nothing else but personal data that has been de-identified. To re-identify a token can be possible depending on the company’s technical and business processes to help prevent reidentification.

However, Radix has announced Scrypto, an asset-oriented programming language for decentralized finance, so that developers have all the tools they need to build a more secure and faster DeFi platform.

We think that Thomas Hobbes would be very disappointed with the idea of decentralizing the finance sector.

FlyAgData is an IoT solution that helps farmers make the most effective decisions. To collect, store, visualize, and analyze in one place allows farmers to make data-driven decisions.

It is a device connected to agricultural machinery that collects agronomic and machine data from the equipment transforming it into valuable insights for the farmers through AI.

The FlyAgData device collects and processes the data from the machinery. The data is processed through APIs (Cropio, Wialon, Power BI, Google Data Studio, etc.), and then through Artificial Intelligence, it gathers insights with a high level of data accuracy.

Tebrio is an agtech “unicorn” startup. They’re building the largest negative carbon footprint industrial insect farm globally, transforming mealworms into biodegradable plastic, animal and fish feed, and biofertilizer. Its machinery is patented in 150 countries.

Global Mindpool is an initiative built in partnership between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — UN’s development agency — and Mindpool, the Danish technology firm Mindpool specializing in collective intelligence. 

Do you remember the viral video of dinosaurs that entered the United Nations and gave a speech about climate change? That was from Global Mindpool. 

Global Mindpool uses the collective intelligence of people around the globe to take action against climate change. You can make your voice heard and contribute your knowledge, experience, and solutions through the platform. But how exactly can collective intelligence help tackle this crisis? 

Global Mindpool asks questions such as “Do you think climate change is a threat to your country?” and “How do you think climate change might affect you?”. You provide answers, and UNDP will channel your answers and amplify your voices to critical decision-makers around the globe.

YData is a data development platform. It offers a set of tools that helps data science teams to discover and unlock data sources, fast prototyping, experimentation with data, and productization of models. The cofounder Fabiana Clemente, a speaker at Web Summit, found an Achilles heel. Everybody talks about and is doing AI, but the truth is 80% of AI companies never reach production, and of those, 40% are not profitable. 80% of the time a data scientist spends doing their job is not building algorithms but data cleaning and preparation. That’s why Fabiana founded YData, a data development platform built for and by data scientists that helps them build a better dataset for AI. 

The question we raise is, do they use or abuse the data for the greater good? Stay tuned for more reports from our trip to Web Summit, where we’ll expand on this question and offer some answers. 

David Kuntz, Head of Data Science at Degreed, discusses how to find and form a close-knit, full-stack data science team in weeks. 

We’ve all heard about data science unicorns – people with an almost mythical set of skills that can bring real clout and power into your organisation. But searching for your unicorn can be a misguided mission. Instead of hiring just one unicorn, who are hard-to-find and often out of budget, look at creating a full-stack team and uniting their differing skills and experiences towards a common goal.

At a key time in Degreed’s product journey, we had a critical need to build-out our data science capabilities to accelerate its product roadmap. So we took this approach, searching for ‘full-stack’ data scientists who were diverse, collaborative and talented. Then we united them as a close-knit team under significant pressure and company-wide scrutiny. Simultaneously, the Coronavirus pandemic began to spread. As our data science team began their life at Degreed, so too did the global shutdown.

Looking back at this time, there are lessons learned for all leaders looking to build a data science team quickly. In recruiting, uniting, and motivating them – even when spread across different geographies and time-zones. 

The need for data scientists

We were fortunate in that there was a clear business case to invest in a “full-stack” data science team. There was senior buy-in from the start, which is critically important.

What’s a full-stack data science team, you ask?

We were looking for people who were not just strong data scientists, not just experienced ML (machine learning) engineers, but also talented software engineers – people who had strong coding and product development skills. And not just that, but people with strong critical reasoning and critical thinking skills.

Why?

The team’s main focus is to build production-grade ML-driven services to create new capabilities and features in the Degreed product, initially for the (currently in-beta) Career Mobility product that helps to link skills and learning to work opportunities. 

Recruiting a range of backgrounds

When building a team from the ground up there is a temptation to focus on hiring a collection of very experienced people, especially when the team has a lot to do, and needs to move quickly. But this can be a mistake. Diversity in the team, along many dimensions, allows each person to contribute from the start.  

The benefits of a diverse team are well-known. Diversity leads to greater innovation. Culturally diverse teams, for example, are more likely to develop innovative new products compared to homogeneous ones.

Rita Sallam, research vice president at Gartner, explains that,

“…Among analytic and business intelligence (BI) leaders indicates a positive relationship between the diversity of teams and business benefits.”

She goes on to explain that data leaders must consider both the ‘seen’ diversity criteria (gender, ethnicity and so forth) as well as ‘unseen’ factors like the diversity of thought, knowledge, experience, cognitive styles and perspectives.

It is especially important when building this kind of team to blend areas of expertise and experience so that each person on the team has something to teach the others, and something they can learn from others.  This provides balance and trust across the team and helps create a learning culture, which is especially important when developing groundbreaking new capabilities.

Going deep into (and then beyond) the CV

What does it take, then, to find people with different skill sets, experiences, strengths and personalities?

To build a varied team that would be better at problem-solving, coming at an issue from different angles, where there are fewer blind spots, they can learn from one another, and their skills complement each other?

Doing this today requires really reading CVs in detail. It might seem old-fashioned, but each CV tells a story that mere keyword filtering cannot yet capture, nor yet most of the AI (artificial intelligence) applications in this area. 

Once a shortlist of CVs has been identified, you need to move beyond it to other indicators of skills, capabilities, communication, and critical thinking. Looking at a candidate’s blogs, GitHub, and/or Kaggle, for example, can really help round out the picture, and help identify who’s worth speaking to in person. 

Again, while many organizations are trying to speed up recruitment by searching for keywords in CVs, this misses the wider context of a candidate and potentially eliminates really good candidates merely because they didn’t happen to have the right keyword listed.

Aligning business needs with skills and experience

To build a quality data team rapidly, you need to assess their experiences and how these align with your needs. Consider what skills they have that are related to others, that can be built upon and soft skills like empathy and collaboration that will help your team function. You should also consider their career potential – what each data scientist can achieve for you five to ten years from now. 

This led to a data science team with strengths in machine learning engineering, data engineering, data analysis, software engineering, and in seeing and telling the deeper stories behind the data. It enabled us to have a real-time modelling and continuous-deployment infrastructure working in parallel and develop the first iteration of our new capabilities in just a few months (from March to May 2020). 

Competing for talent

Companies like ours (and most companies, frankly) cannot compete on compensation with the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix, et al. Data scientists in high-demand areas like California, New York, and Washington were simply out-of-budget. So, we spent our time looking at smaller markets where there are concentrations of interesting and exciting things happening. Markets like France and the UK, where government investment in data science is driving growth and innovation. 

Being a remote-first company makes Degreed a more competitive employer. People can choose to work from anywhere and we could search globally for suitable candidates. This set-up also enabled a certain resilience when the coronavirus shutdown occurred. Our team was already operating remotely, operating from home, and we had all the tools in place to support productive remote work, like an up-to-date Confluence repository for documentation, Slack for communication, Github for code, and so on. 

Remote-first communication

To aid communication and cohesiveness, we hold daily stand-ups via video call to check-in with each other and ‘see’ our colleagues every day. As a team, even though we live in different cities and countries, we try to be visually together as much as possible and our video calls also give a chance to socialise. The current team spans nine time zones, but with some flexibility and empathy, we were able to find a time that worked well enough for everyone.

Regular one-on-ones with each team member is also critically important to understand how they’re doing professionally and personally, as well as stopping them feeling isolated. A daily standup also helps to quickly resolve any blockers or concerns.

Future plans

While the first version of infrastructure has launched, the team has plenty of exciting work in front of it, such as internationalizing the ‘language’ of skills and understanding how different skills connect to each other. Longer-term, the team will be leveraging this deep insight into skills to enable not just upskilling for Degreed users, but also mobility based on those skills, by helping employers connect the right people to the right work opportunities. 

There’s also the emerging impact of the pandemic to consider. The demand for upskilling and workforce agility is growing post-COVID – one in seven Degreed users activated their profiles during the global shutdown. The data science team is responding to this growth, building-out further functionality and exploring new capabilities for Degreed learning and career mobility products. 

Build strong foundations

The main takeaway from this is that your team’s foundations are key. By investing early-on in the diversity of your team, clearly aligning their skills and experience with your goals, and ensuring they can learn from and teach each other as they grow, your team will be well set-up for whatever may come their way. 

Corporations need to digitalize in order to overcome their challenges. That’s especially true for the large industrial corporations in Germany’s Ruhr region and its over 50 cities and municipalities. By collaborating with startups, they are able to drive the change forward, and that’s what the Data Hub program by Gründerallianz Ruhr is all about: cupid’s work between corporates and startups. 

The German Ruhr region has been undergoing a unique transformation. For a century it was the place for the steel and mining industry, but it has been rediscovering its identity in the past decade. Today, the region that is home to over five million people is aiming to integrate the knowledge and experience into the new digital era. 

Gründerallianz Ruhr is part of this mission to make the Ruhr region a forerunner and show its huge potential – especially for B2B startups:’. Christian Lüdtke, himself born in the Ruhr region and successful founder of digital consultancy etventure, thinks the Ruhr region offers opportunities like no other area in Germany, for startups and companies alike. “What we need in order to benefit from these opportunities are companies willing to open their doors to digital specialists and innovation drivers from the start-up ecosystem”, he tells. 

That’s why he launched the Data Hub Ruhr, a three-months curated program, where startups can get to work on the challenges that various Ruhr corporates want to tackle. “As digitalization processes are catching up in the Ruhr region, data and talent support are greasing the wheels”, said Dr. Frank Dudda, mayor of the Ruhr city of Herne, during the demo day of Data Hub Ruhr, where five startups presented their results.  

Startup AdiutaByte emerged that day as the winner, for helping waste management company Entsorgung Herne reduce their kilometers driven for bulk waste pickup by up to 30 percent. They were able to shorten the resident’s waiting times by two thirds. The startup won a well deserved 10.000 euro and a chance to collaborate with Herne further. 

Finding the right match

The program turned out very valuable to Herne, as they were looking for “out of the box thinking”. “Cities need different perspectives to solve problems, the digitalization is the answer to some problems of the cities, for example in the fields of mobility, energy or climate change”, says Pierre Golz of Herne’s Office for Digitalization. “The disruptive thoughts and the general mindset of startups are important to solve those difficult problems.” 

Important for Herne is that a startup can match with their specific profile, as the company is not seeking to maximize profit, but to maximize the welfare of its citizens, organizing state services in an efficient, paperless and transparent way. It is important for startups to understand this context: “To understand the needs of citizens is important to create qualitative solutions for the problems.” 

Data Hub proves to be valuable here, by helping the city formulate its needs and finding the most fitting partners. “I think that the cooperation between cities, research, and industry, in general, is one of the most important change-processes the public sector has to solve”, says Pierre Golz. “The Data Hub program could be an important partner to create this ecosystem of innovation which is needed to solve future problems.” 

Sparking innovation

For Evonik, another corporation participating in Data Hub Ruhr, digitalization is essential to overcome some of their challenges for the future. Over the next years, a lot of knowledgeable people in the specialty chemicals company will retire. Databases and other online tools might be the key to preserve expertise for younger scientists in the company.

Another challenge is that the company has a lot of innovative ideas, but not always the time and resources to test them out. “Here, collaborations with startups help. With the Data Hub program we can test potential ideas to see if it’s promising and worth spending more money and time on”, says Udo Goecke, Digital Strategist at Evonik.

It’s also important for Evonik to inspire a more entrepreneurial and agile culture within their company. “Startups have this already in their DNA”, says Goecke. “Collaborating with a startup might also spark some new ideas and transfer part of this culture into our company.” 

To select the startup they wanted to work with, Goecke thinks it’s important to find a startup that shows certain confidence that they can deliver a good result. “You see it in those pitches, most of them look very confident”, he says. “But they also have to really give you the feeling that they are able to deliver what they are promising. They need to have a unique ingredient that others don’t have that we cannot get somewhere else.”

Another important criterion is that the company culture should not be too different. For example, when it comes to the pace of work some common ground is needed. “Some startups are very aggressive in their development pace – sometimes, we can already see from the beginning we won’t be able to work together”, says Goecke.

The runner-up that matched all of Evonik´s expectations was Berlin-based startup Industrial Analytics. They won 5000 EUR for developing an Artificial Intelligence with which Evonik can develop ideal mixing ratios for polymer compounds. 

For the startup, it can be a challenge to find the right contact person at a big corporation. “Who, besides their daily tasks, is willing to explore new products and services and can push this within the company as well”, says project manager Robert Strube. Data Hub makes the process very smooth. “We already know what challenges to solve, who is the contact person, what is the budget, the time frame. It makes it all easier.” 

And hopefully, says Strube, it will also lead to collaboration after the project: “If the connection is good between the partners, you can move forward, either with the same project or in order to solve new challenges.”

Got excited about Data Hub Ruhr? Good news: you can apply for their freshly released open call here! Hurry – deadline is May 8th to upload your application.

About Data Hub:

The Data Hub is a business building program that connects startups with established companies from the Ruhr region. Your task is to tackle the use cases with innovative ideas and to create a proof-of-concept within a 3-month cooperation period.

Funding: €20K per case + additional €10K for Data Hub Demo Day winner – 100% equity-free.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has generated a wide variety of responses from citizens, governments, charities, organizations, and the startup community worldwide. At the time of writing, the number of confirmed cases has now exceeded 1,000,000, affecting 204 countries and territories.

From mandated lockdowns to applauding health workers from balconies, a significant number of people are taking this as an opportunity to step up and help in any way they see fit. And this is true of the various tech ecosystems too.

And while some are repurposing their existing startups and businesses to assist with the pandemic response, others are joining an ever-expanding number of hackathons across the globe to come up with fresh ideas and feasible solutions.

One such hackathon, #HackCorona, gathered over 1,700 people, and during the course of the 48-hour long online event, 300 people delivered 23 digital solutions to help the world fight the outbreak. Organized by Data Natives and Hacking Health Berlin, the event was created in record time, a hallmark of people’s response to the situation. There really is no time to waste.

Attracting hackers from 41 countries, the teams worked tirelessly to produce solutions that were useful, viable, and immediately available to help in a multitude of areas affected by the spread of the novel coronavirus. Mentors and jurors from Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Flixbus, MotionLab.Berlin, T-Systems International, Fraunhofer, and more both assisted the teams with their applications, and decided which would win a number of useful prizes.

“We are happy to have created a new community of inspired, talented, and creative people from so many different backgrounds and countries eager to change the course of this critical situation,”  CEO at Data Natives, Elena Poughia, said. “This is exactly the reason why we, at Data Natives, are building and nurturing data and tech communities.” 

Distrik5, born from members of the CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, developed a digital currency that is earned when one of its users provides assistance to the elderly, those that are at the highest risk of dying from COVID-19 and its associated complications. The team won a fast track to join the current incubator cohort at Vision Health Pioneers.

Homenauts created a participatory directory of resources to help maintain strong mental health while isolating. Polypoly.eu developed Covid Encounters, a mobile app to track exposure and alert citizens without compromising privacy. HacKIT_19 created a solution that uses data to help you make better decisions with self-reported symptoms. 

In total, eight teams created winning solutions that are viable and instantly applicable to the crisis. And #HackCorona is just one of many such examples around the world.

“The solutions created were a good mixture of ‘citizen first’ solutions with the aim to assist people with limited technology,” Poughia said. “However, what really stood out to me was that we need more data scientists working closely with epidemiologists to predict and understand the current outbreak.”

Poughia warns that we mustn’t slow down now, or become complacent.

“I think it is admirable to see institutions, academic universities, incubators, and accelerators joining in to support the projects,” Poughia said.

“What we need is immediate action and immediate support to keep the momentum going. Volunteers should continue to come together to help but we also need the support of governments, companies, startups, and corporations, so that we can accelerate and find immediate solutions.”

Data Natives is now bringing the #HackCorona concept to Greece. With the support of the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance, Hellenic eHealth and innovation ecosystems and co-organised by GFOSS and eHealthForum, the second edition of HackCorona aims to find creative, easily scalable, and marketable digital solutions. Its aim is to help hospitals manage the supply and demand chain, provide real-time information for coronavirus hotlines, offer telehealth solutions allowing doctors to care for patients remotely, use data to create an extensive mapping, create symptom checkers, and more. 

HackCoronaGreece is currently gathering teams of data scientists, entrepreneurs, technology experts, designers, healthcare professionals, psychologists, and everyone who is interested in contributing for a weekend-long hacking marathon which will conclude on Monday, April 13th with a closing ceremony. Applications are closing on April 10th at 23:59 Central European Time.

Head of Marketing for TechBBQ, and co-organizer of Hack the Crisis DK, Juliana Geller explained the motivation behind creating hackathons at times of need.

“It’s the potential of getting people of all walks of life together to create solutions to a problem that affects all of us,” Geller said. “By doing that for this particular challenge, we can prove it is possible to do it for all the other challenges we face as a society.”

Hack the Crisis is, in fact, not one hackathon, but an entire series that have been set up to find solutions pertaining to COVID-19. Hack the Crisis Norway ran for 48 hours on March 27, 2020, and was won by a team that used 3D printing technology to put visors in the hands of medical staff on site, saving time and reducing the supply chain dramatically.

Of course, bringing people together to create apps, products, and services is one thing, but getting to market quickly enough to make a difference is an entirely different proposition. Almost every hackathon I looked at when researching this article has built deliverability into the judging criteria, so that those who can put the solution into the hands of those that need it are rewarded.

“One of our judging criteria is actually that the solution is delivered as an MVP by the end of the Hackathon and had the potential to be developed into a go-to-market product quickly”, Geller said. “Besides for the ‘saving lives solutions,’ which are obviously the most urgent, we want to see ideas to help the community and help businesses, and it is already clear that those will be affected for a much longer period. So we are positive that the solutions will indeed make a difference.”

Hack the Crisis was originally created by Garage48 AccelerateEstonia, and other Estonian startups, but it has become an entire hackathon community, determined to not only support the efforts against the novel coronavirus, but to supporting other hackathon creators.

Anyone can organize a hackathon and post it on the Hack the Crisis website, which at the time of writing has 46 hackathons listed in over 20 countries. Geography, of course, it not important at this time, since every hackathon is being run remotely, but it does illustrate how global the response is, and how everyone, everywhere, is looking to solve the biggest COVID-19 challenges.

“It is a worldwide movement,” Geller said. “And on April 9-12, 2020, there’ll be a Global Hack. But that is not where it stops, absolutely not. We want to generate solutions that will have value after this crisis, that can actually become a startup and keep benefiting the community later on.”

But there are also groups that are forgoing the traditional hackathon format and are coming up with solutions created in WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger group chats. One such chat was created by Paula Schwarz, fondatrice of the Cloud Nation and founder of Datanomy.Today.

By bringing together like-minded people, and through constant curation of the chat and calls to action to incentivize members to come up with solutions, Schwarz has created a pseudo-hackathon that never ends.

One such solution is Meditainer, which helps get important supplies to those in need. It’s a simple solution, but one that was created quickly and effectively. 

Meditainer is a project very close to Schwarz’ heart. “My grandfathers started a medical company shortly after the second world war,” she said. “This is why I have very good connections in the pharmaceutical sector.”

“Since I had mandates from the United Nations to organize the data of 25 cities and I watched the supply chains of the United Nations fall apart, I realized that right now is the time to leverage my network and the background of my family, together with sophisticated usage of data in order to provide next-level healthcare innovation for the people,” Schwarz said.

So how does it work? 

“Meditainer works directly with governments and strong institutional partners inside and around the United Nations to close supply gaps in healthcare through our effective public-private partnerships,” Schwarz said. “It operates as a distributor of thermometers, smart corona tests and apps that will hopefully help to reduce the spread of the virus.”

So whether you organize a hackathon, participate in one, or create your own “mastermind group” on a messaging platform, there’s one thing that is for sure – you’re making a difference and you’re aiding those in need, when they need it the most.

The benefits for society are obvious, and the growth you’ll witness by getting involved in some way is also extremely apparent.

“I’m grateful to be working with so many active masterminds and I look forward to getting to know key players in the industry even better,” Schwarz said.

The startup industry, and those connected to it, have really stepped up at a time when it is needed the most, and long may that spirit continue.

According to WHO, it took more than 3 months to reach the first 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, but only 12 days to reach 200,000, 4 days to reach 300,000, 3 days to reach 400,000 and another 5 to reach 700,000. China’s cases rocketed in the early weeks of the outbreak but curbed before other significant outbreaks had happened. Now, the US has the most number of confirmed cases. Can we predict where the virus hits next?

Greece currently faces over 1800+ coronavirus cases. As of now, over 200 people have recovered but 81 people died. With a disciplined approach the Greek Government is implementing, the outbreak could be very well under control. However, based on the experience of other European countries and taking into consideration the threats of an economical crisis, easily implementable solutions, will help manage the current state of affairs better, avoid overloading the healthcare system and putting additional burden on the Greek economy. 

#HackCoronaGreece: Supported by the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance

HackCorona hackathons are initiated by Data Natives, a community of 78000+ tech professionals, data enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and activists. After gathering over 1700 hackers and producing 23 digital solutions to help the world fight the COVID-19 outbreak during the 48-hour long virtual hackathon on March 20th-22nd, Data Natives is bringing the concept to Greece. 

With the support of the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance, Hellenic eHealth and innovation ecosystems and co-organised by GFOSS and eHealthForum, the second edition of HackCorona aims to find creative, easily scalable and marketable digital solutions to tackle the main pain points the greek healthcare and social systems are facing due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

HackCoronaGreece is currently gathering teams of data scientists, entrepreneurs, technology experts, designers, healthcare professionals, psychologists, and everyone who is interested in contributing for a weekend-long hacking marathon which will conclude on Monday, April 13th with a closing ceremony. Applications are closing on April 10th at 23:59 Central European Time – hurry up!

Proposals gathered throughout the hackathon will provide solutions directly applicable to the challenges posed and will be evaluated by a renowned committee of jurors, including scientists, entrepreneurs and awarded.

Hackers will deep-dive in an intensive collaboration to come up with the working digital prototypes to:

• help hospitals manage the demand and supply chain
• provide real-time information for coronavirus hotlines
• offer telehealth solutions allowing doctors to care for patients remotely
• use data to create an extensive mapping, symptom checkers and pandemic forecasts & more
• come up with fast and easy hardware solutions that can be produced to solve problems defined by hospitals and other healthcare providers

The participation application is available here.

Application deadline: April 10th, 23:59 CET

The event launch, demo sessions and workshops will be streamed here.

Official #HackCoronaGreece website: http://hackcorona.world/gr

Slack group for hackers:  http://hackcorona.world/slack

Become a mentor here.

Join as a journalist here.

In just one day, the HackCorona initiative gathered over 1700 people and 300 selected hackers came up with 23 digital solutions to help the world fight the COVID-19 outbreak during the 48-hour long virtual hackathon by Data Natives and Hacking Health. Here are the results.

HackCorona was created on March 17th in order to find digital solutions for the most pressing problems of the COVID-19 outbreak within a short period of time. In just one day, the initiative gathered over 1700 people. 300 selected data scientists, developers, project managers, designers, healthcare experts and psychologists of 41 nationalities formed 30 teams to collaborate intensively throughout the weekend to come up with the working prototypes for selected challenges:

• “Protecting the Elderly” challenge focused on finding digital solutions for a voluntary care network for the elderly population, supported by young and healthy people.
• “Open-Source Childcare” challenge aimed at creating digital solutions for open source childcare networks.
• “Self-Diagnosis” challenge targeted the development of an online self-diagnosis COVID-19 solutions that would allow to input symptoms and suggest the next steps to take.
• “Open Source Hardware Solutions” challenge intended to build fast and easy medical devices that can be produced to solve problems defined by hospitals and other healthcare providers.
• “The open challenge” allowed participants to suggest and wok the challenge of their own choice

HackCorona hackers were joined by renowned jurors and mentors such as Max Wegner, Head of Regulatory Affairs for Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Thorsten Goltsche, Senior Strategic Consultant at Bayer Business Services, Sabine Seymour, Founder SUPA + MOONDIAL, Dr. Alexander Stage, Vice President Data at FlixBus, Tayla Sheldrake, Operational Project Leader at MotionLab.Berlin, Dandan Wang, Data Scientist at T-Systems International GmbH, Mike Richardson, Deep Technology Entrepreneur & Guest Researcher at Fraunhofer, and more.

I encountered some very committed people, who presented amazing analyses. I really hope that they can actually use their solutions to fight the virus.

Max Wegner, Regulatory Affairs at Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

Hacking teams were focusing on creating easily-marketable solutions to connect volunteers to the high-risk population, encouraging people to volunteer, low-cost wearables tracking body values, assisting parents to deal with anxiety, helping authorities to better manage the lockdown and many more.

From a community currency to incentivize volunteering to drug screening using quantum calculations

8 winners were selected to receive prizes provided by the HackCorona partners Hacking Health, Bayer, Vision Health Pioneers, Motion Lab and Fraunhofer. 

• Distrik5 team from the CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin developed a community currency to incentivize people to volunteer and help the elderly with their needs by rewarding their time via digital currency. The team won a fast track to join the current batch of incubation at Vision Health Pioneers.

• Team Homenauts created a directory of resources to help people stay at home and take care of their mental health. Homenauts introduced a participatory platform with ideas on how to better cope with isolation where users can submit useful resources. The team won a prize of connections from the Data Natives team, who will support the development of the platform by connecting Homenauts with marketing and development experts. 

• DIY Ventilator Scout team created a chatbot (currently available on Telegram) to help engineers to build a DIY ventilator by giving instructions and data regarding the availability of components need to build a ventilator. The team received a prize from Fraunhofer to use the DIY Ventilator Scout system to guide Fraunhofer’s engineers who are currently working on the hardware. 

What a fantastic event with incredible outcomes! … We at MotionLab.Berlin absolutely loved the motivation and enthusiasm. Your energy was felt and we could not be prouder to have been part of such a positive and community building initiative. Thank you DataNatives and all those involved for making this happen.

Tayla Sheldrake, Operational Project Leader at MotionLab.Berlin

• Covid Encounters team by Polypoly.eu developed a mobile app for tracking the exposure and alerting citizens without compromising their privacy. The app allows notifying any encounters with the possibility of the infection through public alert service that sends a notification to all connected devices.  The team won a prize of connections from the Data Natives team, who will support the development of the app by introducing the team to relevant stakeholders. 

• HacKIT_19 team developed an easy-to-use app to help individuals, families, and decision-makers to make better decisions based on self-reported symptoms and real-time data. The team won a prize of connections from the Data Natives team.

Best way to spend a Sunday afternoon! I am just listening to the pitches of the #HackCorona teams. Some of them like the team from Anne Bruinsma just came together 48h ago to fight coronavirus. Hands up for the 140 entrepreneurs that spent their precious time to come up with new ideas!

Maren Lesche, Founder at Startup Colors, Head of Incubation at Vision Health Pioneers

• Quantum Drug Screening team developed an algorithm for drug screening using quantum calculations to describe the drug molecules that have been already approved and can be adopted in therapy faster. Drug discovery for virus infections usually takes a lot of time and manpower and consumes over 15% of pharmaceutical company revenue. The faster way is using computer simulations to target viruses with an array of available drug molecules and look at hundreds of thousands of possible drug solutions in a short time. The team won a prize of connections from the Data Natives team and further support of the project from Bayer.

• BioReactors team developed a small data AI-powered tool for the optimization of bioreactor settings and nutrition mixtures based on their existing xT smart_DoE solution to scale the vaccine production much faster than usual. The team received a prize from MotionLab Berlin and got access to their facility infrastructure of 4000 square meters to help with the project development.

• “Our Team” focused on creating prediction models for of Covid-19 outbreak based on a machine learning algorithm with an option to change the parameters and view results. The team won a prize of connections from the Data Natives team and will be introduced to the relevant network stakeholders to push the project further.

CEO of Data Natives, Elena Poughia, said:

We are happy to have created a new community of inspired, talented and creative people from so many different backgrounds and countries eager to change the course of this critical situation – this is exactly the reason why we, at Data Natives, are building and nurturing data and tech communities.

HackCorona initiative was just the beginning. While the winning teams are continuing to work on their solutions, Data Natives is looking to build on the success and bring more bottom-up community-driven hacks to solve current and future problems collectively.

Sponsors & supporters:

Sponsors: Hacking Health, Bayer, Vision Health Pioneers, Motion Lab

Supporters: Fraunhofer, Enpact, gig, INAM, Photonic Insights, SIBB, Unicorns in Tech, StartUp Asia Berlin, Start-A-Factory

Pitching session recording is available via this link.

Winning ceremony recording is available here.

Which are the AI startups that are innovating in Europe? Why is the world so skeptic about AI innovation in Europe? From where will the next wave of innovation come? Read on. 

Pundits say that Europe is losing the race for artificial intelligence (AI). Their perspective is suspiciously dire and misses an obvious point: Europe is not the U.S. or China. 

Our AI champions will not resemble Google and Facebook or Baidu and Tencent—and that is for the best. Europe will not tolerate AI innovators who violate individual privacy or further government coercion.

As an AI and robotics investor based in Delft (Netherlands), I acknowledge the concerns about European AI. However, I meet regularly with entrepreneurs who ought to give alarmists pause. Our AI founders are not media superstars touting multibillion-dollar valuations, but their potential should be not underestimated, least of all by their American and Chinese competitors. 

In response to the pessimists, I’d like to convince you that the seeds of an AI revolution are planted in Europe. But like any seed, it must grow from the ground up, not from the top down. 

The AI Panic

When AI investor Kai-Fu Lee said the EU isn’t even in the running for the bronze medal in AI, he was preaching to a growing choir—of which I am not a member. “Europe is not keeping up” with North American and China, says an open letter from the ELLIS Society, which seeks to create a research and entrepreneurial network for European AI. 

CLAIRE, another research network, says that “If Europe were to fall behind in AI technology, we would be likely to face challenging economic consequences, academic brain drain, reduced transparency, and increasing dependency on foreign technologies, products and values.”

And on it goes. The European Council on Foreign Relations warns that “Europe has not yet taken all the steps it needs to benefit from these advances or to protect itself from AI’s potentially dangerous aspects.” Geopoliticians worry that EU militaries see little need for AI strategies. Meanwhile, though Vladimir Putin claims that the dominant player in AI “will be the ruler of the world.” 

The EU seems to be losing the AI race, but there is no finish line, and no one has defined what it would mean to catch up. Meanwhile, our AI innovators fly under the radar, uncelebrated and often underfunded.

Pockets of Excellence

Europe has pockets of AI excellence. I happen to live near one at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The UK, Germany, France, and Spain are home to the bulk of Europe’s AI startups. The problem is that most European AI startups have dug themselves into niches. They seem to copy the Silicon Valley model, which commands innovators to define a startup as the singular solution to a singular problem. That, perhaps, is why the world has more than 7,000 marketing technology companies.  

One-trick companies limit their potential. Imagine if Google had stuck to search only, or if Amazon only sold books. They would not be the world-shifting AI pioneers they are today. 

Therein lies the concern for Europe. Although companies must hyperspecialize when they first attack the market, they need the ambition—and capital—to expand. Otherwise, their best financial outcome is to cash out quickly through an acquisition by an American company.  

The task, then, is not just to fund AI innovation. It is to fund AI technologies that have a pathway from their beachhead to a diversity of applications and markets. A few startups have pursued that strategy.

Multidisciplinary AI

In no particular order, I’ll present several startups that seem to grasp the future of AI. I presently have no financial ties to these firms. They exemplify the multi-industry AI strategy that we need more of in Europe. 

Let’s start with Rotterdam-based Widget Brain. Companies entering the AI game used to have two options: hire expensive data scientists to make homegrown AI, or buy conventional software with built-in, black-box AI. Instead, Widget Brain builds applied AI on top of its “Algorithm Factory,” which trains, runs, and manages its AI services in the cloud and delivers “AI-in-a-box” to the market. 

Widget Brain’s first successful AI service predicts labour needs and automatically schedules employees according to local labours laws. That same Algorithm Factory now runs pick/pack optimization-as-a-service to reduce pick times for online retailers. The company is also developing AI services to predict breakdowns and automatically schedule preventative maintenance. 

Widget Brain isn’t stuck in one industry because it figured out how to deliver AI at scale. However, Widget Brain will have to demonstrate that AI in a box delivers value to large organizations sceptical of this approach

UK-based Graphcore likewise has multidisciplinary value. It develops semiconductors called intelligent processing units (IPUs) that accelerate AI and machine learning applications. From robotic factories and autonomous vehicles to emergency room technologies and cybersecurity, plenty of use cases demand faster processing speeds than what conventional chips offer. 
Hence, Graphcore’s $1.7 billion valuation. As The Economist notes, Graphcore is well-positioned for an AI chip industry projected to be worth $30 billion by 2022.

This roundup owes a nod to Germany, which has as many patents for autonomous vehicles as China and America combined. By one count, Germany has 71 autonomous driving startups deploying €180 million in venture capital funding.

While U.S. companies worry about how to show advertisements in your self-driving car, Germany’s Enway is developing autonomous vehicles for street cleaning, waste collection, agriculture, and construction. You’ll find their autonomous street sweeper in the pedestrian zones of Darmstadt, Germany. 

Again, I highlight Enway because it’s not stuck in one niche. It recognizes that one autonomous vehicle platform can transform multiple industries.  

Seed to Tree

Europe has the seeds for an AI revolution, though pessimists may accuse me of not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s a faulty analogy. In the startup world, the forest of early-stage companies largely dies out, leaving a few trees standing to seed the next generation. Companies like Widget Brain, Graphcore, and Enway show the potential for European AI champions to stay independent and nourish a wide range of industries. 

By the numbers, Europe is trailing the U.S. and China in AI. But let’s not discount our bottom-up innovators. It is they, not just Europe’s universities, industrial juggernauts, and public research consortiums, that will develop a competitive AI economy. 

We have untapped talent, capital, and collaborators spanning the private and public sector. Let’s fund AI projects that will be too valuable to sell off to Silicon Valley.

Netflix excels at attracting users to its platform and hooking them on to the content it provides. For several years, pharmaceutical companies have wanted to achieve the same thing with specialised medical content. But is it that easy to transfer the “Netflix principle” to the pharmaceutical industry? What kind of data do we need to make this possible and which mechanisms are required for curating and customising content?

Let’s start at the beginning: Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies are looking for increasingly sophisticated and more relevant  ways to connect with one of their most important direct target groups — doctors. Because there is nothing worse than encountering reactance from doctors, at least from a pharmaceutical company’s perspective. Therefore, it is crucial to have a data system that enables specific target groups to be presented with content that actually interests them and which will support them in their daily work. Similar to how Netflix only suggests content to its users, which is suited to the individual and is as relevant as possible.

In recent years, the focus in multi-channel marketing has been on using as many different channels as possible to reach a high percentage of the target audience, such as congresses, sales force, emails, ad words, online ads – just to name a few. However, repeatedly sending the same content via all channels has been a frequently made mistake. The so-called multi-pipe approach, a development of the multi-channel concept, tailors the message to specific channels and, most importantly, to the user group being targeted. Nevertheless, the database structure has not always been optimal, and campaigns haven’t always reached their full potential either.

In other words: Underlying data will become crucial in deciding whether doctors engage with content or reject it. Data stored in silos and not available to all stakeholders will prove increasingly useless, at most being suitable for implementing one-off projects. The aim must be to create a complete picture of all targeted individuals, stored in their personal profiles. These personal profiles should be the only starting point to develop specific measures. 

Personalization is the key

To achieve this objective, a customer data platform (CDP) is required. This is a central database that compiles and processes all data from all touchpoints and makes this available via interfaces. 

And this does in fact mean “all touchpoints”, including conference attendance, mailings, field calls, emails, web interactions and other means used in marketing – the list could go on indefinitely. Of course, CDPs are not just databases. They can be used for measuring KPIs, for visual analytics and predictive modelling as well as for content shaping and marketing. If CDPs are additionally equipped with artificial intelligence, many multi-channel and marketing processes can be completely automated. Anything

from the selection of specific target audiences to delivering content tailored to individual users.

CDPs therefore become central hubs that not only collect data but also share it. In turn, the shared data is used to learn about specific target groups and to provide an ever-improving service. The Medflix principle is an important milestone on this data path.

What does Netflix do?

1.8 seconds, that is how long Netflix has calculated a film has to persuade a user to watch it. The film’s preview image was identified as the most important factor in this persuasion process. For a perfect match, AI automatically searches for film frames and selects an image based on user preferences that is most likely to appeal to the user. 

You may also have noticed that Netflix users often get different thumbnails for the same film. For example, the film “Good Will Hunting” presents a romance watcher with a kissing scene whereas a lover of comedies is shown a smiling Robin Williams. 

Doctors want to medflix

As Digital Natives enter the specialised, medical target groups, the demand for the level of digital sophistication is constantly set higher. In their private life, they are familiar with services like Netflix, Uber, Lime and Spotify and expect the same or a similar level in their daily business. 

Static websites that provide a handful of content at launch, and then only add new content on a monthly basis, need to be rethought or removed. Classic website navigation, from homepage via landing page to desired content has also largely served its purpose. And as long as the website does not serve the direct sale of a product, which is rare in the pharmaceutical market, then web competition in terms of content solely revolves around the user’s attention, dwell time and duration of use.

A modern content and service hub should adapt to this changed usage behaviour. High-quality, wide-ranging content is essential. But to distinguish itself from other web content, it needs to be accurately tailored to user interests and must adapt flexibly to user behaviour in real time. The good thing is: Even without the resources Netflix and similar companies have to hand, the basic principles can be adapted and applied efficiently. Software development is making enormous advances and offers similar mechanisms. The challenge lies in finding the right tool to fit your own needs. Because the “data lake” is followed by a “software river”. New tools come onto the market practically every day, enabling even better, faster performance.

Success factor: Curated content

Curated content is the key. Each user of a portal is presented with the content that is most relevant and interesting to them. So, instead of content pages, let’s think in terms of article streams. Each stream can be curated according to a topic, for example a specific discipline or indication, content type, such as written articles or videos, or as a package, i.e. a combination of both elements. 

By using high-performance tracking, we can find a user’s interests as well as their preferred content and can then curate the matching content in customised streams. What a user reads, rates, downloads, watches and comments on says a lot about their interests. With the help of so-called “shared characteristics”, two different users can be identified, who display a similar interest behaviour. As a result, even users who rarely use the platform and reveal little about themselves can be provided with suitable content. 

By consolidating multiple data sources within a single CDP, the information gathered can be used for curating different offers. Not only does the accessing of a particular web article become more likely but the opening of an email/mailing, registration for an event and interest in a field call are more likely as well. 

However, target groups will not allow a digital trend to be imposed on them. Whether your target group members already “medflix” or still very much prefer an analogue approach can only be established through mutual communication and a direct dialogue with them. 

Nowadays, the speed and flexibility of the digital world can be easily transferred to the analogue world – and make the “Medflix principle” usable here as well. Through software automation, print templates (e.g. postcards or mailings) can be provided and sent via digital systems. As a result, a marketing manager can easily decide which specific target groups receive an e-mail or a mailing, or are even visited personally.

This is where the “agility mindset” comes into play alongside the “data mindset”. Co-creation methods enable ideas and digital products to be collaboratively developed, user journeys to be fine-tuned and strategic actions to be taken. The database must be considered from the outset.

Vice-President of XING’s Data Science team, Dr. Sébastien Foucaud, believes the time of blackbox AI is behind us. The market leader in the DACH region has a vision for its Machine Learning: it should be explainable to the boss, as well as to users. 

Focussing on German-speaking countries since 2012, XING has become the market leader in the DACH region with around 16 million users. If you work in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, XING is a must. In a market that is all but saturated, not only LinkedIn has the space to grow, but also the presence of XING is rising. In the first half of 2019, XING increased profits by 22 percent and gained one million new users. 

So how has the company managed to conquer the German-speaking market? One major reason is that it has been important for Xing to profile itself as a reliable and trustworthy social platform. “In Germany, we see that users are reluctant to leave Xing for LinkedIn, because they can trust XING more,” says Dr. Sébastien Foucaud, Vice-President of Data Science at XING. 

As privacy regulations are becoming increasingly prominent and users are demanding their rights, transparency turns out to be a true asset to XING. GDPR and California’s CCPA (The California Consumer Privacy Act) are just a start: “It’s not just crazy Europe, it’s getting global,” he says. 

Know what you are after

After building Data Science teams for companies such as Scout24 and Naspers, Foucaud is working to tilt XING’s Data Science team to the next level. 

He bases their Machine Learning development strategy on the vision that it should be simple and transparent. Foucaud found that users are willing to share more information with XING, if it provides them a better user experience. But only if the company is transparent towards users about why their information is needed and what it is used for. 

Foucaud believes that the time of blackbox AI is behind us. “Privacy goes hand-in-hand with model explainability,” tells Foucaud. “If your model is understandable, you can explain it to users.” That is why he has his mantra ‘the simpler, the better’: “I can explain my work to my boss, because I understand which part of our information is driving our decisions.” 

According to Foucaud it is crucial to first understand exactly what information you need. Don’t just throw a lot of data into the system, know what you are after. Through Machine Learning, his team does several hundreds of A/B tests of different models, in order to find out what information is required from users to optimise their job and networking recommendations. 

Then, optimal communication with users is key. At XING, different business teams, in particular their UX/UI components, now work in close collaboration with the Data Science team in order to communicate explicitly to users why they get their specific recommendations. “When users understand how a complete profile optimises their recommendation system, they make sure to submit the right information.”  

That is important, because bad recommendations are mostly caused by faulty or missing information. In such cases, users still have their old job or city on their profile, or aren’t aware enough of the skills they have to list them on their profile.

The best job recommendation system in the market

Leading a Data Science team of a large social networking platform like XING to greatness comes with many battles. “The first few battles are big, you gain a lot instantly,” says Foucaud. “Then it’s about the long run. It’s a slower process.” 

Their big win is their job recommendation system, the brainchild of Dr. Fabian Abel, director of Data Science at XING, who will be speaking at the Data Natives 2019 conference. “It’s the best in the market,” says Foucaud. Their system consists of different strategies for recommending jobs, on the basis of qualifiers such as similar jobs, similar user profiles, analysis of texts and networks.

Such a system is crucial for a company that gets half of its revenue from helping companies in their recruiting process, while the other half of XING’s revenue comes valuable services they offer to subscribers. Based on their behaviour on the platform, XING is, for example, able to see how likely users are willing to change jobs. The platform then offers those users competitive opportunities. 

Overall important for the further growth of Data Science at XING, Foucaud believes, is to spread data-mindedness across teams. “At different companies I’ve worked it always takes effort,” he tells. “The Data Science team can be a geeky crowd and they work the way they work. So it can be tricky to work together with other teams, in the product organization for instance.” 

XING is therefore ramping up the Data expertise within the Business Units, is making sure to include Data Science in early stage of product development and is establishing cross-functional teams. An important task, in order to lead XING to greatness: “Division in a company is reflected into the user experience. You can tell when the interface of the platform is different in various corners,” he says.

That’s where Foucaud comes in. “My secret to make these people work together? Well, I just talk a lot!” he jokes. 

How will micromobility change the way we travel from point “A” to “B”? How will micromobility co-exist with the traditional models of transportation? What is the importance of network effects in micro mobility?

Kristin Dolgner, a marketing and communications professional at BCG Digital Ventures based in Berlin had an eventful week recently, when she travelled to the US. It started with testing a Lime kick scooter in Santa Monica, then riding an Uber to her office in Manhattan Beach and after her return to Berlin, she spontaneously signed up for Jump electric bike by Uber.  

Kristin, in her own words, is an excessive user of the ridesharing app Berlkönig offered by Berlin public transport Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), German car-sharing apps such as DriveNow and car2go, as well as taxi service FREE NOW( formerly mytaxi). 

If you ask her to quickly review her experience of the week when she tried these different modes of transport, she says, “ I was really excited for the kick scooter but I didn’t feel that it was an exclusive experience. Maybe there was a problem with this specific scooter, but I experienced a bumpy ride with the engine gearing up and down. Apart from this, I was carrying a bag with me, which turned out to be very impractical for the kick scooter ride and left me feeling unsafe next to the heavy cars and scooter traffic in LA. However, looking at my Uber experience in the U.S, it is still  a better experience as compared to Uber in Germany – be it availability, fleet, service oriented drivers, pricing etc. Jump bike was the biggest surprise to me : the shrill pink look is killing me but biking at 35 couldn’t have been any more pleasant. Two rides in and I am already a huge fan.”

It is not just Kristin who is confused, but most people today are, who are spoilt for choices when it comes to using the modes of transport and making the right choices. The question that arises is that how are these different modes of transportation going to co-exist? 

Lawrence Leuschner, CEO and co-founder at TIER mobility explains the existing scenario of mobility when it comes to transportation, “The current transportation system is dominated by cars. It has a negative impact on health, environment, space and safety. At present, Europe is pushing cities towards car free cities. The younger generation does not want to own assets. There are three options to travel at present: Car sharing (DriveNow), Ride Sharing(Uber) and then there is micro mobility (TIER). The cake is big enough for all the players right now, but in the end you want to be the one who wins.” 

Most new mobility models want to solve the existing problems in transportation by reducing carbon footprints and decreasing the time of commute.  Cities such as Berlin and Tokyo, could boast about their extensive and user-friendly public transportation systems, which include subways, trains, buses, and trams. Into this field of transportation within cities, enters Micro mobility. 

Micromobility, a relatively new concept, is defined as any transportation via very light vehicles. These include, but are not limited to, electric scooters, electric skateboards, and bicycles.

One of the names you will hear more than often in this space is US-headquartered Lime which has raised over $600 million in capital. “ There are 45 million cars in Germany alone , which is a country of 80 million people. There are 250 million cars in the US with over 320 million people. You need three things to be a great company- operational excellence, leadership in hardware, true partnership with cities. Eight months ago, we did not have a single market that  could say with a straight face that we are making money . Today, 30 percent of our markets are making money and the nmber is going to increase. There is no micro-mobility unless you are a true partner with cities. A deep focus on safety, people and underground teams in each city has been our strength. Ride sharing and mapping companies have invested in Lime,” says Wayne Ting, Global Head of Operations & Strategy, Lime . 

THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORK EFFECTS IN MICROMOBILITY

Micromobility is new and there are existing traditional players that still dominate the market.  Hence, we see a greater movement toward traditional corporate mobility and micromobility startup partnerships.  

Gunnar Froh, Founder and CEO, Wunder Mobility, says, “In the present scenario, there is a need to be the middleman. If it requires technology- to upgrade mobility- companies like us do it. Digital solutions will open new choices for customers. For example, ticketing by mobile phone for various modes via mobility platforms helps consumers to search for the best platform.”

Some examples of corporate- startup collaborations are given below: 

• Ford, is partnering with small electric scooter companies, such as Spin, to diversify their brand as well as maintain influence in the future of the mobility sector. 
• Volkswagen set up its VW Digital Lab in 2016, an innovative hub to execute transportation experiments.
• Honda has its Xcelerator program, which funds startups that are coming up with mobility solutions for the future. This movement of traditional, corporate companies partnering with startups, if done effectively, could mean successful metropolitan integration. 

A recent report by Deloitte says: Automakers are experimenting and inventing, and have passionate voices within their ranks, describing much-altered futures. Most have set up offices in Silicon Valley to gain greater proximity to technology development and early-stage funding. Among the noteworthy examples of forward-thinking initiatives are Ford’s 25 mobility projects, BMW iVentures,Daimler’s engineering advances in intelligent driving,and Cadillac’s “super cruise” functionality. In addition, public-private partnerships such as the recently opened Mcity in Ann Arbor, MI, provide a platform to enable more efficient and effective automated vehicle (and feature) testing.

This approach is consistent with historic norms, in which automakers invest in new technologies—e.g., antilock brakes, electronic stability control, backup cameras, and telematics—across higher-end vehicle lines and then move down market as scale economics take hold. In Deloitte’s ongoing conversations with auto-industry leaders, they repeatedly and collectively argue, that outsiders simply do not appreciate the sheer complexity of developing a vehicle today, the challenge of introducing new advanced technologies into a vehicle’s architecture, or the rigor and inertia of the regulatory environment. All of this encourages incumbents to believe that they can be at the center of actively managing the timing and pace of these converging forces.

HOW STARTUPS AND CORPORATES COULD WORK TOGETHER? 

The crucial question is, how far can these partnerships go and why  they are so important right now? “Startups and corporates are like fire and water – work attitude, culture, values etc,” says Holger G. Weiss, CEO of German Autolabs. However, innovation in digital times is very fast and has to be fast. “That is to my knowledge the strongest reasons why startups are outpacing traditional corporations in new technologies and business models. They can be faster as they don’t have to be so risk-averse, they can test without immediately burn a brand etc. On the other hand, if it comes to scale and execution, corporates can show their true potential. So, while at first glance there is no common ground, in fact it’s a question of timing that startups and corporates will benefit from each other,” he says.

Gal bechor,  Product Manager, Volkswagen Digital Lab feels, “In a world that is changing so rapidly, we realize it is important for us to collaborate with startups, they can move faster and do things that our processes and bureaucracy do not allow us to do.However, startups usually lack the resources, experience, and scale that we have. By collaborating we are able to get the best of both worlds and build things together. We are now trying this in a small scale with “Inbound Initiative” where we take challenges from business units, and collaborate with startups that can solve them.”

Marvin Metzke, founder of an e-scooter startup called Simple Mobility, talks about the necessity of partnerships between startups and corporations to create sustainable cities. Simple Mobility is a startup that provides its customers with user-friendly scooters as a method of transportation. As a startup, Simple Mobility is able to move with flexibility, but doesn’t always have access to infrastructure necessary to complete its vision. Corporations are more steadfast in their approach, and  have the resources and the infrastructure to execute its goals. 

For example, Simple Mobility’s partnership with Deutsche Telekom will give the startup the infrastructure and investment it needs to successfully bring its scooters to the streets of Berlin. Unlike other e-scooters, Simple Mobility scooters do not need to be plugged in to charge. They rely on chargeable batteries, which can be removed, recharged independently, and inserted back into the scooter, thus allowing more flexibility in scooter movement and business. Simple Mobility’s goal in a partnership with Deutsche Telekom is to enact battery exchanges and charging programs on a large scale. 

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF MICROMOBILITY? 

With micromobility, a 35-40 minute bus ride becomes a 9 minute scooter ride. As Marvin rightly puts it,  “A future in which scooters, cars, buses, etc. successfully coexist on the streets has the potential to create a better quality of life for people who live in the city.”  

As per a Deloitte report, young adults, along with urbanites, are gravitating toward a model of personal mobility consumption based on pay-per-use rather than upfront purchase of a capital asset, which fundamentally challenges today’s consumption model centered on personal ownership of cars. The change will happen systematically—a rising tide, not a tsunami. At no point will the world be presented with a Manichean choice and collectively decide to plunge all-in to a system of driverless, pay-per-use travel—or else to change nothing at all. Rather, the new personal mobility ecosystem will likely emerge unevenly across geographic, demographic, and other dimensions, and evolve in phases over time.

With corporate funding and infrastructure, micromobility startups have the potential to change the way we live and move. Getting from point A to point B within a city could be an issue of the past. Nico Wohlgemuth, Managing Partner of Dayone, a service design studio leaves us with a question to think about, “If there are passenger drones in the future, the question won‘t be how you get to Moabit. The question will rather be why you‘re still living in Moabit – and not outside the city listening to birds and going for a swim in the lake nearby. The city will just be a glimpse away.”

Note: The quotes by Lawrence Leuschner, CEO and co-founder of TIER mobility ; Gunnar Froh, Founder and CEO of Wunder Mobility; Wayne Ting, Global Head of Operations & Strategy, Lime – are extracted from their speeches at the Noah Conference Berlin 2019. This is a co-authored piece by Diksha Dutta and Arwa Sutarwala.

Here is what a recent report says about opportunities for startups in Sports Technology in Europe. With 1500 startups and 900 new investment deals, it is safe to say that the field is vast and possibilities in the sector are booming.

What is a SportsTech startup? How are these startups funded ? What makes investors want to back them?  The answer lies in two concepts: products and people. After SportsTech expert, Benjamin Penkert interviewed six investors for his European SportsTech Report 2019, a common response occurred upon asking them, “How do you choose to invest?” All investors agree that they only invest in opportunities that, in their opinion, deliver value. However, this idea of value can vary from investor to investor. When a startup is in the initial stages, investors typically contribute their money based on the management and the team behind the product. If the team seems to be 100% committed, the investors provide funding. The other approach is product-focused. This occurs during the later stages of the startup when the growth potential and visibility of a product is more tangible. Investors look for products that will improve experiences, earn revenue, and improve playing conditions for the industry.

Investment in the SportsTech industry saw major growth from the previous year. In 2017, 285.6 million euros were invested compared to 363.9 million in 2018. This surge in investment, combined with fewer rounds, shows that the SportsTech industry is moving towards growth and expansion.

With this large influx of capital and the pure potential of Europe’s startup scene, many countries battle to be the hub for innovation in Europe. The leading frontrunners in this competition remain The United Kingdom, France, and Germany as they remain ahead in both investment capital and startups. See below for a breakdown of funding by city.

The SportsTech industry could be divided into four categories, according to experts. After analyzing companies based on their funding, stakeholders, and target audiences, four main themes were found to drive further analysis for a report prepared by SportsTech expert, Benjamin Penkert. According to Benjamin, the SportsTech industry can be broken down into the following four categories:

• Activity and Performance innovations are ones that track physical performance either before, during, or after the activity. They generally include actual equipment, trackers, and wearables. For instance, Dynostics is a German-based company which measures smart performance and analyzes metabolic rates. Another example could be Runnin’ City is a French-based company which helps individuals to explore the city while running.

• Management and Discovery technology offers users platforms to manage organisations, venues, leagues and events. It assists people in finding other sportsmen, coaches, and athletes in buying products and services. Examples of these products are tickets to sporting games and trips to multi-day tournaments. One example of this is GainChanger, a German-based company that offers entertainment data through AI. Another example is Globatalent, a UK-based company that supports transparent funding of sports endeavors through blockchain technology.

• Fans and Media provide social outlets for fan engagement which strengthen team branding and follower connections to the team as well as each other. They encourage community development among these individuals with similar interests.  A startup called FanAxn brings community members together about free-to-play betting games while Kinexon tracks real-time location and senses motion.

• eSports covers any concept relating to video games, online/virtual teams, and betting on outcomes. For example, JOIN is a French-based platform that optimizes esports media campaigns, and Patron is German-based tool used to empower esports communities.

Final Thoughts

The field of SportsTech is continuously evolving and changing. Now, more than ever, consumers of sports media have a variety of platforms at their disposal to fully invest themselves in the content they want to consume. There are multiple ways to interact with one another purely based on similar interests. The startup culture of SportsTech encourages innovation and movement within the industry. With Activity and Performance currently having the most number of startups, Management and Discovery reflecting more traditional structures, and Fans and Media attracting the most amount of investment capital, the future of SportsTech can really land anywhere. Ben’s expert opinion states, “Well, in all of [the categories] we’ll see lots of new startups. I expect the trend towards a healthy lifestyle to continue, so my guess would be everything fitness-related, across all sub-sectors of ‘Activity & Performance.’”

Find the full SportsTech report here: ESTR19

How do we automate the Smart Machine Bidding procedure for the LPWAN devices in order to reduce the costs of an IoT network? Yes, this is one of the challenges for the second Blockchain Hackathon (part of LongHash Cryptocon Vol2) in Berlin on May 18-19 this year. More details here.

As an advantage to all developers, blockchain enthusiasts and crypto geeks who are aching to solve this challenge, here is an interview with Aslan Mehrabi, Data Scientist at MXC Foundation which defines LPWAN in detail and its IoT devices that operate through it, and maybe a few tips that might help in cracking this challenge.

MXC foundation focuses on connecting Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology with the blockchain as an infrastructure for Internet of Things (IoT). MXC automates machine-to-machine (M2M) transactions and provides a device data economy. The pricing policies of data transmissions through gateways in LPWAN are determined by MXC Smart Machine Bidding (SMB). In the SMB, based on the bidding strategies provided by the device owners, and the gateway owners, the payments for using downlink / uplink LPWAN resources will be determined. Your task is to develop an automated solution (e.g. based on Machine learning methods, dynamic algorithms or greedy algorithm) which provides near-optimum value for accepted_delay and max_bid parameters to reduce the total cost of the LPWAN for the user. Edited excerpts of the interview:

Please share a some background of MXC Foundation and its focus?

MXC is creating a global data highway, which automates machine to machine (M2M) transactions, decentralizes big data and enables a device data economy. With the introduction of the Machine Xchange Coin (MXC), adopters of LPWAN data technologies trade data access or sensor data for MXC.

The MXC global data highway is automated using smart contracts running on the Machine Xchange Protocol (MXProtocol). Based in Berlin, MXC is a non-profit foundation promoting the global adoption and implementation of LPWAN data technology.

At MXC, we believe that MXC, paired with LPWAN is the next step in the fourth industrial revolution, we’re actively enabling smart cities and providing public access to big data. By introducing the Machine Exchange Coin and the Machine Exchange Protocol, MXC gives everyone a chance to profit from a more balanced and intelligent infrastructure data network. This is why MXC, is the future of IoT.

What is a “Low Power Wide Area Network”?

LPWAN stands for ‘Low Power, Wide Area Network’. it can be used to realize the Internet of Things (IoT). LPWAN is a type of wide area network that allows radio-equipped devices to communicate. WANs are simply telecommunications networks. The system of cell phone towers and 5G you rely on every day is a WAN. So is the internet, if you want to get technical. You could form an Internet of things WAN using 5G technology, or even landline broadband. However, unless your device has a mains plug, you’re going to run out of battery power very fast that way. Instead, the future of large scale, low maintenance, widely dispersed IoT applications will be found in LOW POWER wireless WANS – LPWANs.

What are the examples of IoT devices that operate through MXC or LPWAN?

Temperature sensors, smart locks, movement sensors, fire alert and etc.

Where will the data come from?  In the LPWAN based IoT network, the devices (also known as sensors / nodes) are required to send the data which they have produces to their corresponding server and receive commands from it. It makes the flow of data which is possible by LPWAN.

How are the prices determined?

By the bidding procedure which is determined in the SMB white paper of MXC

Any examples of device owners/ gateway owners?

If I have a LPWAN device (temperature sensor, smart lock, movement sensor, etc) I am a device owner. LPWAN Gateways are needed in order to send/receive data to/from the LPWAN device. Gateway owners – people or companies who own and maintain gateways.

How fast can the machine operate? How much data can it process and transmit?

It depends on what do you mean by the machine. For LPWAN devices, based on the applications and the firmware, different processing and data transmission speeds can be provided.

What are the main industries where such a technology is applicable?

Smart cities, smart homes and in general the future world will use it. For more information take a look at https://www.matchx.io/solutions/

Why focus on using GO as the programmatic language?

Golang is a preferable language.  It’s convenient, fast, and secure to write code with Golang, and it provides cross-platform support. Golang is currently one of the fastest growing programming languages in the software industry. Its speed, simplicity, and reliability make it the perfect choice for all kinds of developments.

How is cost being defined exactly if the value of the data is set by the owner?

In this task (and generally the SMB), we are investigating on data transmission cost which should be paid by the device owner to the LPWAN resource providers (e.g. gateway owners). Value of the data is set by the data owner in the data market place of MXC which is managed in another ways and is not related to the SMB.

Tell us a few more applications of the LPWAN?

LPWAN can provide a cost effective network for IoT.  Battery usage of LPWAN devices are super low. The devices are able to send / receive data for several years with a single battery. These are just a few of the reasons to say LPWAN empowers the IoT.

Any extra tips for the developers who are working on this task?

A really good implementation of this task is very important because it will help to optimize expenses for end-users.

Does this challenge interest you? Apply here for the Hackathon before the 12th of May – the event is free for all developers who apply. Also, there is more. If you are a developer or aspiring entrepreneur in the blockchain/crypto space and  want to know about the investment perspectives from Top Asian & European Funds in the Blockchain segment or business use cases in real word adoption, get your free tickets for Hash Talk which will be an afternoon-long summit focused on discussions and creating insights on investment, business, and tech in blockchain curated and brought by LongHash Germany. More details here.

Here is what “The State of European Tech 2018”, a data-driven analytical report by Atomico reveals about the factors that are accelerating the growth of tech in the European economy

The comparison of Europe’s tech scene with Silicon Valley in the U.S and Asia (particularly China) has been a topic of debate for long criticising not only the lack of consumer-tech companies in EU, but also the mere lack of tech innovation supported by EU policies.  

Amidst this cynicism, there are numbers which tell a story of constant progress in the European tech economy and break many myths of the past. Lack of VC funding is not a problem anymore and tech workforce in EU is on the rise. The State of European Tech 2018, a data-driven analytical report by Atomico states that while Europe’s overall economy and traditional industries are stuck in the doldrums, booming tech represents the best hope for growth. Tech firms are powering job creation and ambitious founders are tackling some of the world’s biggest problems. All of that has members of the ecosystem optimistic – except in the U.K. where sentiment is not at the same levels as elsewhere.

Some of the key findings of the report mention:

• The amount invested in Europe’s technology ecosystem is $23bn in 2018, up from just $5bn in 2013.
• There were four tech IPOs or direct listings of European tech companies in 2018 that reached valuations of more than $5B on opening day, including Europe’s largest ever venture-backed publicly-listed tech company, Spotify.
• In total, Europe contributed three of the top 10 largest tech IPOs globally of 2018.

Chris Grew, Partner, Technology Companies, Group Orrick says, “There has been a nearly five-fold growth in European venture capital investment in the last five years. There are five times the number of unicorns – with at least 17 new billion dollar plus companies added in the past year alone. The European tech sector has produced nearly four times the job growth rate of the general economy, resulting in a talent pool of programmers and STEM researchers surpassing that of the United States. At Orrick, we see it in our practice every day as we have helped founders, investors and corporate venture clients raise or deploy more than $3.7 billion across Europe over the past year.” He mentions that as a global tech law firm, they are not surprised to see investors from around the world chasing strong returns from their European investments. While U.S. investment returned to 2016 levels after another record-breaking performance last year, investment from Asia continued to grow.

Here are the factors (according to the report) driving this high growth for European tech:

Powering Workforce Growth

Tom Wehmeier, Partner, Atomico says, “Last year we found that Europe was experiencing a ‘Battle Royale’ for talent. This year was the year Europe figured out how to effectively mobilise its deep pools of talent. The tech sector is attracting more participants – whether measured by the healthy increase in professional developers or the uptick in talented executives moving into tech from other sectors. What is interesting is that the developer pool is growing fastest outside those countries that have historically attracted the most investment: Turkey, Spain and Russia’s pool of developers have been deepening the most rapidly. All this will lead to a massive potential upside for the wider European economy as capital eventually grows into these new communities,” he says.

Employment growth in the European economy as a whole is stalling. The European Commission’s latest forecast for 2018 employment growth implies a drop to just 1.1% year-on-year growth, a material decline from the level seen in 2017. On the other hand, Europe’s tech workforce grew 4% in 2018. It is worth comparing the EU employment growth rate to the remarkable worker population growth that powers the European tech industry.

Within Europe, the French tech worker population is growing significantly faster than Germany and UK. The rate of tech workforce across Europe is not equally distributed, with workforces in some growing much faster than others. France, for example, hit 7.3% growth in 2018, making it comfortably the fastest growing tech workforce in EU.

Tech: The Motor for GDP Growth

There is an ever-widening gap in the indexed growth rates of the tech (software) and non-tech parts of the European economy. The implication of this sustained difference in growth rates is starkly visible when looking at indexed growth of the tech parts of the European economy. Over the past 15 years, tech (software) has grown to hit 194% of its relative value in 2002. Europe’s software industry growth dramatically outpaces the rest of the European economy.

Today, the European tech (software) industry is now growing 5x faster than the rest of the economy. Over the last 10 years, many of these traditional industries upon which the European economy is so dependent have either stagnated or declined, undermining the overall rate of growth in European Gross Value Added.

The European tech (software) industry contributes around $400 billion to the European economy today, remains just a fraction of total European Gross Value Added, accounting for just 2.5 % of total European GVA.

Smiles (almost) all round in European tech

Europe’s tech ecosystem remains characterised by a strong level of growing optimism about the future.  This increase in optimism is most evident in Eastern and Southern Europe

where there is real momentum. The UK, perhaps unsurprisingly, registered the largest downturn in optimism by a wide downturn in optimism by a wide margin. There continues to be a very strong sense of optimism across the European tech ecosystem

90 per cent of the European tech community is either more optimistic about the future of European tech or maintain the same levels of optimism compared to 12 months ago. This remains the same as in 2017 when 91% of respondents were more optimistic or the same.

“ I’m definitely more optimistic than 12 months ago. I think we’re seeing a marked shift in ambition in Europe, and crucially, that’s being matched at an investor level. What’s more, the increased cost of living and hiring competition seems to have taken the blinkers off a lot of Valley-bound entrepreneurs. This can only benefit Europe.” says Rosie Dallas, Fat Llama.

Tech for Good: A European Opportunity?

There is strong agreement across all stakeholders, including within the public sector, that European tech entrepreneurs will have a bigger impact than European governments when it comes to solving important global challenges.  64 % of the public sector and policymaker respondents who agree that European technology entrepreneurs will do more to address major societal challenges than European governments.

“ Compared to the US, we seem to be a bit further ahead when it comes to sustainability. Especially when it comes to food waste and climate consciousness, both among consumers and within the food industry..Compare this with President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement a year ago…One thing that has influenced us at Karma is that we’ve had mission-driven, competent and successful entrepreneurs, such as Niklas Adalberth founding Norrsken Foundation, drive the agenda of using entrepreneurship to build technologies that can solve social challenges on a global scale,” says Elsa Bernadotte from Karma.

Final Thoughts

Tom Wehmeier, Partner, Atomico leaves us with a word to the naysayers and critics of European tech: irrespective of the huge strides European tech has taken in the last few years, our tech sector will continue to be compared to the performance of Silicon Valley. ”For a long time, US VC has outperformed European VC in terms of portfolio returns, but that is increasingly untrue. The latest historical performance data shows that European venture has been outperforming US venture in recent horizon periods. We believe this is a bellwether for a changing landscape. Let’s not forget that 95% of the value creation of today’s US tech sector is from companies founded 15 years ago or more and that the early tech successes of ARM, Amadeus and Ocado were not venture-backed. Given that 21 European companies have been founded and scaled to billion-dollar-plus valuations with the support of venture capital since 2010 alone, we are confident that Europe has caught up on North America’s head start, “ he concludes.

Disclaimer: The content of this article is based on a section of The State of European Tech report. The full report can be downloaded here.

An insider tip: if you’re looking for the real inside track on tech innovation at a conference, look to the startups. Undoubtedly the larger companies have the resources and brainpower to fuel the innovations of tomorrow, but many of the nascent ideas which will revolutionise the ways we live and work originate in small companies with big visions.

If you’re part of a smaller operation yourself, the benefits of surrounding yourself with a robust and supportive startup ecosystem cannot be overstated. Many in the data field will preach the value of open data; the same principles of transparency, access and collaboration are also key reasons why data startups & scaleups should be in communication with one another, sharing learnings and ideas to grow concurrently.

Showcasing startups with cutting-edge ideas and exposing them to our ever-growing community has always been a crucial part of Data Natives’ modus operandi- and DN18 is no different. On the 22nd and 23rd November, we’ll be joined by game-changing startups from across the globe, and across industries too. Below is our pick the startups you need to watch out for- trust us, you’ll be hearing these names a lot in the coming years.

Vivy

Vivy has situated itself at the lucrative but tricky intersection of personalised medicine and data privacy. Vivy aims to be a one-stop shop for all of your medical documents and data: it offers all of your (encrypted) medical records at a touch, reminds you about appointments and vaccines, warns you about interactions between your prescribed medications, and pairs with fitness trackers. Additionally, it offers end-to-end encryption, and allows users to determine who they share what data with. Their business model is to sell to insurance companies, who offer it as a service to their clients; they’re already highly active in the German market, having partnered with several major public and private insurance providers.

Opinary

Opinary offer dynamic and engaging polls on major publishing outlets- with a twist. Publishers get to engage users, and encourage them to share structured data in a way they actually enjoy; brands get to place their content on major publishers in real time; and users get to see a data-driven overview of where their fellow readers fall on key issues. Already working with brands including MasterCard, Deutsche Bank and Toyota and publishers like The Huffington Post, The Independent and Spiegel Online, Opinary reaches 60 million monthly users- and counting. Their tech team are currently applying deep learning to their data with the aim of uncovering which underlying structures of language drive users to engage with content- this research will form the backbone of their talk at Data Natives.

WeFox

One of the fastest-growing companies in the InsurTech space, Wefox offers a fully digital insurance solution to connect insurers with potential clients, based on their individual needs. The data-infused insurance comparison platform currently boasts more than 200 insurance providers. For users, the app provides a one-stop-shop to oversee and manage their various insurance packages, and offers an annual review of policies and potential risks. With $38.5m total funding, WeFox are reportedly close to settling a triple-digit-million new funding round, to propel their offering to the next level. Wefox CEO Tasos Chatzimichailidis will share his dispatches from the frontline of InsurTech disruption at DN18.

omni:us

Also active in the InsurTech space, omni:us provide AIaaS; namely, they offer insurance companies with all benefits of an AI-infused data management system without the pain of creating AI pipelines themselves. Under the tagline “Settle claims in minutes, not weeks”, their solution ostensibly speeds up claim times by 80% and leads to a 75% cost reduction for the client. They completed a Series A round last month, bringing their total funding to $22.5 million. Their talk at DN18 will focus on the challenges of data extraction using deep learning, touching on both structured and unstructured data abstraction.

Swarm64

Based out of Oslo with German operations, Swarm64 offer unparalleled FPGA-based accelerators for relational databases with their out-of-the-box solution, which gives databases an analytical boost in real-time. Their solution is also engineered to integrate with existing environments, minimising implementation risks and costs. Swarm64 have been active for five years, accruing more than $20 million in funding.

All of these startups will be speaking at Data Natives 2018– the data-driven conference of the future, hosted in Dataconomy’s hometown of Berlin. On the 22nd & 23rd November, 110 speakers and 1,600 attendees will come together to explore disruptive technologies, including AI, blockchain, healthtech, and the latest innovations in data science. As well as two days of inspiring talks, Data Natives will also bring informative workshops, satellite events, art installations and food to our data-driven community, promising an immersive experience in the tech of tomorrow.

Data Natives is teaming up with FTR4H as an official community partner for their healthcare alliance at SXSW. Sign up today for our US tours to become a part of this journey.

What happens when you combine knowledge of Big Data, AI, Machine Learning and Blockchain with innovations in the healthcare industry? It gives birth to ideas for future business models, a scope for collaborations and more specifically an insight into new technological advancements within the fast-growing world of health tech. Strategic partnerships across geographies and various ecosystems is the key to remove roadblocks in the growth of health tech industry. Larger corporations need to work with more innovative younger companies and the public sector needs to understand the hurdles of private healthcare/ health tech business models.

This is exactly what you could get a chance to experience in our upcoming US tour in collaboration with FTR4H,  an international community that explores how Digital Transformation affects the healthcare industry. FTR4H connects digital health experts in China, Europe, India, Israel and the US with the community of the leading trade fair MEDICA.

Data Natives, the largest data-driven community with a flagship conference in Europe is teaming up with FTR4H and will be one of the official community partners for their Healthcare alliance at SXSW. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. We are more than excited to spread the word!

We are working towards bringing together health tech experts from different geographies across the globe to solve the most relevant issues in healthcare with technology,” states Tom Mitchell, Co-Founder at FTR4H and President at Messe Dusseldorf North America.

We started this initiative to bring everyone together at the forefront of change and transformation for the healthcare industry. Machine Learning and Data Science are critical to transforming the healthcare industry. The role of data scientists is inevitable to come up with the accurate predictive models and pull algorithms from electronic medical records which further help in the correct diagnosis or decreasing risks of diseases. And this is just one of the many instances how Data Science is accelerating innovation in health tech.

Together, we are curating six meetups across the US which will be a prelude to the mega event where FTR4H will showcase at SXSW edition that takes place in Austin in March 2019.

Become a speaker, join us on the US tour!

Why do we feel that our community of Data Natives should be a part of this journey? Here is a look at the numbers: The statistic displays the global digital health market in 2015 and 2016, and a projection for 2017 until 2020, by major segment. In 2017, the mobile health market is expected to reach 21 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. The digital health market is expected to reach 206 billion U.S. dollars by 2020, driven particularly by the mobile and wireless health market. The market in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be a key region in the future.

Won’t it be a missed opportunity if we don’t discuss how to tap this market? These tours are more than relevant if you are a startup, a solopreneur, a health tech enthusiast or a big corporate who is scouting for young innovative companies.

You will be in good company of speakers such as Rick McCartney, Co-Founder and CEO, iRewardHealth, an evidence-based tool that helps its users implement effective methods to achieve healthy behavioural changes. To give an overview on the research aspect, we will hear Dr Lu Yu from BGI, who is an experienced manager with an in-depth understanding of academic research and the biotechnology industry. She currently serves as project manager at BGI in Seattle, where she manages key projects involving academic collaborations, develops protocols for new products and services, and supervises student entrepreneurial programs

To be a part of this action-packed tour, meet us on the road. Our US tour dates are:    

This is an invitation to submit a speaking proposal to join us on the road to SXSW.

Be a part of the  SXSW glamour and excitement

The ultimate goal of these meetups is to gear up for the big show in SXSW.  Last year, FTR4H brought together more than 30 speakers in a stage that welcomed more than 600 attendees overall – not to mention the tremendous exposure to people and ideas one gets just by being at SXSW.

South By Southwest dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. An essential destination for global professionals, the event features sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together. Next year will be the third time FTR4H will attend the conference. The partners for last year were G4A Generator and global FTR4H sponsors BGI and Philips Healthworks Glimpses of last year can be found here. One of the other speakers who was a highlight at the conference was Dr. Rasu Shrestha, Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC and Executive Vice President, UPMC Enterprises As chief innovation officer for UPMC, Dr. Shrestha plays a leading role in driving UPMC’s innovation strategy, serving as a catalyst for transforming the organization into a more patient-focused and economically sustainable system.

You don’t want to miss a chance to join us on March 8-17 in Austin, Texas for SXSW 2019 and be a part of one of the most diverse, collaborative, and inventive communities in the world!

Lack of women in leadership roles is a global phenomenon, and particularly in areas like STEM. Here is a snapshot on the global scenario and qualities that make women phenomenal leaders.

“Wait, gender inequality is still around?”

Believe it or not, this is the question I received from my peer during my last semester at university.

Yes, our society has made great progress but gender inequality still very much exists.

Need some examples? How about the compensation differences between genders, or that men are 142 percent more likely to hold executive positions within companies and organizations. This is especially true within Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM)  fields.

Gender inequality in STEM has been a hot-button issue for years, but big companies haven’t made many meaningful changes during that time.

In the UK, women working at Apple are paid about 5% less than their male colleagues on average and are rarely hired for leadership roles. In some areas of the UK, female Apple employees are paid around 26% less than male employees.

Even worse, Apple is doing better than many other tech companies, which often have even larger pay gaps.

Women in all STEM fields often get passed over for leadership roles. Though women earn 60% of master’s degrees in the United States, leadership numbers are shockingly low. In fact, 43% of the 150 public companies with the largest revenue in Silicon Valley had zero female executive officers as recently as 2016. All the talk of closing the gender gap has created some disparity in how men and women view employment challenges: 58% of men believed there were no more obstacles for women in the workplace, while 60% of women disagreed.

Not only does gender inequality snub 50% of America’s talented workforce, it holds companies back. Women have incredibly valuable skills and traits that make them perfect leaders in STEM fields. Companies that have not made the effort to promote gender equality within their workforce are losing out on the innovative ideas and skills women have to offer. In fact, companies that have better gender diversity outperform those that do not by 15%. Here are three of many traits that make women ideally suited for leadership roles in these in-demand fields.

Personalized Mentorship

Mentorship is an important aspect of leadership. Gone are the days when barking orders and expecting work to get done was sufficient. Today, employees and teams need leaders who will inspire, provide guidance, and be patient as they develop their skills and confidence. Women tend to be more nurturing, making them ideally suited to leading teams and individuals that depend on development for success.

In fields where more women are needed, female role models and mentors can play a key role in nurturing future talent and preserving the confidence and self-assurance of female STEM workers. One study of 150 female engineering students showed that female mentors could act as a “social vaccine” of sorts. Although the conversations between students and male and female mentors were largely the same, women who had female mentors were more likely to succeed and become confident in their professional lives.

Emotional Intelligence

Although we live in a data-driven world, “soft” skills are more important than ever. This explains why emotional intelligence is such an important predictor of performance. While many women have excellent technical skills, they are also more likely to be empathetic, which can be an asset in both strategic planning and management.

Women can use their skills in empathy to help better understand customer needs and expectations, which can help companies to grow their revenue and gain customer loyalty. Internally, empathy is a key leadership trait that women can use as managers to help empower and direct team members.

Big tech companies like Google have started to figure out just how much they need empathy in order to succeed. Google’s Project oxygen highlights how empowerment and caring are important for Google’s list of quality attributes, and that technical ability actually ranked last of the eight traits they value in leaders.

Communication

Fighting for gender equality often means recognizing where women’s skills can help balance out those of men’s. Women are naturally good at communication, which is vital to long-term business growth and success.  Adding women can help balance a team out and improve both internal communications and brand storytelling.

Whether this superior communication is a result of biological differences in how boys and girls develop, or is culturally learned behavior is up for debate. However, numerous studies have shown that women tend to be better communicators and storytellers than men.

Final Thoughts : Women Create a More Equal Workplace

As we’ve seen from the ongoing dialogue about gender equality in STEM, there’s still a long way to go. Fixing the inequality in leadership roles is an important step. Women can excel in these positions—and as they excel, inspire the next generation of female STEM leaders.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, financial technology, and various connected devices are evolving the data-tech game on a day-to-day basis. Data enthusiasts are integrating into local communities on a world-wide scale to discuss and keep up with the fast pace of data-driven technologies. Here are four tips on how you can plug into these communities and gain access to various data insights. And we have good news, Data Natives Conference 2018 can help you get your foot into the door. Read on.

Put Yourself Out There

The best way to get your voice heard is to speak up! Post your ideas to social media, submit knowledge articles to data media websites, and attend local events and conferences related to data. Don’t be afraid to step up and talk about your ideas with other data enthusiasts – it will increase your knowledge, gift you with networking opportunities, and increase your visibility within the data community. Luck is on your side, Data Natives offers all of these opportunities! Submit original articles with your ideas to Dataconomy to get published on the Dataconomy Media website; follow Data Natives and Dataconomy on social media platforms twitter, instagram, facebook, and linkedin: attend local Data Natives events near you, and attend the Data Natives 2018 conference in Berlin!

Make the Most of Your Networking Opportunities

Optimize your experience and cash in on networking opportunities within the data community! It’s easy to sign up and go to an event and then get nothing out of it, but you don’t want to do that to yourself. When you attend local events or conferences, get the most bang for your buck by coming prepared to meet and be met by like-minded people within your community. Bring a pen and pad to jot down names and numbers, make and take business cards, have an elevator speech about yourself/ your company prepared, and be ready to leave your comfort zone and meet new people!

Data Natives holds yearly conferences for data enthusiasts, connecting thousands across the world. Cash in on those connections, benefitting from wider brand visibility, exclusive insider information on attendees, and various networking opportunities.

Start Locally

Make your community and experience personal by building them locally. Unify your local data-driven community and create networks within your tangible reach. Following a local path is the quickest way to make personal connections, get hands-on experience to build business skills, and pass on knowledge about the data-trade. Building a local community isn’t as complicated as you’d think – post some fliers or use social media to invite a small group for a meeting or keep on the lookout for similar gatherings. Bring a friend or two who are interested in data and have an attractive incentive to get people to attend your event! If you’re looking to build an even larger local community, find sponsors for your program to get funding and support from bigger fish in the data community.

Data Natives has been committed to uniting local data-driven communities even before it was unleashed onto the world. Each year Data Natives hosts a conference to bring together thousands of data enthusiasts from across the world, but its first priority is to bring the freshest data insight to the doorstep of local data communities. Keep your eyes on dataconomy.ru/events to see when the Data Natives family will be coming to a city near you.

And Last (But Not Least): Attend the Data Natives 2018 Conference!

Reaching to over 60,000 data scientists, industry experts, leading entrepreneurs, and influencers world-wide, Data Natives invites you to join this quickly expanding community of data enthusiasts. Data Natives 3.0 is November 22-23, 2018 so don’t miss out. Get your tickets here. Join us along with thousands of data enthusiasts and over 100 data-expertise speakers to cash in on ideal networking opportunities and place yourself in a world-wide community of data-lovers. See you in November!

Great tech events often feature a stunt or two that attendees will be talking about long after the conference hall has closed its doors; on this front, CUBE Tech Fair 2018 certainly delivered. Attendees got to witness an audience member pilot a drone with his mind (thanks to Emotiv’s President Olivier Oullier), as well as an intimate gig from Ghostface Killah who was there to promote his cryptocurrency venture (no, really).

But beyond the rockstar speakers and spectacles, the mark of a truly great tech event is the calibre of startups present. After all, it’s among the startups that some of the most exciting and unexpected innovations of tomorrow are currently being developed. Indeed, CUBE exposed us to some truly fascinating new ventures, whose purview spans blockchain, health tech, machine learning and beyond. Here’s our pick of the best data startups from CUBE Tech Fair 2018.

Valohai

The product: Valohai is an end-to-end machine learning platform that helps companies automate their machine learning pipeline. The platform allows companies to maintain always-online real time records, and gives you a full transparency on the code, configuration, and resulting files.

What they’re working on now: We finalised our funding round early this year and raised $1.8 million. About a month ago, we also opened an office in San Francisco. That is the next big leap for us- we’re hoping there are more companies that are further along with their machine learning development in the US than there are in Europe.

Proudest accomplishment: When we end up talking to the right people, they immediately get the idea and actually start pitching it back to us. This shows us that we’ve identified an actual problem and built a solution to tackle those problems.

The next great data disruption: Data generation- in order to utilize supervised machine learning, you need to have data. This is a huge roadblock for many companies, but for many problems you can use simulations or video to quickly generate lots of data, for example. Currently this is something you need to tackle yourself, but in time there will be off-the-shelf solutions that will help you with everything related to generating data.

The biggest obstacle in the tech sector right now: From our point of view, the lack of proper tools and unambiguous processes are slowing down the evolution of this industry. In the field of machine learning, there aren’t clear ways of working. And, of course, the obvious lack of talent in this field is currently slowing many companies down.

Minespider

The product: Minespider is a blockchain system for tracking responsibly sourced raw materials. Metals particularly often come from mines that fund armed groups and human rights abuses in developing areas of the world. Companies need a way of ensuring their supply chain is not enabling these groups but this is very difficult if the materials are fungible and often are mixed together with material from multiple sources, making tracking impossible. The system we have designed incorporates a mass-balance strategy so that instead of only tracking mineral shipments, we are able to trace the money paid for responsible minerals back to the responsible source.

What they’re working on now: We have just closed a seed funding round, and our next step will be to organize a pilot project with some large players, build a scalable market-ready product, and conduct a token sale.

Proudest accomplishment: We recently won the Talent Unleashed Awards global prize in the Best Idea: One to Watch category that was judged by a panel including Sir Richard Branson and Steve Wozniak. The prize was a trip to San Francisco and which took place last week where I spent 3 hours with Woz and got detailed feedback on our project.

The next great data disruption: Self-sovereignty is the name of the game when it comes to data disruption. This is why blockchain technology plays such a critical role – it enables data owners to maintain control of their data even as they enter a data marketplace.

The biggest obstacle in the tech sector right now: Regulatory uncertainty. Legislative systems are slow by design. They are supposed to be in order to encourage economic stability. The problem is that technology is advancing so rapidly that legislation cannot keep up. This means that technology innovators enter into regulatory grey-areas and end up at risk of regulatory reaction that could quash their business.

Wunder

The product: At Wunder, we’re building trustful artificial intelligence helping brands to serve their customers better through empathic personalization.

What they’re working on now: Right now in Seed Round with a signed LOI and in Due Dilligence. We’re continuously building up pipeline and closing deals for pilot projects with retail innovators (5 so far). Today we focus on DACH market while in 2019 we’ll probably expand to France and/or UK.

Proudest accomplishment: Being selected as speakers for leading global AI conferences next to representatives from the likes of Google and Facebook. For us, every customer meeting where we surpass customer expectations makes us proud (so far, 100%!).

The next great data disruption: Blockchain for Customer Data Management & Intellectual Property Management (see actual developments at KODAK for photographers, bringing back the revenue streams back from Google / FB to the individual content creators).

The biggest obstacle in the tech sector right now: Bringing AI / Blockchain really into the real business processes and not just doing PoC or internal showcases.

Lung Pass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HE73Tg7ryQ

The product: Lung Passport is a digital stethoscope and ML-based app for early detection and at home management of most common and deadly respiratory conditions using lung sound analysis. Shazam for lungs, in a way. It has 90% average accuracy of detecting several types of lung sounds confirmed in a clinical research (average doctor’s accuracy was 72%).

What they’re working on now: We’re in the midst of raising a seed round of $800k (with close to a half already committed). Launched 1st pilot with a public clinic in Belarus, 6 more are arranged in Eastern Europe and Asia. Actively working on establishing connections in Europe with primary care providers, telemedicine companies and insurers to launch selected key pilots. Looking for strategic business advisors.

Proudest accomplishment: We improved asthma control in a 71 year old woman after tracking her state for just three weeks. Prevented unnecessary course of antibiotics in a 4 year old girl. We’ve also achieved unprecedented accuracy of detection of several types of lung sounds and built a pilot ready system around it in 8 months and $90k since establishing a company.

The next great data disruption: Analysis of neuromagnetic fields, generated by the brain. It costs a fortune, but provides troves of data for understanding conditions in details never possible before.

Biggest obstacle in the tech sector right now: Talking about medical device field, the number one threshold is that of certification. It takes lots of time to get one and reduces partnership opportunities while you’re getting there. Number two is scaling. European healthcare market is rather fragmented and varies from country to country. What’s more important, for many successful business models to work you’ve got to get a but in from very different stakeholders: patients, nurses, doctors, clinical management, payers. All have their own objectives, regulations are strict and significant effort on change management is required.

Answers have been abridged for clarity. Featured image courtesy of CUBE Tech Fair.

Everyone wants data—especially the people who shouldn’t have it. Those of us who watch the big data industry closely know how much damage cyberattacks can cause to companies large and small.

When half of the United States’ personal information was compromised in the 2017 Equifax breach, every single American had to consider the possibility that they could be a victim of identity theft. Data breaches are not only a serious threat to businesses and consumers, they’re costly; each breach in the United States costs an average of $7.3 million.

Cybercrime is getting more sophisticated and more common, because data is one of the most valuable assets organizations hold digitally. So, how can we hold back the tide of cybercrime and data theft?  

Cybersecurity has advanced, but it’s struggling to keep up with hackers’ new techniques. Now, one of the biggest players in the data game is leveraging its power with a new cybersecurity company.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, recently announced the launch of Chronicle, a dedicated cybersecurity company. The details are still somewhat hazy, but from what we know, it has potential to revolutionize cybersecurity as we know it.  

Below are five key pieces of information about Chronicle that you should know.

1. It will make sense of massive amounts of cybersecurity data.

One of the most pressing challenges in the big data space is making sense of all the data coming in. The majority of it isn’t even used, leaving money on the table. For example, by some estimates, using big data effectively in the US healthcare system could create $300 billion in value. Unused data isn’t just a missed opportunity, however—it’s a vulnerability. The volume can get overwhelming and confusing, allowing security threats to fly under the radar. Thousands of security alerts can pop up every day in large enterprises, and security teams can’t possibly stay on top of all these alerts. Chronicle helps teams make sense of all this data, and reduces the manual monitoring companies have to do.

2. It will use machine learning to find patterns and anomalies.

Chronicle’s systems make use of advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning to address these vulnerabilities. Machine learning uses these massive, unstructured datasets to spot patterns humans can’t find, and make sense of what’s actually a threat—and what’s normal. Because cybercriminals are always refining their tactics, it’s hard for traditional cybersecurity systems to keep up. A learning system like Chronicle could be the answer to spotting new types of malware and halting the evolving tactics used by cybercriminals.

3. It will help find solutions for large institutions and key industries.

Both large and small companies are at risk for data breaches, but large companies and key industries are often major targets for attacks due to the sheer amount of valuable data they store. Healthcare organizations, for instance, are common targets. About 90% of healthcare organizations now use at least a basic form of EHRs (electronic health records), and healthcare data is some of the most sensitive data in existence. It’s crucial that we do a better job of protecting this information, to keep people safe and improve the care these institutions can offer. Chronicle’s focus is on large institutions like Fortune 500 companies, and the company is working to ensure scalability of its systems to protect key institutions.

4. It will streamline cybersecurity solutions to reduce vulnerability.

Security teams aren’t going to be eliminated with machine learning and artificial intelligence anytime soon, and that is not Chronicle’s aim. The goal is to make security teams more effective and streamline their operations. Using one system simplifies the process and allows teams to work where they’re most effective.

Chronicle’s CEO, Stephen Gillett, says, “We want to 10x the speed and impact of security teams’ work by making it much easier, faster and more cost-effective for them to capture and analyze security signals that have previously been too difficult and expensive to find.” 

5. It will allow for faster reactions.

In a perfect world, we’d be able to stop all cyberattacks before they happened. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and like all crime, it’s impossible to prevent all cyberattacks. Breaches are going to happen, and the best we can do is to minimize their impact. Chronicle hopes to accomplish this by allowing companies to spot problems quickly and start taking action, controlling the damage and reducing the cost of a breach. Currently, some breaches aren’t discovered for months, and many go unreported. Chronicle’s machine-learning system should be more efficient at spotting threats as they occur than current systems, potentially spotting anomalies within minutes, or even seconds.  

2018 will be a pivotal year for slowing the amount of cybercrime and getting a handle on hackers. Keep your eyes peeled for more about Chronicle’s upcoming endeavors in cybersecurity.

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One of the perennial challenges that enterprises face is hiring high-quality employees that will stick around for the long haul. Technology is evolving to enable new ways of solving hiring problems that have long plagued companies across all industries. Take collaboration collaboration software and services, for example, which have allowed employers to widen their talent pool by hiring workers outside of their base location. It’s also easier than ever now to assess a candidate through their online profiles. A software development company can look into the GitHub profiles of an applicant to identify their quality before shortlisting them for an interview.

There are, of course, challenges that come along with these new developments. The first wave of people born after the turn of the millennium are likely to hit the workforce in the next couple of years. This is a
population of job seekers who have experienced the internet for their entire lives. As a result, their life details are largely available via Google and accessible by recruiters. Recruiters might find themselves wondering: Should I reject a candidate simply because of something controversial that they posted as an angsty teen? While this article doesn’t aim to answer that question, it does pose possible answers on how one could handle such a challenge from an IT perspective.

Below, I’ll outline three types of tools that recruiters might find helpful in their decision making – from social dashboards to cloud-based payroll.

Social network recruitment dashboards

According to a CareerBuilder survey, nearly 70 percent of employers make use of social media profiles of candidates to screen their candidates before shortlisting them for an interview. Not only this, nearly 3 in 10 employers have someone dedicated to snoop on the social persona of their employees or potential new hires.

Social dashboards capture the social network and other public profiles of an applicant and consolidate them into one dashboard. This helps a recruiter assess a candidate in terms of their EQ and soft skills before they are even shortlisted for an interview. Although using social media as a tool to assess a candidate can be overwhelming – especially for large organizations with hundreds or even thousands of employees, dashboards are making this process more manageable.

Talent management software

The job interview process is often structured into multiple rounds that include steps such as online tests, group discussions, face-to-face interviews and more. Aggregating a candidate’s performance over these multiple rounds of interviews can be chaotic. Talent management applications serve as a centralized reporting software for human resource teams to handle recruitment and employee issues.These tools also handle other aspects of recruitment, including online tests, applicant shortlisting, interview scheduling and new offers management.

These talent management portals go beyond the interviewing process and are also useful in handling employee issues such as tax and leave request management. For the HR teams that need a holistic view of retention/attrition, workforce productivity, compensation and diversity goals, these dashboards are a unique resource. An added advantage of talent management software applications is that they helps organization store employee and applicant data in structured, formatted data – providing the backbone for analytics and insights to further improve the organization.

Cloud-based payroll

Executing payroll and tax documentation can be a time consuming process in a traditional setting. A number of small businesses continue to make use of spreadsheet tools to handle payroll. While MS Excel is good for documenting payroll information, it is not ideal for accessing specific employee records –a task which can become time consuming, especially during audits and tax season.

Cloud-based payroll management systems remove the headache from HR by automating salary payouts and tax preparation processes. With cloud-based tools, all payroll details are stored in the server for easy access. More importantly, cloud-based tools are less prone to data loss. Similar to the structured data
organization in talent management software, the data in payroll management systems is organized in a way that lends itself to budget planning, resource management and compliance with local wage and gender-pay disparity laws.

HR and resource management contributes to a significant chunk of any organization’s overhead. Advanced tools on the market today, ranging from payroll services to talent management systems, can significantly reduce the time and budget spent in these areas, and therefore boost the overall productivity of any organization.

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Last year was full of exciting events. As soon as solarisBank received its banking license, a new
chapter was opened for the company, as well as for me. We faced a tough but an exciting challenge:
as a tech company with a banking license, we needed a strong BI team to provide the company with
a vehicle to drive business strategy with data. As the Head of BI, this meant that I needed to create this
department from scratch.

Throughout the year, I had a chance to attend several conferences where I met interesting and
inspiring individuals who were as driven by data as I am. Back then, I was looking for a teammate
who would help me with establishing the BI Department and creating processes that would help
transform the data collected into scalable and valuable knowledge.

In October, I attended the Data Natives conference here in Berlin, where I met Ofer Kulka. We had a
successful first meeting at the conference and we were both excited to have the same BI mindset, so
we decided to get to know each other better, have a more detailed exchange at our office, where he
would get to know more about the company, team and our mission.

And what can I say: It all worked out. In November, Ofer joined me at solarisBank to push our work
within the Business Intelligence Department forward. We have accomplished a lot in the past year;
we managed to create and develop workflows and processes to structure the company’s most
important data, in order to identify potential challenges as well as strategic opportunities.

We work closely with a wide range of stakeholders at solarisBank, therefore, it was important for me
to create a reliable and transparent team that manages to collaborate with stakeholders and support
the company in its development and evolution. With Ofer on my team, we managed to achieve this.
Despite our contrasting backgrounds, competences and our problem-solving approaches, we always
manage to find the best possible solution.

Exciting times are ahead of us as solarisBank is aiming to expand into Asia. Even more exciting is that
we are growing together with the company. We will soon have two more analysts joining our BI
team, who will help us overcome the new challenges that might come up along the way.

The Data Natives Conference last year was a great opportunity for me, in many ways. Ofer has been
a strong asset to solarisBank. Furthermore, I managed to not only expand my network with others in
the industry but also create a long lasting and strong partnership.

To learn more from Mari, get your Data Natives ticket here.

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With “Brexit” looming over Britain, a promising new startup hub is emerging in Europe: Berlin’s Silicon Allee. As a comparison between London and Berlin demonstrates, chances are the latter may claim the position as EU’s most important startup ecosystem. But it takes a lot more to stand a chance against San Francisco, the startup capital at the heart of Silicon Valley. Is Berlin ready to compete with that?

Over one-quarter of the world’s unicorn startups are located in Silicon Valley. Being the world’s largest startup ecosystem, it’s valued at approximately $279 billion. In 2016 alone the Silicon Valley startups collected $26 billion in venture capital amongst themselves.

But the Bay Area faces some serious trouble: along with the groundbreaking success of its companies the cost of living has been rising rapidly. This means as workers are priced out and start looking elsewhere for more affordable options, startups struggle to find the talent they need.

And that is where the Berlin startup ecosystem has its chance to shine: cost of living is significantly lower and the atmosphere is ideal for young entrepreneurs to build businesses, supported by investors, government funds and an inspiring startup scene.

All things considered, how does Berlin hold up in comparison with San Francisco? This infographic created by 99designs compares the two startup cities in terms of access to capital, resources, cost of living and startup ecosystem, to find out if Berlin could be Europe’s new Silicon Valley.

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In 2016, global market uncertainty seemed to make investors somewhat more cautious, thanks to the results of the votes in the UK and the USA. However, fintech’s stellar run did not come to a halt. According to the February report by KPMG, venture capital investment in the space rose 7%, totalling $13.6 billion. Overall investment in fintechs hit $24.7B, thanks to evolving technologies, and the success of companies focusing strongly on providing outstanding user experiences.

The only one among all regions, Europe saw its fintech venture investment grow in volume. It grew from 230 financings in 2015 to 242 in 2016. While 2016 almost amounted to a “golden age” for attracting venture capital investment, 2017 is expected to be even more impressive. This time, however, the focus lies in cooperation. Traditional banks, financial institutions and insurance companies seem to recognize the importance of being efficient and customer focused. However, more often than not, these institutions lack the knack for UX and innovative design that fintech thrives on. Many of these ‘traditional’ institutions have realized they cannot make this transition alone. Instead, they have started partnering with fintechs in order to advance their own capabilities.

The desire to innovate versus the ability to do so

Banks are highly regulated and usually unable to offer fast, customer-oriented service. But banks have been the backbone of modern economies and count with large sales and customer service forces. Fintechs, on the other hand, are flexible and generally successful at focusing on specific segments with unmet needs. Most banks see AI & machine learning as a way to to reduce costs. They are targeting promising fintech companies as a means to expand globally.

Case in point: Santander doubled investment in its fintech fund. Goldman Sachs invested in startups ranging from financial product comparison platforms  to commercial real-estate investment startups. Creamfinance, a European alternative lender, has recently managed to snap an impressive €21M investment from the third biggest South African bank. Once ranked as the fastest growing fintech in Europe, the company capitalizes on machine learning and advanced smart data algorithms to evaluate and score personal loan applications in an individualized manner.

The early bird gets the worm

Matiss Ansviesulis, co-founder & CEO of the Poland-based Latvian company, announced that the recently concluded €21 million deal was part of a series B financing with Capitec Bank Holdings Limited. This sizeable investment in just one company serves as a sort of confirmation of KPMG’s prediction that slower funding in the online lending space could be a sign of market consolidation. A select group of companies is already emerging as winners.

“Given their expansion and focus on operational excellence, Creamfinance has emerged as a leading personal finance provider in Europe.” said Gerrie Fourie, CEO of Capitec. “We are impressed by Creamfinance’s focus on Smart Data scoring.  Their business model was developed in such a way that new countries can be entered swiftly and efficiently. This requires limited investment in local infrastructure”.

Using the power of fintechs to go global

The motivation behind the bank’s investment becomes a little more evident. Creamfinance’s business model is a very attractive one. Besides, the long-term interests of both companies converge in a very simple point: Capitec wants to integrate cutting-edge financial technology in its worldwide operations. The biggest incentive for banks to join forces with their more agile counterparts is getting to test different solutions quickly and cost-effectively. This, in turn, accelerates market entry throughout the whole process –  from idea to execution.

“We believe that Creamfinance will provide Capitec’s management the opportunity to gain experience in entering and operating in foreign countries. Specifically, in advancing credit in the international and online environment and to work with a foreign partner to manage an international business,” Capitec said.

Creamfinance anticipates that the investment will allow the company to expand faster. This will facilitate their global mission to make finance more accessible.

“We are excited about this investment from a leading bank that emphasizes technology and operational efficiency, and that acknowledges our ability to scale fast”, said Matiss Ansviesulis. “This investment also marks a potential new beginning in fintech and banks cooperation, especially since so many hold opposing views“

Banks and fintechs, instead of Banks versus fintechs

Ansviesulis’ point is but a clear sign of the current climate in fintech. The most important implication of the Capitec investment in Creamfinance for financial service providers and consumers is that it attests to the growing momentum that bank-fintech cooperation is gaining, after years of perceived rivalry.

Working with startups positions banks as more innovative. Such partnerships create value for banks as the solution is often designed around model innovation and operational excellence. For startups, the union brings stability and financial backing. It’s rather a win-win partnership where both sides add value. Collaboration in Europe has seen many different iterations. We’ve read constant news about new fintech accelerators, the acquisitions of promising companies, and direct investments in startups through corporate funds. “There’s a lot of potential for even more significant changes”, Ansviesulis says. “Building effective partnerships between banks and fintechs will create a new, re-invented digital future”.

We can expect this digital future to reach us sooner rather than later. The ongoing trend of banks and fintechs instead of banks versus fintechs has already started yielding results for adopters. As Business Insider reports, 54% of incumbents in the UK reported increasing revenues and decreasing costs. They also reported an overall boost to their brand after forming partnerships with fintechs. Research by Finextra shows similar sentiment rising in the Nordics. There, 74% of banks have set their sights on collaborating with fintechs in 2017. The possibilities for innovation seem endless. The majority of interviewees for the 2017 Fintech Disruptors report agree that this phase of increased collaboration is creating a “virtuous circle of technology adoption.” This will increase profits and help define new technology standards.

The outcome will be a win-win-win

In the end, the biggest winner is the consumer. Further collaboration will bring forth better, faster, simpler, user-centric service. This will offer consumers new possibilities to improve the way they approach personal finance.   

Fintechs seeking investment could learn a thing or two from Creamfinance and other bank-friendly startups. For banks and fintechs, cooperating instead of disrupting each other’s business seemed unfathomable a few years ago. Now, it increasingly looks like a match made in heaven.  

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Collaboration and innovation go hand in hand, and are based in transcending frontiers – physical, technological, economical, you name it. Open innovation is one of the ways in which Europe can secure global competitiveness. The H2020 research and innovation program is the EU’s financial instrument to achieve this, and within this framework, the IoT-European Platforms Initiative (IoT-EPI) was formed to build a vibrant and sustainable IoT-ecosystem in Europe – one that is based on interconnectedness.

In March 2017, the IoT-EPI met for one week in Berlin, to attend business-building and community-building workshops, to share their projects with the Berlin tech and startup scenes, to host the IoT-EPI challenge 2017, and to strengthen the bonds of this growing network in its effort to unify a very fragmented European IoT platform ecosystem.

Berlin has been one of Europe’s most attractive destinations of the 2000’s. It has become synonymous with avant-garde art, electronic music, and a flourishing startup scene. What it is not synonymous with, however, is well-functioning infrastructure – at least when air travel is concerned (definitely hinting at the infamous BER-airport project here.) Because of an ill-timed airport workers strike in Berlin, a considerable part of the IoT-EPI members were not able to make it to the first meeting days. However, even though the group was smaller than planned, the first workshop days turned out to be very productive. The second part of the week (the Meet & Greet, and the Challenge) went on as planned.

IoT is about connecting

Media outlets, startups, SMEs, and corporates met at Ahoy! for this IoT-EPI Meet & Greet, to get to know the initiative and learn about its projects. Laura Kohler, etventure Startup Hub’s Managing Director, set off the evening with a talk that went to the core of the problem of the siloed IoT platform ecosystem in Europe, and that clearly showed the importance of IoT-EPI’s mission – IoT platforms help organizing an increasingly connected world, but they are not connected amongst themselves. Because there can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution for all the existing and upcoming platforms, collaboration is key within the IoT space, in order to create an ecosystem where platforms and services can talk, and thus connect the world.

“An IoT ecosystem based on interoperability and communication can be the driver of truly smart cities, and a connected world”

• Eneko Olivares, Universitat Politècnica de València, INTERIoT project coordinator

Startup pitch coach Bianca Praetorius took the stage from Laura, to give attendees a clearer picture of the stakeholders of the European IoT ecosystem, in the form of 10 archetypical figures in the space. From The fresh out of university founder to The EU funded R&D project, she highlighted the labyrinthine network of symbiotic relationships within this very interconnected space. Her talk led the way to the more lighthearted part of the evening.

Drawing inspiration from the long-running German dating show Herzblatt, IoT-EPI took on the task of matching innroute, a logistics startup from Barcelona, with a partner that could help reach the next stage of development as a company. The three candidates were an innovative corporate partner (Deutsche Bahn), a VC (Videesha Kunkulagunta), or a mentor (Srdjan Krco, project coordinator of the IoT-EPI project TagITSmart!). Depending on how the candidates answered the questions innoroute posed, one of them would be picked to work closely with the spanish startup. After the candidates answered questions about building and ending working relationships, market fluctuations, cooperation, and other key aspects of a business cleverly disguised as romantic issues, innroute saw themselves in a crossroads. How do you pick only one out of three promising candidates? Eventually, the startup saw a perfect match in Deutsche Bahn.

IoT is about sharing

IoT-EPI consists of seven research and innovation projects spanning the whole continent, designed to make their technology accessible to 3rd parties – Inter-IoT, BIG IoT, AGILE, symbIoTe, TagItSmart!, VICINITY and bIoTope. These projects draw upon the principles of open innovation and collaboration to create opportunities for platform development, interoperability and information sharing.

BIG IoT // big-iot.eu
This project is a seven-partner network with a team of around 40. Their aim is to create an API and a marketplace for IoT data and platform providers to serve as a one-stop-shop for monetizing, finding and acquiring IoT data & platforms for IoT projects. They focus on the smart mobility space, but decided to try something different in the IoT-EPI challenge, and went for the Retail challenge instead.

AGILE // agile-project.eu
Agile is building a gateway to control data sharing (in the cloud), that supports protocol interoperability, device and data management, design and execution of IoT apps and external cloud communication. In a nutshell – building an architecture to support communication between IoT devices

INTER IoT // inter-iot-project.eu
InterIoT is a partner network of 14 universities and big TelCos. Their goal is to build an open framework to integrate new and existing IoT platforms, enabling voluntary interoperability among IoT platforms and across multiple layers – from devices, through middleware to a semantic layer. In layman’s terms – On one hand, they’re building bridges between IoT platforms, so they can communicate; on the other, they’re also building the tools for others to be able to build these bridges between themselves.

bIoTope // biotope-project.eu
bIoTope is leveraging the know-how of their 20 partners, to lay the foundation for open innovation systems to enable horizontal interoperability across IoT systems. As they described it during the meet and greet, basically, they’re offering “everything-as-a-service”.

symbIoTe // symbiote-h2020.eu
symbIoTe wants to help solve the fragmentation problem of the EU IoT landscape by building orchestration middleware for transparent interoperability of IoT platforms and sensing/actuating resources.

TagITSmart! // tagitsmart.eu
TagIT Smart create smart tags for retail products, to enable ecosystems of connected products that are otherwise still out of reach due to technological limitations.

VICINITY // iot-epi.eu/project/vicinity
The VICINITY project will build and demonstrate a platform and ecosystem that provides “interoperability as a service” for infrastructures in the Internet of Things. Unfortunately, the project was not able to be present at the IoT-EPI Week because of the airport strike.

The projects welcomed visitors from large, innovative institutions like BMW, EnBV, and Siemens, to discuss their work, their goals, and to talk about finding ways to build the strong ecosystems and communities that an interconnected European future needs. For BIG IoT, interconnectedness takes on a very physical meaning. With an emphasis on smart mobility, the BIG IoT project is conducting 2 open calls to enable external organizations to join the project with their own ideas and contributions, within a larger IoT-EPI program of 11 open calls, offering funding totalling €5.5 million.

What’s there to win? Aside from getting to work within the BigIoT ecosystem, they are offering a total of 750.000 € for new partners, taking on the role of either IoT service, application, or platform providers.

“There real value-add for businesses and other organizations in the versatility of IoT data”

• Jelena Mitic, Siemens, BIGIoT project coordinator
  

The first next open call, by BIG IoT, starts in April 2017. It will focus on IoT platform & service providers who are willing to provide new data to the project through the BIG IoT API and offer the data on the BIG IoT Marketplace. The second open call will be published in January 2018, targeting also IoT applications providers. Head to BIG IoT’s website to fill in the application form, and to get more information on the project and specific details about the open calls.

IoT is about challenges

The lively networking session was far from the end for this IoT-EPI week. As the evening drew to a close, everybody’s eyes were on the following day and its prize. On the next blog of the series, we’ll share our impressions of Friday’s IoT-EPI Challenge 2017, where 12 teams from all over Europe got together to find the IoT solutions of the future.

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 Convince Your Boss! 5 Reasons to Attend the IoT Weekend

You really want to come to our IoT workshop but you are not sure how to convince your boss to pay your ticket? Say no more. We’ve prepared some pretty good reasons for you (not that you do not know them already) to pass on to your higher-ups.

1. Learn from an expert

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is an entrepreneur and a designer with over 12 years’ hands-on experience in the IoT space. She knows how much money you need to invest, how much time you have to spend, and who you want to work with to get your project going. She is not yet another consultant who will throw you buzzwords and provide you with high level content. She gets things done. The workshop is an intensive course where she will provide guidance and share everything she knows about how to build a business that offers software and internet-enabled product experiences from the ground up.

2. Full focus on commercial IoT

Of the projected 8.4 billion IoT-enabled devices in the world in 2017, the consumer segment represents a staggering 65%. Yet, we’re seeing industrial IoT get all the shine, while the consumer side gets pushed to the side lines. In reality, the space for consumer-facing IoT applications is flourishing and offers unrivaled opportunities for innovation. We want to attract the edgiest product visionaries out there by bringing our focus on commercial IoT to Berlin, Europe’s most exciting tech hub.

3. Do it for the network(ing)

We want you to be able to focus on what’s important. We’ve limited capacity to 30 attendees, so there’s ample time to ask questions, discuss plans and exchange ideas with Alexandra and with fellow participants. The list of attendees participants includes the who’s who of the IoT scene including senior employees from Ernst&Young, R&D engineers, and Managing Directors of established retailers moving to make their mark in the digital world.

The workshop was conceived with an excitingly mixed audience in mind. The model attendee is a professional who promotes innovative product development and marketing, within a company or independently as a consultant or an entrepreneur.

Ideally geared towards Intrapreneurs, the course is also designed to provide Consultants, Product Managers, Developers, and Founders, with the tools they need to manufacture products and fully understand the commercial IoT space.

4. Exclusive Content

The workshop covers these four key areas:

• Planning and Prototyping
• Beta testing and Production
• Engaging with wholesale and retailers
• Intellectual property, business structures & investment

Want to go for the nitpicky details? Then check out the Schedule; Alexandra’s post about how what lies at the heart of building an IoT product; or her talk at Data Natives 2016

5. The SAP Data Space

DATA SPACE, SAP’s flagship space in Berlin, is the place to meet innovators, change makers, partners, startups, artists, Berlin’s multifaceted community, and all people interested in Digital Transformation.

Go ahead and send this article to your boss. You’ll thank us later. Discover your company’s unlimited potential to innovate, and facilitate the journey of digitalization for you and your clients.

What? 3-day intensive IoT workshop

When? February 24-26, 2017

Where? SAP Data Space, Berlin

JOIN US

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Images: Ars Electronica, CC2.0

Xavier Dammanis is an entrepreneur working on a new form of association that enables the Internet generation to fund communities in full transparency: Open Collective. He founded Tribal in 1999, a site that gathered student content from around Belgium that was published in a 30,000-circulation magazine distributed nationwide to high schools. He built content partnerships with leading brands such as Microsoft and other Belgian companies. He moved from Belgium in the summer of 2009 with the vision that there are voices on social media that deserve to be published on main stream media. This vision is the foundation of Storify, the largest social media curation platform used by top publishers, brands and organizations around the world which was acquired by Adobe in 2016.  Xavier earned a Master’s Degree with Distinction in Computer Science from Belgium’s Leuven University, and is one of MIT’s 2016 ‘Innovators under 35’.

What was your first experience with social projects?

I left Belgium seven years ago to go to San Francisco, because I couldn’t raise money for my first startup, Storify. After a while I raised enough money and made Storify what it became, which we then sold (three years ago) and after that I went back to Belgium. I wanted to pay it forward and help communities and entrepreneurs trying to build startups, so a friend of mine and I came up with this movement to start a manifesto in Belgium. The goal was to come up with recommendations for the government and society at large, including journalists, teachers and parents, to basically make it suck less for startups in Belgium. And it was a great movement indeed. Thousands of people started supporting it and it got a lot of media coverage.

How did that drive you to starting Open Collective?

At some point we wanted to print some stickers to distribute at startup events. They cost a few hundred of Euros so we wanted to create a Stripe account to raise money from the supporters. But in order to do that you have to create a legal entity. And the last thing we wanted to do is to create a legal entity for what we were doing. And this was so frustrating. They were literally thousands of people who share the mission, who would love to contribute, and the money is there and we cannot take it. And we could have used that money to have a larger impact. So we said ‘alright, this is broken and we need to fix this’.

So the internet so far is helping a lot of movements to exist but they cannot have economic power. Occupy Wall street is a good example of that compared to Podemos in Spain. The difference between them is that Podemos was able to turn the energy of the movement to a political party. To convince 85.000 to give them five dollars a month. And that makes the difference between a movement that’s gonna be ephemeral to a more established institution.

What is your goal with Open Collective?

Our goal as Open Collective is to create this new light type of association for our generation who really love doing those side projects, creating those meetup groups, taking the initiative to create a conference located in your city, do open source projects together, create movements like occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, all of that. There’s a whole bunch of things that our generation is doing but we don’t have any platform to enable those movements and these communities to collect money. So it’s all about finding a new way, fund those communities that can have a larger impact.

What does ‘Open Source’ mean to you?

Open source happens to be one of those communities where you could have much more impact if they were better funded. I’m a big fan of open source myself and we open source everything. Open Collective is an open source platform because we believe in open source. We believe it’s the future of work. There’s no reason for having two different engineers in two different parts of the world solving the same problem. And also open source is the right business decision, I’m an engineer, as well as a developer and we tend to make much better code if we know that other people can look at it.

How do you see the future of technology in five years from now?

The future of technology in five years from now looks great. In the past 15 years technology has evolved so much. And now I think the biggest opportunities are applying all the things we learned to auto industries in addition to applying the philosophy of open source to those industries. That’s going be the next big thing in ten years. Technology for me is about money, it’s a means to an end, and it’s about how technology can free people from wage slavery. Because today there are still the vast majority of people who are doing things they’re not passionable about, doing it only because they need money to live. If I could solve one big problem with technology today that would be cancer. Technology for me is giving the tools to people so that can pursue what they truly love.

What does is it mean to be a data native?

To be a data native to me is more about building a fair world, an equal world, and the only way we can do that in a scalable way is through data.

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Image: velkr0, CC By 2.0

Meet Angel García, Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016 Judge and Speaker

You can register for tickets to Data Natives Tel Aviv here.

Angel García is the Managing Director of Startupbootcamp Internet of Things & Data Tech, the Barcelona based acceleration program.

Angel has years of experience working with startups and will serve as a speaker and a judge during Data Natives Tel Aviv’s Startup Battle. Here is what Angel has to say about Data Natives Tel Aviv, Startupbootcamp Barcelona and the Israeli tech ecosystem.

Q: How is Startupbootcamp Barcelona driving innovation?

We accelerate startups that are re-inventing the future by helping companies involved in the fields of Smart Data and the Internet of Things. These companies join Startupbootcamp’s acceleration program to improve the way we live – we believe these entrepreneurs are building the future with their technologies. We’re helping these entrepreneurs do so by connecting them with the right corporations and bringing new innovations to the market.

Q: What data-driven technologies are of particular interest to you and why?

 Startupbootcamp Barcelona focuses on data-driven technologies (software oriented) in the following categories:

• Analytics – Behavior patterns, business intelligence solutions, data-mining, data modeling
• Artificial Intelligence – Cognitive computing, deep learning, machine learning, neural networks, pattern/image/speech/text recognition software, predictive analysis
• Augmented & Virtual reality – Applied to B2B or B2C environments in the mentioned sectors & verticals
• Connectivity – Data transmission, synchronisation, virtualization, Infrastructure Analytics, cloud, clusters, distributed, fog, IoT, management, networking, platforms, security, storage
• Internet of Things – Compression, control, networking, software, platforms, protocols, remote access, power management
• Security – Access control, encryption, identification, intrusion detection, storage, tracking
• Storage – Access control, backups, categorization, compression, extraction, software

The transformation of analog systems to digital ones and the support they offer for making better decisions at the right moment is a fundamental question. Yet, how are we going to build software to make decisions or to find pragmatic solutions to solve a problem?

Startupbootcamp brings to market the full potential of computational power in order to find better propositions to achieve the goal mentioned above. We focus on the most disruptive technologies that amplify the possibilities of this new era.

Q: What do you hope to gain or learn during Data Natives Tel Aviv?

At Startupbootcamp Barcelona, we are working on what we call ‘the next big thing.’ During Data Natives, we are looking forward to meeting people who would want to join us in our path to achieve new challenges, to solve new problems and to open new markets.

Data Natives is bringing together people working on data-driven solutions that have the power to shape every aspect of our lives – from the way we understand ourselves to the way we run our cities. These are the talented people I’m looking forward to meeting.

Q: Do you believe that Israel is a strategic market for showcasing data-driven technologies? If so, why?

This year, investors have been looking towards Israel, New York, China and all over the world to find opportunities. The entrepreneurs in Israel are becoming pioneers in technologies, specifically, in those related to analytics in the world of Smart Data, Cybersecurity and many more.

Q: Can you offer advice for startups wanting to get involved with Startupbootcamp Barcelona?

Entrepreneurs whom want to change and improve people’s lives and the world around them need to make that possible not only with their technologies, but also with their attitude. That’s why we spend a lot of time meeting the teams that join Startupbootcamp Barcelona. We want to see if these teams are open minded and humble enough to keep on learning daily, while receiving feedback from mentors, partners and potential clients.

It’s not easy to lead a company. At Startupbootcamp, we prepare startups to be ready for everything they will encounter. Moreover, our global network of programs help startups quickly scale and expand to different markets.

Meet Angel and learn more about Israeli startups driving innovation during Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016 –Save your spot by registering today!

Maren Lesche is the Communications Manger and Startup Expert at the European Innovation Hub, a Mentor for Startupbootcamp Digital Health Berlin and a notable blogger with a focus on startups. Maren has years of experience working with startups and will serve as a speaker and a judge for Data Natives Tel Aviv’s Startup Battle. Here is what Maren has to say about Data Natives Tel Aviv, data-driven technologies and the Israeli tech ecosystem.

You can register for tickets to Data Natives Tel Aviv here.

Q: What do you hope to gain or learn during Data Natives Tel Aviv?

Data Natives differs from many of the other startup conferences that I’ve attended. I joined the first Data Natives event in Berlin in the fall of 2016 and was impressed by the high level of speakers, by the topics of discussion, the deep tech focus and, of course, by the variety of startups that participated in the startup battle.

That being said, I’m looking forward meeting more big data and eHealth experts during Data Natives Tel Aviv to talk about future trends and also to discuss how the IoT community can come together and become even closer in the future.

At the European Innovation Hub we coordinate the EU-funded IoT-European Platforms Initiative. Within this program, seven research consortia with more than 100 partners collaborate to build a strong IoT ecosystem in Europe. Following the motto “from lab to market,” we encourage the development of interoperable platform technologies and foster the adoption by the developer and entrepreneur community.

Shortly after DataNatives Tel Aviv, we will start the first of ten Open Calls. Within this call, SMEs and startups in eHealth, IoT, Big Data and logistics can apply for financial support of up to 125,000 Euro per project. Just in this one call we will invest 850,000 Euro to strengthen IoT technologies made in Europe and Israel.

What data-driven technologies are of particular interest to you and why?

I tend to focus more on the consumer side of technology. In the B2C area, I am most interested in technologies that are changing peoples lives, that overcome boundaries and that will support people in future such as eHealth technologies including smart textiles and robotics in MedTech. In terms of B2B solutions, I am fascinated by industrial IoT, e.g. Virtual Reality in B2B, predictive maintenance, beacon solutions.  

Do you believe that Israel is a strategic market for showcasing data-driven technologies? If so, why?

Israel is a very interesting market for any tech and data-driven industry. Many big players have strong innovation hubs in the “Startup Nation” including Deutsche Telekom, Microsoft and IBM.

Developers in Israel are also extremely experienced and well educated. The community of Israeli tech and business experts are also highly energetic. However, there are reports such the one from Innovation Endeavours that highlight uncovered potential, especially in the area of IoT.

According to investment experts, 80 percent of the startups active in IoT (during the end of 2015) are focused on applications rather than IoT platforms or components. I am curious to see how the data-driven startup community in Israel is taking on this challenge. 

How is your particular field of interest driving the data revolution?

Industrial IoT is still a playing field for entrepreneurs. In Europe, we have many very successful mid-sized companies operating all over the world, but are in areas consumers hardly see. They produce components, take care of logistics, develop new materials and are therefore the backbone for entire industries. If we manage to link these companies with smart startups, then both side swill benefit. Plus, we can access hidden data to kick off cool innovation in the B2B sector. Would I call this a revolution? No, but I think it will be a “smart evolution.”

I also would like to add another layer to the discussion: When we talk about the drivers, we must also talk about current barriers. I believe that working on trust is one of our top priorities in IoT. If we deal with sensitive data such as in eHealth and Fintech, we have to discuss privacy and security. These are two strong topics that always come up when we talk with the partners of the IoT-European Platforms Initiative. Trust plays an essential role in the development of strong IoT businesses in Europe. Customer –and societal – acceptance of data driven services is crucial for its success. 

Can you offer advice for others wanting to get involved in these particular fields?

There is a general piece of advice that I give entrepreneurs as well as executives: Listen first!

Whatever you do, you have to understand how businesses work, what the pain points are and how people are dealing with problems right now to find the proper solutions. 

In IoT, this also means talking to users to understand how processes are connected. Think about collaboration instead of product ownership. First and foremost, connected technology requires communication to overcome borders between sectors, countries and most importantly, competition. Within the IoT-European Platform Initiative, we just started to bring more than 200 researchers, industry representatives and SMEs together – in my mind this is the first step towards building a healthy IoT ecosystem. 

Meet Maren and learn more about Israeli startups driving innovation during Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016 – Save your spot by registering today!

Think you have what it takes to compete in the Startup Battle? Apply for the Data Natives Tel Aviv Startup Battle here.

With more startups per capita than anywhere else in the world, Israel has gained the reputation of being a true “startup nation.” Yet with so many innovative startups, the competition remains tight to be accepted into leading startup accelerator programs.

This is why Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016 will be hosting their very own “Startup Battle” on September 25^th.

You can register for tickets to Data Natives Tel Aviv here.

About Data Natives Tel Aviv’s Startup Battle

 Data Natives Tel Aviv’s Startup Battle will offer 6 innovative startups the opportunity to be accepted to Startupbootcamp Barcelona, the largest startup accelerator in Europe and one of the top 3 largest in the world.

The Startup Battle is a great opportunity for data-driven startups seeking mentorship, networking, training, funding, development guidance and more.

Each participating startup in this year’s Startup Battle will be given 5 minutes to pitch, followed by a 2 minutes Q&A session from our judges, which include Startupbootcamp Barcelona’s Founding Partner, Angel Garcia, Startupbootcamp Mentor, Maren Lesche and the notable Tech Blogger, Hillel Fuld.

The winning startup will then be entered as a “wildcard” to pitch during Startupbootcamp Barcelona’s selection days, being one out of twenty privileged startups to make the cut (and hundreds apply!).

How do I apply to participate?

You can apply for Data Natives Tel Aviv’s Startup Battle here.

Remember, only 6 startups will be chosen to participate. You will be notified by September 15^th if your startup has been selected. Goodluck!

About Startupbootcamp Barcelona

Startupbootcamp is a global family of industry-focused startup accelerators that support startups as they scale globally by providing direct access to an international network of the most relevant mentors, partners, and investors in their industry. Startupbootcamp is currently running 13 programs and has over 350 portfolio startups.

Startupbootcamp IoT&Data Tech is the Barcelona based program, with a key focus on accelerating and growing startups in the following domain:

– Virtual or Augmented Reality
– Artificial Intelligence
– Big Data Analysis
– Internet of Things
– Cyber Security
– Connectivity
– Logistics & Transportation

Have Questions?

Still wondering if your startup would make a good fit for our Startup Battle? Send your questions to: Events@dataconomy.ru

You can also follow us on social media to stay in the know. Connect with us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates on Data Natives Tel Aviv.

See you in Tel Aviv!

London has reigned undisputed as Europe’s digital startup king since the first rise of the digital economy in the old continent. However, Berlin has recently established itself as London’s chief rival, even before the UK’s EU referendum. According to UK Prime Minister Theresa May, the implementation of Brexit will not occur until 2017. However, will the uncertainty of a Post-Brexit world cause more digital startups to choose Berlin over London?

Certainly, the power brokers in Berlin have felt a shift is coming ever since 2014, when the city surpassed London in venture capital investment. Now, the city’s senate has actually taken the time to approach businesses with London headquarters, in a bid to persuade them to up sticks and move to the German capital of cool.

It is possible that British venture capital funds will lose out on cash received from the European Investment Fund (EIF) once Brexit is implemented. In 2015, VCs received over £550 million from the EIF.

Clearly, Berlin believes this potential loss of money could be one of the final tipping points in terms of startups choosing to move to Silicon Allee over Silicon Roundabout. However, how does the German capital actually compare to London in terms of startup ecosystem, taxation, cost of living and other important factors? 99designs sets the (still) European juggernauts side by side in the infographic below.

Who takes the startup city crown?

Clearly, our startup heart beats for our home and Vaterland, Berlin. However, we want to know which city you believe will claim the title. Where do you think all the tech talent will move to in the foreseeable future? Where would you take your startup dream to make it a reality? Leave us a comment down below.

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Meet Ami Gal, Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016 Speaker

Ami Gal is the CEO and Founder of SQream Technologies, a big data startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Ami is an expert when it comes to big data and will serve as a speaker during Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016.

Ami will be discussing how SQream’s technology leverages GPUs for large-scale data crunching. Here is what Ami has to say about how big data is being applied to drive innovation:

Q: What motivated you to start SQream Technologies?

 I’ve been working on high computing performance challenges for more than 20 years. CPU-based computing has always been limited, expensive and complex in scale. I’ve always been fascinated by the option of scaling with GPUs as they offer so many cores and parallel computing capabilities.

Before SQream, I tried to accomplish high-compute with GPUs a few times without succeeding. When the opportunity to establish a GPU database company came along, it was clear to me that I had to go for it, and turn years of brainstorming into actions and reality.

At the time SQream was founded in 2010, the common industry view was that we [SQream] were completely insane for trying to compete with big players like Oracle, with a GPU database. Today, however, it’s evident that next generation databases are running on GPUs with leading companies such as SQream and others.

Q: What is SQream doing differently from other big data companies?

 SQream’s core technology and innovation leverages GPUs for large scale data crunching. SQream brings simplicity to big data through next generation robust solutions that can tackle challenges so big, which are often considered out of scope.

Adding simplicity to such high volume challenges in the business world is one thing SQream does well, but our technology also has an impact on humankind. SQream is being utilized in areas such as:

• Homeland Security – Where speed and scale are critical
• Cyber Defense – For risk and threat allocation in real time
• Research and Healthcare – Enabling an outcome of more precise and knowledgeable clinical treatments, more bandwidth and precision to genome research that will enable an educated, more precise clinical treatment in areas such as cancer and Parkinson.

Q: How is big data advancing healthcare in 2016?

Based on what we know from our clients and from the market, cancer research based on big data analysis has advanced tremendously this past year and is anticipated to accelerate even more going forward. Predictive analysis for exposing a possible disease outbreak is advancing, along with more precise, personalized medicine. These are just two examples of how big data is affecting healthcare.

SQream Technologies and other big data technology companies enable the handling and correlation of large-scale datasets originating from a wide range of sources, in order to get to insights that are more accurate and are based on a larger statistic sampling. In addition, SQream and its GPU capabilities enable much more advanced machine and deep learning algorithms on top of those datasets, accelerating research around the aforementioned by leaps and bounds.

Q: Explain Big Data’s role in genome research?

Genome research includes heavy analytical workloads that cannot be analyzed on a human level. In order to find patterns and reach educational and actionable conclusions, big data technologies are necessary. It is surprising that even today, genome research institutions are doing manual, highly time consuming singular comparisons of post-sequenced data, using a file base (yes, a file base!). This is one of the reasons why genomic research is taking years to complete.

At SQream, we addressed this problem by developing GenomeStack, a database solution that enables bioinformatics researchers to pre upload commonly used genomic databases such as 1000 Genome to SQream’s database, upload the genomic post sequence data from the research, and with a click of a button perform a simultaneous large-scale database search lasting a few seconds or minutes – as opposed to weeks or months when using a file base.

Summarizing it into one sentence – SQream can cut research time and significantly shorten time to cure – by months and even years.

Q: How will big data’s role impact the future?

 The impact of big data is already being felt in almost every aspect of our lives and its role is only growing. Thanks to big data we are able to watch television with less disruptions (network optimization), shop more effectively (with personalized ads and discounts that match our shopping history, needs and preferences) and work more effectively (with more comprehensive reports and information analyzed and delivered quickly).

Big data’s role in the future will have a major effect in areas such as our driving experience – with self-driving cars and systems that manage traffic more effectively, we will spend less time in traffic jams and hopefully be able to decrease the number of accidents.

As a result of less traffic, we will breath air that is less polluted. Instead of physically going to stores or wasting long hours online searching for the right products at optimized prices, we will have it delivered to us directly – saving us time and money.

We will be medically diagnosed and treated in a more tuned and precise manner, perhaps even alerted enough time in advance to prevent a life threatening condition. Nature disasters will be predicted and human lives will be saved as a result. These are only a few examples of how big data technologies and digitalization are changing the world.

This is exactly what’s driving SQream to continue delivering a next generation GPU database able to handle such previously unseen amounts of data constantly being generated in an accelerating speed. When I say “accelerating speed”, I am referring to the following facts – From the beginning of recorded time until 2003, the world created 5 billion gigabytes (exabytes) of data. In 2011, that exact same amount of data was created every two days. In 2013, the same amount was created every ten minutes.

In other words – the quantities of data being generated don’t only accumulate over time – as time goes on, the amounts being generated only expand. The world is spinning faster and faster and we have designed a database from scratch addressing exactly the implications and challenges that arise with it. In every challenge lies opportunity.

Join us for Data Natives Tel Aviv 2016. Save your spot by registering today!

Start-up admiration and entrepreneurship are alive and well outside of Silicon Valley. Check out Berlin, London or Amsterdam and you’ll be met with a striking number of founders, start-up hoppers, and entrepreneurs. Silicon Valley does reign supreme, but the tides are continuing to turn outside of the California-bubble. In fact, 6.9 billion USD was raised in the first half of 2015 in Europe—that’s 86% higher than the same period in 2014. There seems to be few signs of slowing down, especially in the FinTech industry. If industry insiders foresee an imminent burst in the Silicon Valley tech bubble, what’s to stop European start-ups from getting ahead?

American and European start-ups operate on very different playing fields. It’s not that Europe simply has less talent or interest; rather, they have a different set of hoops to jump through. The most notable is funding.

Finding Funds in the EU

The problem is not that the EU has proved unprofitable. With funding largely focused in the US, many European start-ups are quite simply strapped for venture capital: “There have been 24 billion dollar plus exits in Europe in the last five years,” explains Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson. “When you take all of that and combine the fact that there is probably a hundredth of the VC dollars at work in Europe vs the US, you get a great market to invest in.”

The American start-up style is often “go big or go home.” They launch with a fury of marketing campaigns, and reach in every direction manageable. They have to penetrate the market if they ever want to gain an advantage and grow. VC’s fund explosive campaigns in hopes of getting a slice of a unicorn pie. When that fails, there are still plenty of other projects. Europe, however, does not excel at late-stage funding. If a start-up wants to succeed, they need revenue, not market penetration. Perhaps that’s another reason so many are flocking to Berlin, whose unofficial motto “poor but sexy” sums up the financial mind set of many inhabitants. This understanding of start-up growth may also be the culprit behind the lack of exits in the EU.

One reason Silicon Valley seems to take the cake over Europe is the number of exits and acquisitions. It seems obvious: if Europe had better start-ups, more corporations would buy them out. European unicorns are completely dwarfed by those in America. Whereas Europe boasts an estimated value of roughly $110 billion, US Unicorns estimate at $700 billion. Despite the growing hubs and interest in Europe, those numbers are tough to accept.

Europe is, however, growing. Seven companies completed successful IPO’s in 2014. They aren’t all explosive companies like Facebook, but they are powerful players, nonetheless. Consulting firm Roland Berger suggests that we “think of German start-ups such as Sociomantics and Rhode-codes: There may be more sexy companies out there, but their business models plug important gaps in the market.”

The Double-Edged Sword of Language and Borders

There’s another interesting set-back for Europe: language. Many start-ups blossom in their home country. They might become big fish in a comparably small pond. While start-ups in the US can expand all across the country with relative ease, even into Canada, the UK, and markets that accept English as the working language, expansion is much more difficult. While some start-ups can operate entirely in English, others have a more local focus. Even for a continent with relatively high English language penetration, the mother tongue aspect is important, especially in privacy-heavy areas like FinTech. Start-ups may start in German, French or Spanish, and translating everything into another language is a huge step. Basic “Google Translate”-styled localization won’t do. Terms, buzzwords, marketing all has to be perfectly translated into multiple other languages. Customer service has to be immediately expanded into several different language divisions. It’s not only a matter of legal borders in Europe, but linguistic ones.

This has been a blessing in disguise for several start-ups. While american start-ups gain traction quickly, they seldom understand the art of expansion. Having made it in Silicon Valley, the assumption is that the product will boom elsewhere, and the intricacies of expansion are over-estimated. European start-ups that have already dealt with the legal, operational, and hidden fees of expanding across borders have necessarily already learned much more about markets and strategies than their American counterparts.

The Powerful Role of FinTech

One field that is really blossoming in Europe is FinTech. London has become a hub, and it continues to grow. However, the style of innovation in Europe differs greatly from across the pond. They haven’t adopted the “fail fast, fail often” attitude of Silicon Valley. Instead of risking failure and stigmatization, companies who do “make it” often prefer to work within the U.S.’s existing start-up machine. They are built to sell and exit to American companies, because that is a safe route. The result is that they exit quickly, preferring security to fully developing their product and company.

Hopefully they are ready to fill some big shoes, because London’s FinTech sector is projected to continue climbing, and even to surpass that of Silicon Valley. Accenture and CB Insights have found that, while the majority of funds still go to the US, London’s five-year trajectory has outpaced the competition. FinTech investment is growing worldwide, but Europe experienced the highest growth rate, with an increase of 215 percent to $1.48 billion in 2014, 42% of which was in the UK and Ireland, alone.

As prices in Silicon Valley soar and many expect its tech bubble to burst, the scene is changing in Europe. With more capital, and the push of the FinTech industry, US and EU start-ups may find themselves on somewhat closer footing. Still, despite plans to build the world’s largest incubator in Pairs, and significant growth in hubs like London and Berlin, Europe will not simply replace Silicon Valley. They must continue to take advantage of Europe’s unique opportunities, and set themselves apart from the American system.

image credit: TechEU

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How does an IoT start­up stand out against a sea of competitors? Looking in new directions and finding those profitable IoT niches is one way.

The Internet of Things is everywhere. A report from VisionMobile found that there are 300,000 developers in IoT today, and that number will grow exponentially by 2020. There will be some 4 million developers in the world. So how does it keep growing?

New markets. Much like the push behind android and iPhones, consumers will provide the fuel for these new markets. One of the more intriguing jobs related to IoT are IT Solution Architects. Given just how complex connected systems can be, these architects connect the business needs and the technical system, taking responsibility to ensure that everything runs smoothly. It’s a big job, and it requires a thorough understanding of every aspect of IoT. This means both specialized technical skills and an understanding of the overall, business goal. Similarly, unearthing new markets will require a great deal of creative thought as well as knowledge.

Customers are, of course, central to understanding your product. It is impossible to know what problem you are solving if you don’t have the customer in mind. One of the first decisions to make is whether you want to work with big companies or consumers. Furthermore, there are several different aspects of IoT usage. IoT ­related jobs don’t just involve sensors. They involve data analysis, machines, and even marketing. In fact, much of the real money isn’t just in the physical tech but in the services that connect them. Moreover, there is never just one way to realize an idea. There are a multitude of outlets and possibilities. While pop culture might take better notice of trendy start­ups, like those focused on wearables, the real money, according to many, is elsewhere.

Security is one of the biggest concerns among consumers and designers as the IoT continues to expand. It causes several problems that need to be addressed in order to make the field safer, and to help customers feel secure. Not everyone has been jumping on the smart gear bandwagon due to fears of what connected tech (and those behind it) might do. With IoT expanding into other fields of tech, all kinds of IT employees are going to have to become comfortable with cyber security. One great aspect of the security field is that it has so many options. Physical or cyber, corporate­sized or individual­ personalized solutions, it offers opportunities everywhere something is connected. Skills in Java, JavaScript, Android and CSS are good backgrounds for jumping into this field. Being highly skilled in this area is a very desirable quality, as security and IoT will only become more complex over time. Cisco’s 2014 Security Report found that the world is already short some 1 million security professionals. Finding the right people to manage a highly connected world will be a big job with lots of open doors.

Industrial IoT is already home to the popular yet seemingly mythical Smart Warehouse. Industrial Data Scientists, engineers and designers will become vital as companies make the move to connected warehouses. Whether you want to design the smart robots that pick things up and put them down, or work to create connections that keep vehicles online, the logistics industry will be a booming place for IoT. As the system can be incredibly fragmented, with different companies using different standards and styles, it is an open opportunity for developers. Echoing several other papers and companies, a study by IoT Analytics and Boston Consoling Group found that “Germany for example would see a net increase of 350k (+5%) Industrial IoT jobs over the next 10 years.” We already know that manufacturing is a booming hotbed for IoT. The industrial internet of things is hardly a niche on its own; it’s the multitude of moving parts that offer plenty of opportunities to those willing to look.

3D Printing. For many, it’s a novelty. You can print toys and D&D dice, but what else? The biggest use of printing isn’t in the home, but in the tech world. It is vital for prototyping new technology. Speedo, Nike, Ford, NASA and two­ thirds of the top manufacturing firms rely on 3D development and printing. This also means that prototyping IoT tech can be done in much less time than before. Printing means faster models, faster changes, and moving to market faster. Of course, it is also used regularly in the medical field. This field requires a bit of creativity and the ability to really appreciate the cross­over between two technologies. One example is the BOOMcast, a 3D printed foot cast embedded with electronics. It not only behaves in a way that helps the wearer feel more comfortable, it can communicate how the patient is doing to their health professional. The real beauty of these oddly practical maker­driven ideas is that they highlight the importance of cross­over. IoT does not exist in a vacuum. Combining tech with other fields, and also other skills or areas of knowledge, lead to the discovery of undeserved niches. Plus, the result is always interesting.

Agriculture and IoT may be the route for those looking to combine business and helping the world. Earlier this year, AgTech raised $2.06 billion in funding. According to numbers on CrunchBase, Precision Agricultural Technologies have blown up this year, raising $400 million in the first half of 2015 alone. Compare that to the $276 million raised in all of 2014. Using IoT to gather data and make better decisions makes farmers’ lives easier, can cut expenses and, of course, create more food and better practices. With the world population growing, there will be push to update the farming system. While this area may not sky­rocket quite like logistics, it is a field with a lot of money, consumers and, most importantly, needs. Pairing connected tech with the right data capabilities might just be a golden ticket.

Still can’t find that niche? There are plenty of other areas to consider. The ever­ popular wearables, smart grids and smart homes are major fields that aren’t quite ready to go away. Much like security, cloud specialists will be a necessity in the future. Consider the quirky and strange Netflix Switch that hooks up to your house, and let’s you have the popular “Netflix and Chill” experience. It orders take out, dims lights, and the internet is going crazy for it. Not every IoT idea is a web of sensors and life­ altering programming. It’s creativity.

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image credit: meridican

There are rules every start-up abides by, and the FinTech arena has its own special set. These new companies simply must understand the start-up game as well as the legal quandaries specific to finances. Taking a walk through the FinTech graveyard provides educational, eye-opening, and sometimes fun new information.

Respect Supporters and Partnerships

A young start-up needs money to find its way. As a result, much focus goes toward raising funds and making deals. This seems obvious and logical; you can’t make money without spending money. Unfortunately, without the right plan, start-ups may just be throwing money at an idea. Founders need to be asking who will pay money for their final product. After they burn through their initial funds, where will they find more? While some freemium programs seem to work, the term “freemicide” wasn’t coined without reason. The goal is real customers and knowing what they want. Of course, not all of these customers will be typical, average Joes and Janes.

FinTech is one of the most interesting, and maybe inspiring, areas for tech disruption. “Down with the old and in with the new,” right? Except, many FinTech start-ups will be fulfilled through partnerships. As Houston Frost of Akimbo Financial explains, Dwolla, Simple, Moven, Akimbo, and other famous start-up heroes aren’t going it alone. The relationship between the disruptor and disrupted is completely different in the FinTech field in many ways.

“Even the big payment startups like Square, ISIS, and Google Wallet, require not only financial institution partnerships but also partnerships with big processors like Fiserv. Regardless of the product, the financial startup likely requires a partnership with an established company in the same sector the startup is likely trying to shake up.”

Respect Complex Regulations

Every tech field involves legal complexities. While big corporations have their own lawyers to maneuver complicated legal regulations, start-ups are on their own. And it’s a big deal. While some financial technologies may be far less intrusive, some could face intense quagmires. GoCardless, a UK-based online direct debit provider, has been sponsored by RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and handles $1 billion of transactions a year. Even their founder, Hiroki Takeuchi, has noted the difficulty in understanding regulations, as well as penetrating the bank-owned financial infrastructure. “To get access, you need to set up some sort of arrangement with a bank that moves at a glacial pace.” They didn’t go it alone, and it took a lot of work to work with the famed glacial pace of traditional banks.

Then there is the tale of Zenefits, an incredibly hot start-up dealing with employee insurance benefits—among other things. Having thoroughly annoyed insurance companies in the area, Zenefits was attacked with legal battle after legal battle. Angering brokers and regulators is often the last thing FinTech start-ups intend to do, but that doesn’t mean trouble won’t come looking. Throwing curveballs is almost to be expected in the financial world, much like Prosper and Lending Club saw back in 2008 when they were hit with legal claims they weren’t operating in accordance with regulations—the result of simply not grasping the legal jargon and what it really means.

Finances are very complicated market, legally and socially. While a humble start-up may have the consumer’s best interests at heart, that doesn’t mean society will see it that way. TandemMoney was marketed as an “emergency fund for the underbanked,” and as swiftly as they appeared they were slapped with legal papers. Rather than garnering immediate sympathy from on-lookers as a poor start-up cornered by big banks, there were debates on whether their product was socially and financially healthy. They caused worries that their tech would be exploited to avoid payday lending laws. It was also termed “payday lending in disguise” by watchdogs. In the end, TandemMoney joined the other FinTech start-ups in the graveyard. Their missteps remind that social and legal regulations in the financial sector can be far more dangerous than in other areas.

Respect Marketing and Your Markets

90% of start-ups fail. Websites, incubators and founders honor founders’ post-mortem words, because, frankly, nearly everyone knows the sting of start-up death.

One of the biggest reasons start-ups fail is that they simply make a product that no one wants. Models and apps that don’t engage customers don’t gain traction. The fact that Starbucks is able to kick Apple and Google to the curb with their payment app should highlight how tricky customers can be. If customers care about the product and are engaged, then they will be a great friend. Mobile payment system M-Pesa was able to succeed in Kenya because they made the right partners. Their audience seemed to love them from the start, simply because they were tied to the right companies. Soon after, hundreds of other companies would try to market almost the same product and end up completely ruined. It was M-Pesa’s partnerships that created serious traction with users and even the government. They knew their market and how to use it.

Conversely, the story of failed personal finance management site Wesabe offers a stern warning. Marc Hedlund, Wesabe founder, described the tale of how his company effectively lost to Mint in a blogpost, here. One of his biggest realizations is that, while they had a great product, they didn’t get quite get their audience. “Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all… we completely sucked at all of that.” It’s important to recognize each start-up as one of many. Wesabe may be great; but if consumers don’t love it in those first few keystrokes, they may just move on to something better. Yes, there is probably something better.

Deceased start-up Blippy also thought they knew their customer. They’ve stated that “the big question that Blippy answers is ‘What are your friends buying?” and it sounds convincing. It’s great that they’re answering a question; unfortunately, it was a bad one. Blippy wanted to let you share your purchases with friends, and make the act of buying a social event. It took a long time and several iterations before Blippy released the real question was “who cares?”

In the end, 90% of start-ups will still fail. A FinTech graveyard of post-mortem words should serve as a wealth of information and support for founders and employees. Startupbootcamp Berlin has even hosted Failure Lunches celebrating dead start-ups. There is a lot to be learned from lost start-ups, so take advantage of the wealth of knowledge before dooming your own company to join the graveyard.

A nice chart/study from CBInsights. It’s not a necessary photo, but could be nice if you wanted some visual data

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image credit: feature: Robert-Couse Baker, body: CBInsights

Not all accelerators are equal, and not all start-ups will benefit from their rigid programs. Here’s a list of alternatives to help grow your start-up without handing out shares left and right.

There are a truly absurd amount of accelerators and incubators around the world. For all the good they have done, they can also do plenty of damage. They come and go, and some leave several dissatisfied start-ups in their wake. In fact, there are so many coming and going that it is nearly impossible to keep an accurate, up-to-date list of them. For start-ups that have tried the traditional accelerator/incubator route, or are wary to go it at all, there are other options available.

Maker / Hackerspaces

For many, makerspaces are the grassroots ideal for start-up creation. These spaces have sophisticated equipment that some start-ups desperately require. Paying a membership fee means access to all the tools a young start-up might be itching for. Plus, as makerspaces become more prominent and popular, more companies are investing in them. Governments, corporations and even universities may offer funding or space. If you are near a big city, chances are you have a makerspace or hackerspace nearby.

The real power of these spaces doesn’t just end at equipment. They also tend to have a very energetic atmosphere. Surrounded by similar makers and creators, there is never a shortage of creativity or input. Another great advantage is how they lend credibility to an otherwise small or unknown start-up. Much like an endorsement from an accelerator or big company, having a real space to work lends traction to a new name. Start-up founder Tom Panzarella, who works out of a makerspace NextFab Studio explains:”You’re not these two guys in a garage building a robot, right. You have your 21,000-square-foot production space; the boardroom here is really nice if we need to have meetings.”

Ideal for: Access to expensive equipment
Examples: Sudo Room (USA), London Hackerspace, TechShop

Co-working Spaces of Varying Style

The beauty of co-working spaces are the unbelievable variety. From strict and quiet to friendly innovation bonanzas, they offer all kinds of support. Some are more invasive than others, offering perks that range far beyond a coffee machine. Many are run by like-minded founders and their experienced entourage. They may listen to pitches, share duties or offer helpful (totally optional) seminars. They might also just offer you a place to hang your hat and do your work. These are ideal spaces for being involved in an accelerator-like environment while keeping full control of your start-up and avoiding the type grip of rules or sponsors.

Ideal for: Making connections, getting outside help
Examples: Fishburners (Australia), Tech Liminal (USA), AfriLabs (Africa)

Research Institutes

For the founder without a startup. Companies like these take great ideas and turn them into start-ups. To do so, they seek out founders. It’s sounds almost counterintuitive to the start-up culture, but for the right mind these scenarios might be ideal. This is for the entrepreneur that wants to be part of the culture but doesn’t have the “golden ticket” idea yet. Much like a carefully constructed boy-band, these institutes want to create a team that will flourish.

Ideal for: Entrepreneurs
Examples: NoveLook (Israel)

Meetup Platforms

Hackathons and similar short events sound, at first, like what nerds might do on any given weekend. These platforms, however, thrive on a very vital part of innovation: speed. Technology, more than almost any other field, becomes irrelevant fast. Start-ups that take too much time to create, develop, or pitch are left in the dust. Events like Startup Weekend push individuals together with only the common goal of creating. They are a whirlwind education in how to become a successful start-up. Going into these events with a bit of forethought may also yield extra possibilities. Winners don’t just get a medal; they may get written up in Venture Beat or TechCrunch. Even BBC and CNN cover such events.

Ideal for: Mingling, Exposure and Experience
Examples: Startup Bus, Startup Weekend, Oxygen

University Accelerators

Young people are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of starting their own business. Multiple studies have shown that today’s students are deeply imbibed with an entrepreneurial spirit. They don’t want to work at corporations; they want to create something on their own. This is likely why university accelerators are becoming so widespread. Different programs have different requirements. While some have rather unusual requirements (for example, that a founder be enrolled in a certain program at their school) others actually accept founders that simply have a connection to the university—whether as an alumni, or even as a member of town. These programs also vary wildly in usefulness and the most successful are tied to the big, obvious names, like Harvard, MIT and Northeastern. They do not necessarily offer the same wealth of resources that a full-blown accelerator might. There are no outside mentors, and fewer big connections.

Ideal for: Young folks, getting your feet wet and staying local
Examples: Stanford StarX, Accelerate Cambridge

Startup-In-Residence

Another version of the city-funded program is start-up residency. Many of these wants start-ups to focus on certain local issues or ways to give back to their community. Of course, that can mean a lot of things. From fostering community, analyzing local data or helping the local economy. While many people may not think of themselves as the philanthropist-types, many new apps and technologies could make great changes to communities. Don’t forget, sometimes these residency programs do come from big companies looking to improve their own business.

Ideal for: Developing start-ups looking for outlets
Examples: San Fransisco Entrepreneurship in Residence, Amsterdam Entrepreneurship in Residence, Dell Startup-in-Residence

Public Programs

These are programs designed or highly backed by cities, counties or towns specifically to retain talent and start-ups in the area. They look a lot like incubators and accelerators, but with a very different goal. While they do want their start-ups to succeed, the overall goal is to help local companies thrive and stay in the area. As a result, they want to make their start-ups happy. They generally offer similar services as a traditional incubator, but rather scaled down. Granting space and mentorship, they might be a more reasonable support system for the everyday startup.

Ideal for: Getting an accelerator experience
Examples: International Labs Madrid, Welcome City Lab (France, tourism-specific)

Given how many accelerators will fail their start-ups, or how many start-ups are unprepared to be properly accelerated, these alternatives are always a step in the right direction. If organic acceleration just won’t cut it, or your start-up snagged a spot at the famed TechStars accelerator, then more traditional programs may be worth a try. Just don’t forget that it’s all a business. Not just any old building with a “start-up accelerator” sign will do the trick.

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Awesome new start-ups are popping up every day and it’s easy to overlook even the coolest, most cutting edge developers—especially when they’re not based in Silicon Valley. Amazing, unexpected projects are popping up all over Europe, and that’s why we’re going to look at some of those newer, local start-ups who are pushing boundaries, finding niches and doing what no one else is. It’s time to support your local start-ups.

UK

Hackajob: recruitment platform that matches you with jobs & challenges you to hack them
Hackajob was founded by three students at King’s College London and everything about their idea screams progress (not to mention “millennial”) in the best possible way. It is no secret that recruiting and job-finding can be a nightmare. A CV and a sample simply do not tell the whole story, and they do neither the employer nor employee justice. Hackajob is a marketplace that connects employers with job-seekers and let’s them do a sort of test-run. Applications involve completing short, job-specific challenges and let’s users show what they’re actually capable of, in real-time. So how did a handful of students manage to take off? A healthy combination of great idea and TechStars London.

Spain

Cropti: SaaS solution for better farm management
While there are countries generally known as start-up hotspots, incredible ideas come from everywhere. One of the biggest surprises are the not just lively, but shockingly creative and practical start-ups that come out of Spain. Cropti is a Madrid-based company that specializes in giving farmers and engineers all the data they could possibly need. Since 2012, farmers in the area have been required to keep highly detailed lists of work performed. Cropti’s first order of business is to make that easy; secondly, it combines all kinds of relevant data—meteorology, biological alerts, costs or market shifts—to help users make better decisions. The ability to share such complex information so quickly means, of course, lower costs and more efficiency. Talk about grass roots movements.

Genomcore: Personal genomics platform
You thought Cropti was niche? Genomcore was created to get consumers all the information they could ever want on their own DNA. Unlike other services, they do a very thorough, complete sequencing of a customer’s genome, lending unparalleled insight into their body and future. The result isn’t just a solid customer base but a lot of data. They must not only deal with storing and analyzing that data, but finding new ways to keep it safe. In slightly over-simplified terms, the size of data stored in a human genome is equivalent to “approximately 2000 copies of the book War and Peace.” The experiments required to properly sequence a genome means even more data. We’re talking 600 gigabytes of data. Genomcore analyses don’t use just big data, they use huge data, and that’s going to be a business all its own.

Finland

Rating.vc: Big data platform for startup analytics
What about the business uses of big data? If this Helsinki-based start-up succeeds, they may make hundreds of websites obsolete. By listening to all kinds of sources—anything from news, to accelerators, to databases—Rating.vc wants to help new start-ups prove their clout, and investors have a more practical way of analyzing prospects. Most importantly, they benchmark given start-ups against others, giving very vital insight into how their company and product might evolve. Judging start-ups can be incredibly time-consuming, and often yield sub-par results. As Rating.vc explains, angel investing is a lot like gambling. The data can be shoddy, and you’re left to rely on your gut or incomplete information. Frankly, the world of investing was made for start-ups like Rating.vc.

Romania

OnyxBeacon: Adding micro-location possibilities to your apps
The Romanian company set out to create hardware and software that let developers hone in on users’ very specific locations. The uses are nearly endless for creative marketers. Such an app could send important, relevant data to customers when and where it is actually relevant. It allows for highly personalized offers and messages. OnyxBeacon is already well on its way to recognition. Winning Best cloud/data application at the CESAwards2015 in Romania, they’ve found a practical, marketable product and gained a strong footing, to boot.

Austria

Waytation: Track 100% of movements in complex physical environments
The idea behind the Vienna-based start-up is not so new. Companies want to understand and target customers efficiently and effectively. They boast not only very easy-to-use tech, but a new way of connecting with customers. They focus on seeing each customer interaction as a puzzle-piece, or a single step in a story. In any given expo, congress, or large gathering of people, there is data to be absorbed with every step and glance. By analyzing data never before thought relevant, Waytation hopes to uncover new insights and marketing methods. The real fun comes in the physical aspect of this data collection. It’s not about what a person click on, but where they go and what they actually do. Analyzing how people participate, for how long, and even route they take through an exhibit could tell powerful, unexpected stories.

Denmark

Macellum: helps fishermen obtain higher profit for their catch
Fair trade, and getting farmers fair wages remains a hot topic. Fishermen, for whatever reason, are not quite as trendy. Macellum’s appropriately-named app “Neptun” operates by communicating to fishermen exactly what their catch is worth. Comparing prices at every port connected to the North Sea, as well as examining fuel and docking costs, it gives a lot of power back to folks who work really hard to get food into towns and cities. Historic data as well as comparative data between market houses means the average fisherman will be a lot more connected and far less subject to external variables. Inspired by the founder’s own father and his experiences, Neptun is a great example of data-based apps can affect even the groups generally not included in the “big data” loop.

France

Running Heroes: Run. Get rewarded
One great use of big data is to connect the online consumer with their offline persona. Paris-based Running Heroes has already gained great traction for discovering one niche that may transform the business side of the fitness industry. The idea is to not only gamify exercise, but to reward users and collect useful data. Users are happy, and companies can gain insight on exactly who their target market it, as well as their highly specific habits. Honestly, here’s hoping Running Heroes and the relevant fitness companies realize just how useful that data is. This offers the incredible chance to connect online data with the offline.

There are, of course, hundreds more start-ups working in more mainstream, and more popular, areas of big data. But the uses for data doesn’t end at big companies. It doesn’t end at the marketing department, and it doesn’t end at the California boarder. Luckily, there are also hundreds more start-ups tackling new problems and finding ways to make life better every day.

With McKinsey projecting fintechs to take as much as 60% of banks’ retail profits in the future, it’s not surprising that the financial industry is scrambling to retain customers every way it can. However, traditional financial institutions still expect consumers to come to them: fintech’s great strength is to adapt to consumers.

But who is fintech adapting to? A close look at the burgeoning industry’s many-faceted interest groups not only gives us an idea of who is benefitting from fintech right now, but also the industry’s most likely growth areas in the future.

Entrepreneurs

Massolution’s 2015 CF report estimated that the global crowdfunding market will grow to an enormous $34.4 billion in 2015. Fintech companies can streamline and develop this into new funding avenues for entrepreneurs. Fundingtree, for example, is a crowdfunding platform that provides real-time evaluation of pitches by experienced business professionals.

A variety of fintech companies also focus their services on the needs of MSMEs and early stage entrepreneurs. Traditional financial institutions cannot provide loans to MSMEs easily due to high charges and inefficient processes. Capitalizing on automated credit scoring technologies, fintech companies can lend to MSMEs more efficiently, which will foster a much more positive culture around entrepreneurship.

The off-the-gridders

Fintech will enable people who, for structural, legal or political reasons, are off-the-grid, to get on it. bKash allows people who are not formally connected to the banking sector to send and receive money via mobile phones. This is a highly effective solution, since 70% of Bangladesh’s population live in rural areas without ready access to financial services.

Similarly, immigrants and refugees are often excluded from mainstream banking systems. That’s where companies like Monese come in. Monese allows immigrants and refugees to open current accounts via their mobile phones, and provides them with a Visa card – overcoming some initial problems of settling in a new country.

The send-money-abroaders

Fintech will benefit individuals, companies and charities; anyone who needs to transfer money abroad. To this date, sending money abroad still largely relies on antiquated business models involving hidden charges and high remittance rates.

Fintech companies have been able to work around traditional charges and horn-in on the transfer industry (with over $500 billion sent abroad each year by individuals). Peer-to-peer exchange benefits from charging a fraction of the typical 5-8% in fees that transfer giants like Moneygram and Western Union conceal inside their advertised exchange rate. British charity Comic Relief stated in 2014 that communities in Sub-Saharan Africa were being “hurt” by transfer remittance fees; reducing fees helps overcome financial exclusion, as more money reaches recipients.

Likewise, SMEs aren’t catered for; complex processes and hidden charges applying specifically to them when making transfers. Money Mover, a fintech startup in this area, calculates that SMEs make an incredible $5.6 trillion in international payments and monetary transfers annually – an enormous market fintech can cater to.

Finance professionals

Fintech services for finance professionals can be found, for example, in the field of property and hedge-fund management. Add to that the growth of tools like Planwise which provides detailed analysis of proposed housing investments to aid decision-making, and the fintech market becomes more than the sum of its parts; it becomes a substantial addition to current forms of financial operation.

Fintech leverages technology to limit the amount of investment risk. This will foster the development of companies using data to provide investing and risk expertise. FutureAdvisor, for example, provides private clients and financial professionals with a data-based analysis of their investments. The trend to turn to tech companies for financial expertise means we can expect major disruption in this area, and the adoption of more reliable fintech data and expertise by finance professionals and institutions.

Early adopters

Fintech and digital natives were made for one another. Young people are more amenable to innovations in technology, especially at a time when they are increasingly more careful with their finances. The most likely reason for their financial scrupulousness is the global recession of the past few years.

Fintech startups like Number 26 serve this demographic by offering a fully-fledged bank account on smartphones, which not only clusters spending in beautiful visuals, it assists young people in thinking more clearly about their financial management. Services which cater specifically to the needs of young people will grow significantly with online insurance and student tuition being two areas for future growth. Companies like Tuition.io are already making headway in the latter. This combination of fintech with digital native desire to become more financially conscious means the technology will play a vital role in shaping young people’s perceptions and management of their money.

Cyber-security experts

Fintech involves money and technology: two things hackers and criminals love. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are so popular with these groups because of the significant gains and anonymity offered. A total of more than $1 billion was stolen in bitcoins in 2014 alone, including the infamous attacks on Mt. Gox and Flexcoin. Additionally, analysts from the Southern Methodist University, Dallas estimate that a quarter of all Bitcoin exchanges were subject to fraudulent activities.

These scary-sounding facts have an upside: criminal interest in fintech will mean greater investment in cyber-security in the future. Expect the emergence of a meta-fintech sector, dedicated to protecting the privacy and wealth of customers, as well as the tools used in exchanges like wallets. Cyber-security firms like Digital Shadows will continue to grow, providing threat analysis as well as tools to prevent hacks. Thus, fintech will play a vital role in securing the integrity and safety of online markets.

Startups seem to jump from lofty ideas to global megastars overnight. In order to keep you from being left in the dust, we’ve compiled a list of the most funded new FinTech startups. Focusing on companies formed in 2014 and 2015, we can take an inside look into what will be helping to evolve the sector next.

Get ready, because this is going to be fun:

Able

More than a loan ($12.5M)

The Texas-based “collaborate lender” has raised $12.5 million, including $6 million in August. They’ve already begun making a name for themselves, and have a wide breadth of investors, including Blumberg Capital and FLOODGATE. They work by utilizing both their own network and the customer’s. In other words, they expect your family and friends to make sure you pay back your loan. This model of lending will create a highly unique situation that is just as likely to succeed as inspire a dystopian novel.
They market specifically to business owners. When taking out a loan, the borrower’s friends, family and associates will contribute 25% of the loan, and Able will do the rest. Able founders expect the responsibility of borrowers to repay friends will not only ensure that loans are paid faster, but they will achieve better rates and happier overall results. In a recent article we talked about the need for FinTech to integrate social interactions and relationships. Able is one of the many companies realizing that money is, in fact, social. This may help usher in a new, more interactive kind of financing.

Grouplend

Save money by analyzing the details ($10.2M)

Grouplend raised 10.2 million in August, alone, with the goal of bringing good loans to middle-class Canadians. They use new softwares and powerful analytics to cut out the typical costly overheads. Unlike traditional banks, they rely heavily on technology and its capabilities. The company was launched a year ago, and is already taking huge strides towards success.

It’s worth noting that their funding comes primarily from Markus Frind, founder of PlentyOfFish. Frind called Grouplend “one of the most promising and innovative startups in Canada.” Considering that PlentyOfFish recently sold for $575 Million, we’re just going to have to trust him on this one. While Grouplend is hardly the first of its kind, it has been quick to move and has plenty of users…Why? It may be their real commitment to low rates. It seems, after surpassing $30M in loans, Grouplend actually went back and reduced costs, actually passing savings along to their customers.

Mighty

The first plaintiff marketplace ($5.25M)

The creators of Mighty have certainly found a niche. Mighty is all about getting money to unfortunate individuals bombarded with legal fees. No matter how strong a case may be, it’s incredibly tough for “the little guy” to emerge victorious from a court room. Time-consuming and frustrating, the justice system doesn’t always play fair. By connecting those awaiting settlement with the money they need to keep living their life, everyone wins.

The noble idea is incredibly practical, given how stressful (and sometimes life ruining) legal fees can be. Plaintiffs should never accept lowball settlements just because the fees are too high. Mighty works only with clients who are already represented by an attorney, and the loan is intended only for basic living expenses. Their investors come from an array backgrounds, including Tribeca Venture Partners and FinTech Collective.

It’s hard to disapprove of this startup, especially when they only collect money after you win your legal battle.

“If you win, you pay the investor back plus a return. If you don’t, you keep their investment.”

PeerIQ

Risk management for P2P credit ($8.5M)

PeerIQ is all about credit risk analytics, and helping investors asses loans and performance. Using industry data from top P2P platforms, they help investors make better decisions, and become more efficient. Based in NY, they’ve raised a total of $8.5 million largely from Wall Street names, including John Mack.
The growing popularity in P2P lending is really hitting wall street, and this startup is one of many being pushed and funded by big names. As described by Andy Lam, Managing Partner at Uprising, what sets them apart is their dedication to “technical depth” and “market sophistication.”

“By addressing the investment requirements for many large lenders, PeerIQ will enable efficient capital to enter the sector, create new opportunities for P2P platforms, and generate substantial impact by helping more borrowers achieve their financial goals.”

Stash

Why let old guys have all the fun? ($1.5M)

Stash was founded in February of this year and in August, they quickly secured $1.5M in funding. What is it that makes the investment advisor so intriguing? Is it their curated investments? The support and continual advice? Maybe it’s the tagline, “Start with $5,” and their incredibly small $1/month fee. The personable brand is all about you, average person who wants to invest but doesn’t know where to begin.

Stash will succeed because it understands exactly what people these days want: everything, and they want it cheap. Stash wants to inspire, teach, and advise customers on their investments, without charging commissions or secret fees for moving money in-and-out of accounts. They treat customers as individuals, asking users to invest in ways that reflect their personal beliefs. Stash will be launching soon, and is currently offering Early Access.

Trunomi

Know your customer ($5.3M)

The KYC problem revolves around “knowing your customer.” It’s the process of verifying a client’s identity, and is sure to be a big question as FinTech continues to boom and evolve. Trunomi provides the software that let’s users manage personal information or documents, and financial institutions deal with on-boarding and dealing with Personally Identifiable Information (Pii). Trunomi boasts numerous different outlets for their clients: TruHub helps reduce regulatory risks, and improve reporting; TruMobile is designed to be highly customer friendly, and keep the user happy and engaged.

Trunomi addresses the growing need to not just integrate tech into the financial sector, but to make it user-friendly. Customers don’t just want FinTech, they want intuitive apps that are a genuine pleasure to use. With the $3M raised by Saturn in August, Trunomi will investigate how to unlock the full potential of data within their project, and make the game even more exciting for companies and users, alike.

WealthArc

All-in-one wealth management solution ($300k)

Wealth managers and companies have their own set of needs. BBVA Open Talent finalist and Microsoft BizSpark member, WealthArc was founded to not only combat analysis and security problems, but to make the whole process more automated. Their flagship product, the SaaS solution, uses AI to manage portfolios, and cyber-security measures to keep cloud data safe, all with the end goal of helping managers form real bonds of trust with clients.

Members of the team have all worked at top-tier firms, and experienced the ups and downs of tech in the financial sector first hand. With the help of Microsoft Azure Cloud, they bring higher computing potential to their customers. With the money raised by U.S.-based venture capital firm Novit LP, WealthArc has expanded their team and research, and intends to tackle problems of compliance requirements.

These startups don’t just highlight how FinTech is growing at a rapid pace, but how the entire sector is developing and evolving. With disruptions at every turn, it is easily one of the more exciting fields to follow. Keep your eyes peeled, because you’ll be seeing these startups again.

Every five minutes a new FinTech start­up materializes, connecting us to better mortgages, showing us how to invest, or explaining what to do with our Bitcoins. It begs the question: what makes a FinTech Start­up memorable, and garner widespread success?

Usefulness. If FinTech is going to replace traditional financial services, start­ups must understand what people need on a daily basis. What apps are consumers really desperate for? It seems many companies are stuck in the traditional banking mindset, as though FinTech exists simply to cut, copy and paste old patterns onto new technologies. There is so much untapped potential for the FinTech world, and the start­ups doing the real, mental innovation are going to be heralded as heroes. There are more than a few things that developers need to understand…

Money is social

It is impossible to ignore just how social and connected humanity is in 2015. People expect their money to move just as fast as their news, gossip and internet trends. The peer­-to-­peer payment platform Kashmi made waves this summer in Singapore by making money sharing easy and social. Slowly branching across Asia, the app enables users to transfer funds immediately via smartphone with no extra fees. It makes the process easy and streamlined, just like users expect.

Combining the money­-sharing process with social media features, it’s as easy as selecting a friend from your Facebook list (literally). No more splitting a restaurant bill five ­ways. No more IOU’s. It is simply not enough to be able to send money online; it should be instantaneous, user-­friendly and integrated to other social outlets.

Humanity’s social needs don’t just end with the easy day­-to-­day transactions. ShereIt, another trending Asian start­up, is giving investing a new, social makeover. This is, perhaps, the social trading network of the future. Rather than just listening to friends, family, and your uncle’s advisor for tips, you can enter a whole social world of profitable investing. If you follow your favorite actresses’s web presence, why not a top investor? Mimicking trades and patterns add an incredible new level of possibility to the old art form. Moreover, when this succeeds, that will certainly signal unforeseeable changes in the entire system.

Making money social doesn’t necessarily mean the world needs a “Financial Facebook.” It means realizing how people use money to interact with one another. Start­ups need to see and harness the need to combine financial resources with the social, political, and emotional interactions people make everyday.

Keep users safe, so they don’t have to

Most tech ­users don’t follow the rules and use highly complicated passwords or change them regularly. Passwords get written on slips of paper, or shared with friends. People don’t quite know what to do with all the power associated with their online accounts. Not many of us respect or appreciate how important our passwords are. If start­ups want to get attention, they may consider appealing to the lazy side of all tech ­users in simplifying these unnecessary steps.

PixelPin does just that. Rather than lots of words and numbers and symbols no one wants to remember, it uses an image. By allowing users to select their own image and four points to act as keys, the simple but useful app can be seamlessly interwoven into daily life. Similarly, Logrr let’s users to have a single sign-­on to all enterprise cloud applications. This means no passwords, and conserving time by not signing into every single app one at a time. Even the most organized of person gets tired of passwords and codes. Everyone wants to feel secure online, without having a trail of twenty­digit passwords kept under lock­and­key.

Further inspiration: TSWG and their eyeSafe app.

International Globe-­Trotting and New Markets

It was much harder twenty years ago to pick up and move to a new country, or hop on a plane and weekend on a foreign shore. When traveling it can seem impossible to maneuver all the red tape of international money transfers. It’s expensive, exhausting and sometimes downright infuriating. When given banks are deemed “foreigner­ friendly” because their international transfer fees are less likely to enrage customers, it’s time for entrepreneurs to find a better way. FinTech start­ups are just the people to tackle all of these forgotten (and often exploited) markets. Money Mover has the beautiful motto, “Moving money shouldn’t be shrouded in mystery.” They recognize that traditional banks have overlooked these vital markets and face the problem with a more consumer ­oriented POV. They help customers maneuver that impossible red tape, and transfer money with ease. It’s no surprise that Money Mover is moving forward at a rapid pace and (hopefully!!) bringing us along with it.

Similar Start­ups: Stellar, Toast

Help people who suck at money

Not everyone wants a social investing network; many just want to make it to payday. Millenials, as already discussed, are giving a huge push to the FinTech revolution and they have very specific needs. Many aren’t able to save money, and living life paycheck-­to-­paycheck is far from easy. Apps like Qapital are trying to get practical information and tools in the hands of those who need it. Rather than being particularly high ­tech, the app relies on “If This Then That” logic.

It can tell a user exactly how much money it will save by not buying this coffee, or by walking the two kilometers to work. It’s a common sense app; there’s no cutting edge technology involved, yet it addresses a serious, daily problem with finesse and clarity. Furthermore, its audience is huge, and growing each day.

Apps for making life easier: Ringpay, Squirrel

Banking evolved

If FinTech is signaling the slow downfall of traditional financial services, what will take their place?

The Berlin startup Number 26 is a good example of twenty ­first century banking. The “European Simple” realizes that modern ­day finance woes need a progressive modern­-day remedy. Everything happens online, and users are given a traditional debit card to use (free of charge) at Mastercard-­friendly ATM’s and shops. Number 26 CEO, Valentin Stalf, had some great words on the future of his product and start­up:

“The broad vision is to build one bank for the European market. Because I think that is what the lives of young people look like. They don’t care about boundaries within Europe, they are living European lives. It makes no sense to have an English bank and a German bank anymore.”

Much of modern finance simply does not make sense. Traditional banks have failed to see the untapped needs of the modern consumer, and that’s where start­ups come in. By showing the world what they’ve been missing, consumers just can’t say no to innovative new financial services.

(image cred: Michael Davis-Burchat)

Accelerators and Incubators are becoming strangely mainstream in tech, and FinTech especially. Hooking up small names with funding and opportunity, accelerators seem like a great win/­win/­win situation for backers, creators, and consumers. Of course, like everything in business, there is always a dark side. When tech startups get in bed with big banks and corporations to succeed, who really wins? Does that relationship support progress, or undermine it?

Big brands and banks are notoriously unable to get with the times. Due in part to their sheer size, it is far from easy to implement innovative new ideas. Preoccupations with their “legacy” technology, thinking, and processes, often leave them unable to implement the great, new tech that has us drooling. What are big brands to do when they can’t beat start­ups? The answer:

Incubate and Accelerate

Accelerators and Incubators were created to lend office space, funding, and valuable mentoring to start­ups at varying levels of development. Those in charge get a small stake in the start­up, and the start­up team gets the chance to connect, develop, and succeed. Corporate incubators and accelerators take this to a new level: they want these start­ups to not just succeed, but to bring something good back to the parent company.

The Pros of working with corporate pro’s

There are weighty pros that accompany teaming up with big brands. Apart from the great knowledge, money and opportunity, they have perks that can only be given by a major company. They specialize in clearing international red tape, simultaneously easing the many headaches of a start­up, and giving them a leg­-up on competition. They may realize that your start­up is absolute gold, and buy, invest, or send customers your way.

Moreover, folks don’t trust random designers in an office, but they do trust international house­hold names. Corporate accelerators and incubators offer trust and credibility—traits that are beyond vital in the financial industry. In the end, a corporation ties itself to a start­up because they hope an invention will work within real company goals. For start­ups, this can be a god­-send. That corporation doesn’t just want you to finish a product, they want it to succeed.

The Cons, along with a dose of skepticism

There is a vital piece of information FinTech start­ups should know: banks need you. This has even been said by Rhydian Lewis, CEO and founder of the peer­-to-­peer lender RateSetter.

Even the most genuine of corporate accelerators carry baggage. As discussed earlier, large companies cannot simply change and innovate at will. It is the very nature of their business structure. Mentors and advisors impart not only their own specific corporate objectives, funnelling you into whatever direction may most benefit the head company, they will share the same style of business thinking. Rather than an array of business sizes, types, and styles, they will be strikingly similar. There’s no other word for this than indoctrination, no matter how accidental it may be. When you’re learning from one company, you aren’t going to see all of the options.

Many early start­ups might also feel invigorated just to be eyeballed by a major company. They may be willing to forego steps a later­ stage start­up would take. For example, being wary of tying an impartial start­up to a big name. What happens if your start­up parts ways with their accelerator company, or you simply continue innovating in different directions? Other corporates may be wary of taking on a company that is associated with a competitor’s name, processes and ideas.

Bigger is not better for innovation

Large companies inspire ideas of stable work and funding, but that is hardly the case. Rather, their fickleness stems from their position as slaves to the market. They make changes and decisions based on necessity.

Furthermore, choosing a corporate accelerator is almost harder than choosing an ordinary one. With big shiny corporate names and connections attached, it seems like a dream. It’s hard to say “no” to Wells Fargo, Disney, Samsung, or Sprint. It’s also unnecessarily easy for such corporations to set up and back accelerators and incubators. The amount of money and marketing invested doesn’t mean the given accelerator is any good. And these quickly­ created accelerators may close as quickly as they began.

Conflict of Interests

Startups, you have the power. Thanks to the grassroots phenomenon, people are falling head-­over-­heels with the start­up culture. But what happens when innovation doesn’t mean real profit?

Non-­corporate accelerators have much more in common with start­ups than their corporate counterparts. Both are looking for real, cutting-­edge, disruptive innovation that will make money. They aren’t tied down to a massive corporate brand or ­established needs that inherently stifle progress. Droves of start­ups running to corporate accelerators hurts these independent accelerators. Though working with early­ stage start­ups and fostering outside innovation isn’t a core value in big companies, they’re able to coax and rope creators thanks to their money and name.

Lastly, even when a company finds your tech useful, that doesn’t mean they’ll be using it. One participant in a Shell­backed accelerator found that ties to the parent company was not only useless, but hurtful. Matt Bell of Houston ­based GeoDynamics found that other companies were put off by Shell’s slow integration of Bell’s work. When the parent company doesn’t use your technology, potential buyers are left wondering why.

Image and Branding Problems

What do consumers think about start­ups and corporations partnering up? If you aren’t worrying about “selling out” by working with a big company, you may worry about public perceptions of your company. Start­ups hold an allure that is all their own. When Simple, a beloved “anti­-bank” banking system, was acquired by one of the world’s larger banks, the biggest fear was losing customers and engineers who loved Simple specifically because it wasn’t tied to big corporate agendas. The story of Simple is complex and merits an article all its own, but it reminds creators how important branding is. Describing their own corporate accelerator, Coca-Cola VP of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, David Butler, states “we need teen engagement in our brands or we’re done,” hence bringing in outside entrepreneurs and start­ups. Big companies can consume genuine and lovable brands in a heartbeat. This begs the very real question: if corporates are desperate to enlist hip start­ups, why hand over that power?

Summary

People of all backgrounds and intentions are founding tech accelerators. As a start­up, it’s vital to understand what these accelerators want from you. The goal of many FinTech start­ups is to be integrated into big corporate systems; they want to work with established companies, and corporate accelerators will let them do just that. However, that is not a blanket answer to the funding question. Plenty of start­ups will succeed under the watchful eye of their corporate accelerator. We mentioned Barclays in our list of top accelerators, because they’ve had great results and successes. Still, corporate accelerators and incubators should not be seen as elusive golden tickets.

Big companies need disruptive startups. Big banks need FinTech innovators. Without outside brains, many of these companies are done for. Don’t undervalue your start­ups and innovations.

Nothing is better than seeing a lowly start­up succeed. They push the envelop, think outside of the box, and inspire. The game, however, can be tough to play. For innovators and techies who don’t necessarily have experience or funding, breaking through can seem impossible. This is why accelerators and incubators can be vital to success. They teach creators what and who they need to know. They offer money, office space and, of course, the ubiquitous Demo Day

In major hubs like NYC and London, the list of FinTech accelerators and incubators is seemingly endless. Berlin, Tel Aviv, Singapore and Hong Kong and other major cities also boast their own multitude of hubs. We’ve compiled a list of some of the top incubators and accelerators around the world. If you’re a start­up looking for guidance, or businessmen looking for some new connections, here’s who you absolutely must know:

Fintech Innovation lab is based primarily in NYC, but also operating in London, and Hong Kong. Fintech Innovation is an established name, working in conjunction with the Partnership Fund for New York City and Accenture. They held their first lab in NYC in 2010 and haven’t stopped since.

Their 12­week program is meant to share insight on the financial sector as well as get start­ups in touch with would­be clients and industry executives. They combine their leadership program with the chance to refine and test products with partnering firms. The results have been generally positive, including an alumni start­up that would later be acquired for $175 million. Their connections to big banks and names certainly pays off for them and their start­ups.

Alumni: Inktank, BillGuard and Standard Treasury

Barclays. Teaming up with Techstars, a mentorship driven accelerator, Barclays is on its third round and currently accepting applications. The last program saw seven out of their ten companies signing with Barclays. Their contracts and terms vary, but some of their companies have seen real paid contracts worth up to £100,000. The exchange includes six percent equity for £12,500 seed money and office space.

The fact that Barclays has been operating with Techstars since 2013, producing steady results specifically in the FinTech sector is part of the real appeal. Not to mention, showcasing their current startups to an audience of 400 CEOs, CIOs and investors. They have also opened up a NYC chapter, that is already in full­swing, with ten bright eyed start­ups in tow.

Alumni: Everledger, Post­Quantum, Aire

Also based in London, Seedcamp is easily one of Europe’s top accelerator programs. Starting with their Onboarding program, they cover an array of topics to get you thoroughly prepared. With continual Founder Feedback, they meet weekly to discuss and work through problems as well as define goals. They also boast their monthly Academy to follow up. Meaning, even when the program is over, start­ups still have access to workshops and masterclasses. With a US trip and Berlin week, Seedcamp provides a thorough background for start­ups of all kinds. Their portfolio holds over 138 companies and they are backed by over international thirty venture capital firms.

Alumni: TRData, Elliptic, Revolut

Y Combinator has been around since 2005, and is not limited to FinTech. However, being a general tech incubator definitely works to their advantage. They boast countless success stories and are often termed the most important incubator in the field of technology. With names like Dropbox, Reddit and Airbnb on their list of success stories, it’s hard to doubt the incubator giant.

Despite not being fully rooted in the finance­sector, FinTech start­ups from Y Combinator have also flourished. However, with success rates like theirs they are also speculated to have extremely low acceptance rates—perhaps as low as 3­5%. No one ever said getting into top programs was easy.

Alumni: Twitch, Reddit, AirBnB, Dropbox, Weebly, Airbrite, you get the idea…

Another big name in the US is sixthirty, managed by Jim McKelvey, co­founder of Square. Giving start­ups up to $100,000 in funding, this program focuses on a flexible schedule with only two days of proper “class” time per week. Here, you can share exactly what you’ve been up to and schedule to speak to the proper mentor for feedback and planning. So how can they afford to shell out $100,000? They don’t invest in as many companies as other accelerators; rather, they put their money where their mouth is. They prefer working with more mature start­ups that are at the business development stage, and have a working product. They focus mostly on business development, introducing start­ups to connections and potential customers, aiming to create real traction.

Alumni: Gremln, Data Simply, Upside

Tel Aviv is home to numerous accelerators, including a prestigious program from Citi. Then there is Elevator, backed by the Israeli Leumi Bank. They seem heavily focused on honest feedback and seem to become very invested in the start­ups they work with. They can make pretty weighty investments in companies they feel will flourish under their guidance. Acting as full strategic, operational and financial partners, getting chosen by Elevator means a lot more than just courses and lessons.

Alumni: LynxGuard, Moburst, BLender

Perhaps not as colorful as Elevator, Visa Europe Collab announced plans earlier this year to spread to Israel. Planting hubs in London and Berlin, Visa is looking to turn out great new tech and has the money to back it up. They intend to take on a minimum of 20 start­ups, and mature those products into Visa­ready services.

There is one name that repeatedly pops up in Asia: Startupbootcamp FinTech, Singapore. With the chance to collaborate with over 200 mentors, partners and investors, Startupbootcamp offers plenty of exposure. 10 start­ups receive roughly $18,000 to get industry experience. Focused on challenging founders and teams, Startupbootcamp is all about education. From how to work with banks, to being a good leader, and understanding your customer, Startupbootcamp appeals to the whole body, mind and soul of start­ups. Its recent Demo Day boosted some 600 attendees making it easily one of the largest in Asia. Plus, they’re one of the most wide­reaching programs with partners in over 30 countries and programs around the world.

Alumni: Kashmi, SkolaFund, BankGuard

Hold on to your horses, bright­eyed start­ups…

While there is plenty to learn from the great minds and mentors in accelerators and incubators, past participants also warn of being too eager. These programs are sometimes compared to university. The mentoring and networking work great wonders, but teams must be prepared. Don’t just choose an incubator because they’re willing to give you money. A Visa-­run incubator will certainly not be the same as a small, tight­-knit program. Secondly, professors and mentors are not gods. Always hear what mentors are sharing, but don’t expect them to know everything or do the real work. Events and speakers are great for learning, but they aren’t going to get your start­up of the ground: you are.

New research from PlaceILive.com, the Yelp for Neighborhoods, has visualized where in London most businesses make it through their crucial first two years. Using open data, which they use to calculate their signature Life Quality Index, they ranked London’s boroughs according to the 2-year business survival rates.

Two year business survival rates in London. Source: Office of National Statistics

The best boroughs to start a new business are Sutton and Kingston Upon Thames, where as the City of London is the most risky area to start one. In the top two boroughs 79% of new businesses make it through their first two years where as the lowest score is a mere 64%. The full list of business survival rates can be found at the bottom.

PlaceILive conducted this research to show how its platform helps entrepreneurs, startups and commercial real estate in London. By providing a combination of government open data and user reviews the startup measures livability of cities, which is both a useful tool for residents as for up coming businesses when deciding where to settle.

When trying to find an explanation of why new businesses are more likely to survive their first few years, PlaceILive found the strongest correlation with the transport accessibility scores from Transport for London. Surpassing the more likely suspects as income, vandalism, crime, or unemployment.

Their research has shown a significant negative correlation between the 2-year business survival rates and transport accessibility scores. The less accessible transport, the more likely businesses were to survive their initial two years. As the numbers from the Office of National Statistics includes all sorts of businesses (ranging from tech startups, freelance photographers to clothing stores, supermarkets and take away restaurants) one of the possible implications of this research could be that consumers prefer to shop nearby whenever a far away competitor is too difficult to visit.

No matter if this implication holds up, it is valuable to see that businesses outside of the city center tend to be less risky than those in the city. Regardless of what the causation is for these business survival rates, it does help entrepreneurs calculate the financial risks they are taking and tells consumers to appreciate the smaller businesses in the city, as they might not be there for too long.

Two-year Business Survival Rates for London Boroughs:

Featured image credit: Death to the Stock Photo

At the end of the key FinTech talk at Heureka 2015, FinLeap Venture Partner Nasir Zubairi had just one question for the audience: Who can build better FinTech solutions – startups, banks, or a collaboration between the two?

Most hands went up in favor of startups or collaboration – and, as you might’ve guessed, not a single hand went up for banks. The representative of Deutsche Bank, Beate Hofmann, nodded her head as if to say, “fair enough.”

Hofmann had mentioned several times throughout the talk that she knows Deutsche Bank has a lot of work to do. She named user experience as the main draw for FinTech companies, but also countered with the fact that Deutsche Bank has a deep, collective knowledge about finance. “My question is always how we can bring both of these worlds and strengths together,” she said.

Perhaps illustrating her point about bank strengths, Number26 founder and CEO Valentin Stalf later admitted that his company does not have any “traditional” bankers, but he also mentioned that the consumer doesn’t care about backgrounds of particular banking systems. For that reason, Number26 is very much focused on the consumer’s needs and the value created. “[The consumer] has an account in the U.S. and he has an account here [in Germany], and he wants to pay for something, and we just have to figure out the easiest way to do that,” Stalf said.

Stalf also firmly believes bank branches are quickly becoming obsolete and aren’t worth the costs anymore, countering Zubairi’s interjection that bank branches still serve an important purpose for many people.

PayPal Regional Vice President and GM Arnulf Keese, the quietest of the bunch, made a notable statement about product focus, saying he’d rather be adaptive to other technologies to achieve one single mission rather than try to accomplish it all. “We don’t even try to be good with 10 things,” he said. “We try to be good at one thing.”

Arguably the most illuminating aspects of the talk were Deutsche Bank’s outward acceptance of FinTech advantages, and the clear disagreement between tech figures about the functionality of bank branches in 2015. It will be interesting to monitor how these perspectives change, if at all, by the end of the year.

“We are looking for the best marketing solutions to help consumers achieve their goals using our products and services. If you’re a startup, participate in the challenge.”  – reads the finance giant’s webpage dedicated to the challenge.

Ahead of the SXSW conference, Visa plans to launch the initiative with the purpose of harnessing the best of the startup community. As a part of the initiative, Visa is launching three challenges- First is the ‘Drive Digital Commerce’ which is aimed at lowering the number of people who initiate transactions but never complete them . Visa Checkout is a new product that makes it easier for consumers to pay online from the card they know and trust. The challenge includes raising awareness about the subject and drive trials.

Second is the ‘inspire Millenials’ challenge aimed at providing Millenials security, get home loans and take care of their finances. The last challenge- ‘reward members’ with which they hope to maximise benefits for their cardholders and win more loyalty.

The Initiative will be open for start-ups from 14th March. Finalists will be invited to present their pitches to Visa’s marketing and communications teams before up to four winners are picked, each receiving $50,000 and given 30 days to work with the card scheme to get a pilot up and running.

“The time is right for Visa to work with the “grown-up” startups of today. We’ve reached a new phase in how brands interact with the startup community, in which true partnerships generate measurable results. We’re directly connecting with the marketing and advertising startup communities to solve for meaningful business objectives,” said Shiv Singh, global head, digital and marketing transformation, Visa.

The challenge promises to break down barriers everywhere. They say “If you’ve got a breakthrough idea watch for your chance to submit and help us make it happen.”

(image credit: Heisenberg Media)

According to Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, almost three-quarters of US venture-backed firms fail to return on investor’s capital. This week’s disheartening announcement from Fab proved that even the most promising cash cow is not a safe bet. Luckily, researchers at MIT may have come up with a mathematical model which can assess the “quality” of a startup- and help us understand why some startups go up in flames.

The model is based on an empirical study which projects the growth potential of tech startups with “new precision — and could help local or regional policymakers assess their growth prospects,” according to the MIT News Office. It determines the “quality” of startups, where “quality” denotes the chances of either landing an IPO or getting acquired within the first six-years.

“A central question in evaluating the impact of policies toward business creation, startups, and innovation, is simply how to measure the kinds of entrepreneurs who are likely to build growth businesses,” explains Scott Stern, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the research lead.

The study summarized in Science, titled “Where is Silicon Valley?” explains how Stern and his colleague Jorge Guzman, a doctoral candidate at MIT Sloan, armed with an exhaustive list of new firms from California’s official business registry for the years 2001 to 2011, tracked a series of features that was common high-growth firms over the period from 2001 to 2006, for 70 percent of the firms.

With the results they tested their model with the outcomes of the other 30 percent of new firms in the same period. They also tested their model against new firms registered in the years 2007 to 2011.

“It is very difficult to manage the entrepreneurial ecosystem if we cannot measure the entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Stern said. “While our work is a first step, we believe that policymakers and practitioners and researchers would benefit from being able to assess … the combined entrepreneurial quantity and quality in a given region. What we want is to really create new real-time economic statistics.”

Some interesting findings from their research include:

• Companies without the name of the founder in the title had 70 percent more chances of either landing an IPO or getting acquired within the first six-years.
• Companies with shorter names had 50 percent more chances of success than the ones with longer names.
• Equally interesting is the fact that those companies with “high tech” names have 92% better chance of either landing an IPO or getting acquired.

The study also provides insight regarding geographies and locations.

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The rise of big data has ushered in a whole host of innovative startups, who all hope their idea will be the one to transform the data landscape forever. However, the startup landscape is a minefield, where even the most brilliant ideas can fall by the wayside without proper implementation and business acumen.

This is where Thomas Thurston comes in. Veteran data scientist, recent venture capitalist and Chief Executive at Growth Science, Thurston believes he has developed a predictive algorithm which can mitigate some of the risk involved with starting and investing in a new business.

“Most businesses fail, and that’s not good for people,” he notes. “People lose their jobs, the economy suffers.”

According to Wired, Thurston has been working on his system- dubbed business model simulation- for the last nine years. The model evaluates business plans statistically rather than intuitively.

Claiming to have predicted the success of Snapchat, Uber, and Airbnb, the model can apparently predict which companies will still be in business after 5 years with 66% accuracy. The model has a higher level of accuracy at predicting which startups will fail to make it to the 5-year mark, managing to correctly predict failure 88% of the time.

Thurston’s dealings with data science to guide growth investments and innovation at Intel Capital helped him initially devise the model in 2006. Now, his firm Growth Science assists enterprises with predictions towards favourable investments. He himself is a partner at the venture found Ironstone Group.

He agrees that the model may not be perfect, but believes that predictive statistical models are paving the way for a better business environment in the future. Growth Science’s top predictions include Arcimoto, Color Genomics and Indow Windows.

(Image credit: Growth Science)

So you’ve got your Next Great Idea for a data science startup that’s going to change the world. There’s a diverse number of paths you could take- incubators, accelerators, hiring a cheap office space- but one option we hear less about is coworking. We recently spoke to William van den Broek, one of the Co-Founders of the Mutinerie coworking spaces in Paris, about why he sees coworking as “the future of work”.

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(Image credit: Mutinerie)

Today marks the start of the Startupbootcamp Internet of Things & Data accelerator program that, over a period of six months, will see ten select entrepreneurs and their startups develop their offerings to rewarding outcomes.

Focusing on Internet of Things & Smart Data, the global startup accelerator provides these ten startups with support, mentorship, and connections. Managing Partner and Co-Founder of the programme Ángel García described the selected squads as showing “a high level of motivation, dedication, willingness to work hard and the ability to adapt themselves to change and innovation.”

The program was initiated in August 2014, receiving 250 applications, and after twelve Pitch Days around the world and over 150 pitches in total, 10 finalists were announced in December. These finalists have devised disruptive solutions with connected devices and the immense associated data these machines create, explains Startupbootcamp.

Here are the 10 startups chosen, and what they had to say about their products:

• Balázs Weibel, CEO of Cubilog (Hungary): “We save the user time and money by connecting all the smart, semi-smart and dumb/wired devices to one hub and one app. The user can get rid of any other hubs and apps and still control all the devices from one dashboard.”
• Nacho Lafuente, CEO of Datumize (Spain): “We have created a software solution for corporate clients that captures and stores large amounts of data with more efficient energy savings.”
• Frank Hoonakker, President of eNovalys (France): “We offer a new way to manage, share and exploit the unpublished scientific data which is 97% of the scientific production! With our technologies, we will change the paradigm of making science and accelerate the process of creating drugs.”
• Richard Lagrand, co-founder of Muzze (Netherlands): “We help curators and museums to unlock their untold stories trough an app that lets you create an audio tour in three simple steps.”
• Sergio Mottola, CEO of Nuwe (United Kingdom): “Our committed aim is to develop powerful digital health services and, as a result, contribute to the overall well being of society.”
• Blai Carandell Saladich, CEO of Oasys (Spain): “We have the aim to become a central place for the home, a technology that unites families in a unit and with life’s most important resource: water.”
• Morten Poulsen, CEO of Plytix (Denmark): “We provide a more transparent product based web analytics platform with a tool that enables brands to track the sales data of their products across retailers’ websites.”
• Markus Kopf, co-founder of Teraki (Germany): “Teraki wants to be for the IoT what MP3 is for the music industry: our solution employs newest techniques to reduce the amount of data generated by sensors by up to a factor 10 without compromising its quality.”
• Iván Caballero, CEO of The Social Coin (Barcelona): “The Social Coin’s mission is to improve people’s life through fostering and giving visibility to Acts of Kindness. With more success in business, there is more social impact”.
• Marc Fàbregas, CEO of Zolertia (Spain): “We will enable everyone in the world to immerse and create all kind of awesome IoT applications, with an easy and ready-to-use hardware that will let people connect with their things in the same simple and powerful way people are connecting today through Internet.”

2015 looks to be an exciting year for these ten finalists.

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(Image credit: Startupbootcamp)

Startupbootcamp is a global network of industry focused startup accelerators. They take startups global by giving them direct access to an international network of the most relevant partners, investors and mentors in their sector.

In addition to their Internet of Things and Data chapter in Barcelona, Startupbootcamp are also in the process of building their Smart Cities & Living chapter in Amsterdam. Focused on connected devices and automation, they are aiming to drive data centric solutions to problems such as energy management, waste management, urban planning and smart health solutions.

We spoke to Selection & Alumni Manager Mark Wesselink to learn a little bit more about the program:

Tell us a little about yourself and why you got involved in Startupbootcamp.

I have started 12 companies myself, failed 4 times, sold 2 and one company even did an IPO. The first 3 years in a startup is always the most difficult, and from an angel investor perspective also the most time consuming.

Startupbootcamp provides a way to combine knowledge, experience and network into a 3 month accelerator program, 3 month funding program and an 18 month alumni program. We will be actively involved for a minimum of 24 months and sometimes even longer. In that way we will increase the chance of survival. Our survival rate in Amsterdam is currently 95%.

What are the main benefits of accelerator programmes such as Startupbootcamp vs. going it alone as a startup?

I started a company in 2006 based on a hunch, we validated a lot of the model and it took us 16 months to change the model from personalised baby food to personalised offer for green energy. In an accelerator it would have only taken us a month.

Could you tell us about some of the startups already on your roster in Amsterdam, and the challenges they are aiming to tackle?

We have accelerated 50 companies in Amsterdam and a total of 200 companies with all the programs combined. The main challenge for everybody is that they want to scale too fast without having a good product/market fit and another challenge is to form a solid team with a good caretaker in the middle who can connect all the dots and get things done.

How would you say the scene for data science/smart living focused startups here in Europe compares the US?

In the US there is a culture that failure is not a problem, so people are willing to fail. The only way to learn how to build a startup is by failing fast and learning from it.

We see in Europe a clear shift that people are becoming willing to fail and learn. Don’t forget that the EU market is still the biggest market in the world.

Why did Startupbootcamp choose Amsterdam as the home for this accelerator?

We think that technology can help solving the current problems of cities. More people in cities means more pollution, more cars, more energy consumption etc. Amsterdam is one of the most connected cities in the world, has a Smart Grid, a Living Lab for Smart Homes, and more bikes than people. It is one of the best cities in the world to live in.

The Dutch people are open to innovation and eager to test. A lot of big companies in the world are using the Netherlands as a market to validate and test their product.

Do you see any trends emerging with the startups innovating in this space? Any common pain points they are addressing?

We see more collaborative sharing platforms, IoT clouds, and P2P marketplaces that are connecting people offline. We have connected billions of people online but now local connection seem to be growing in importance. For example, P2P home-care, P2P Lending, P2P collaborative usage of consumer goods and tools.

Are there any challenges you would personally like to see a startup tackle in Smart Cities & Living?

The biggest challenge is to reduce transportation in a city – distribution wise, but also people wise. If we can connect both, we will reduce transport in a city by 50%. We have already accelerated a company which helps to reduce the search for free parking spaces in a city by connecting car owners with free the parking spaces of hotels, companies and private individuals. You can also imagine people giving other people a lift on a scooter, bike sharing, P2P car rentals at airports or in neighbourhoods. We also see platforms where anybody can pick up an item in the city and deliver it to somebody else, because they have to be there anyway. We also believe in local produce and deliver it to local restaurants and consumers.

People are busy, but a lot of people need help on a daily basis. Helping people is the most rewarding thing you can do. Why not combine the two: Let people relieve stress by helping others in the neighbourhood. Technology can help with profiling and matching those people.

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Marc is the Selection & Alumni Manager at Startupbootcamp Smart City & Living. He is a serial Entrepreneur, having started 12 companies in FMCG, Home Electronics, Healthcare, E-Commerce, HR and Finance.

(Image credit: Startupbootcamp)

Crowdfunded data enrichment platform CrowdFlower, scooped up $12.5 million in Series C financing earlier this week. The round was led by Canvas Venture Fund and saw participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures, bringing the total amount raised by the company to $28 million.

Rebecca Lynn, the General Partner of Canvas explains their investment, “Having worked at P&G where every product and brand strategy is based on exhaustive analysis of data, I naturally gravitated to CrowdFlower’s vision to help companies realize the real potential of Big Data.”

“CrowdFlower’s platform takes the pain out of managing an on-demand workforce to deliver accurate and fast results so that organizations can base their important business decisions on data they can trust,” she added.

Founded in 2009, CrowdFlower essentially assists data scientists through its data enrichment platform. CrowdFlower’s five million on-demand contributors assist by helping enterprises in maintenance, organisation and cleaning up of the data, delivering up to “seven years of work in a single day”.

Their clientele includes the likes of eBay, Edelman, EventBrite, The Home Depot, VMWare and Venuelabs, to name a few, which utilize CrowdFlower to address a spectrum of projects like search relevance tuning, data categorization, image annotation, content moderation, sentiment analysis, metadata creation and real-time transcription.

The financing will help with the fierce growth the company is faced with. A separate statement on the same day CrowdFlower revealed its intention to free data scientists from cleaning incomplete, messy data. More information can be found here.

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(Image Credit: Nick Ares)

Adatao, a startup in the big data analytics space, yesterday announced it has raised $13 million in series A funding led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Although the company has been developing its product for a few years, the new funding will go towards expanding the team, developing their product further, and acquiring new customers.

Adatao has two product offerings for customers, one aimed at “geeks”, as Techcrunch describe, and the other at “people who just want information.” The former – dubbed pAanalytics – is built on Apache Spark and sifts through “data by representing it as one large, simple table, hiding the data complexities, enabling data scientists and engineers to work with Big Data analytics in a very simple, powerful way.”

pAnalytics provides an API that allows data scientists and engineers to build applications on top of the data to make it accessible to business users. Data can be pulled in from Cassandra, analyzed in Spark, and the results saved back to S3 – all using one familiar API

The second product offering, pInsights, allows business analysts to interact with big data in an interactive format. As the company describe, “Similar to aFacebook or Google Search engine, predictive SmartQuery was built into a Google Doc type document that allows users to instantly and collaboratively produce embedded analytics to assist with decision making.”

Peter Levine, general partner at Andreessen and now board member of Adatao, described how the aforementioned product offerings could be used in practice,

“For example, a business user in the airline industry can ask (in natural language) Adatao’s system to predict future airline delay ratios by quickly exploring 20 years of arrival/departure data (124 million rows of data) to break down past delays by week, month, and cause. In the same way Google Docs allows teams all over the world collaborate, Adatao allows data scientists and business users to collaborate on massive datasets, see the same views and together produce a visual model in just three seconds.”

Adatao was founded in 2012 and is headed by former engineering director at Google Christopher T. Nguyen.

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Earlier this month, we reported on IBM’s Watson Mobile Developer Challenger Challenge, where IBM held an elite competition to give top developers access to their supercomputer Watson. Now, the Watson team are what VentureBeat is calling a “hiring binge”, trying to source to top minds in New York’s startups to work with their cutting-edge technology.

One of the men tasked with introducing Watson to New York’s most innovative start-ups is Ted Angelus of Bluewater Labs. “No startup is too small to work with Watson, and there’s still many people who don’t know who the hell Watson is,” Angelus remarked.

The Watson Group also recently announced a move to new offices in St. Marks Place; once established, it will house over 2,000 employees tasked with developing the Watson brand. The aim of the huge hiring round is open Watson’s technology to innovators, who will hopefully find new uses for the technology across industries- commerce, AI development- and maybe even curing cancer. “Researchers can take an individual cancer patient’s DNA, put it into Watson, and Watson, using different databases, will tell you what kind of treatment is recommended,” Angelus said.

Over 100 people turned up last week to their informal Watson workshop, and they’re intending to host weekly workshops to keep pace with demand. The move has been branded by some as IBM’s attempts to shake off their reputation as an archaic big hardware provider, something Senior Adviser Michael DiTanna seems well aware of- “It’s not your grandfather’s IBM,” he remarked.

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Paul Forrest has some twenty-five years experience of helping businesses to solve complex business problems, deliver their transformation goals and to achieve tangible strategic outcomes. Hands on and deep thinking, he has worked with many FTSE 100 clients, Global 500 businesses and major Government entities around the world including Ford Motor Company, VAG Group, BAE Systems, GSK, AkzoNobel, RBS, HBOS, Diageo, Bacardi, Wal-Mart, British Airways, Virgin Galactic, Etisalat, British Telecom, Vodafone and Allen & Overy. Paul also sits on the board of a number of agile, disruptive and challenger businesses whilst supporting value creation programmes for Private Equity backed businesses. He joined the board of MBN Solutions to help establish the platform for growth and focuses on the development of the senior team, management practices and MBN’s core focus around Insight and Analytics.

See all of Paul’s posts here.

The analytics startups market was a hive of activity last week. As well as more established companies making exciting announcements, such as IBM’s new software-defined storage technology and SAS’ expansion of their Hadoop in-memory analytics range, it was a big week for the startups too.

Monday saw Splice Machine’s Hadoop database launch into public beta. Talking about the unqiue features of their software, Splice Machine CEO and co-founder Monte Zweben said: “It’s radically different to anything else that’s out there because it’s the first true ANSI SQL transactional database on the Hadoop stack. It can power concurrent applications. People can read and write from the database at the same time.” Splice Machine also claim the price-performance of their software is ten times better than that of Oracle RAC Implementations.

On Wednesday, Platfora, another company working with the Hadoop stack, announced updates to their software which would allow for increased data mobility. In this update, data in Platfora “lenses” can be made available for statistical analysis in R, or for integration into recommendation engines. Ben Werther, founder and CEO of Platfora said new software would allow organisations to “interactively work with multi-structured data”, and would help them “create new opportunities and solve once unsolvable problems, often within days of installation”.

Wednesday also saw the announcement of Acxiom’s acquisition of startup LiveRamp. However, initial excitement around the acquistion quickly dissolved when Acxiom’s shares plummeted 21% on the day of the acquisition. Shares are down 42% overall this year- it will be interesting to see what strategy Acxiom come up with to try and turn this around.

As the market for big data analytics continues to expand, it’s good to see a diverse range of companies- from big names to startups- staking their claim to this incredibly profitable industry.

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We caught up with Sebastian Deletaille the CEO of Real Impact Analytics. Real Impact Analytics has developed a strong expertise in the emerging market telecom industry, providing solutions that, among other examples, support the management of distribution channels, local/targeted marketing campaigns, and network infrastructure.

Who are you and what are you doing at Real Impact Analytics?

My name is Sebastian Deletaille and I’m the CEO of Real Impact Analytics. I’m here at Cebit because we were nominated in the fifty finalists of the Code_N contest. It’s a contest that basically brings together a whole series of start-ups active in big data.

What does your company do?

So, Real Impact Analytics is a company that specializes in telecom big data, so sixty percent of our revenue is really coming directly from mobile network operators. For them what do all of the data technology and services to answer their key business questions — from subscriber acquisitions to valued development to trim prevention. All sorts of operational questions like how to improve my marketing, my cells, my network coverage, and so on.

What is your business model?

So, we have a hybrid business model. By that I mean that we have a technology component where we sell our proprietary software and scripts, and we also sell services in a sense that we don’t believe that to get impact of your data, technology is the sole solution. That’s what our competition is doing. We’re trying very much to say how can we work with the technology to integrate it into your process, integrate it into your day by day, eventually to be with you in the beginning of the usage of the technology to make sure there’s real and long term change. That business model is hybrid, and naturally we’re very flexible, we’re a start-up, so when a client says, “We don’t want to buy the technology side, we just want to get the service side,” we adapt our offering to whatever the client needs.

What makes you unique?

Whenever you ask a company why they’re different, they’re going to tell you that they have the best ROI in the world, that they have the best teams in the world, that they have the best client references in the world, so everyone ends up saying the same thing when you ask them why they’re different. We don’t like to go into that game. We only tell telecom operators, “Give us your data, and you’ll see the results, and give the data to the others and ask them to do it at the same time. We’re very happy to be benchmarked. I can assure you that what you’ll see is different.” So our way of being different is just to say, “Dare us. Experience us. Open your data. From there, you’ll be able to define.”

Any case studies that you would like to talk about?

We’ve been tackling all sorts of telecom problems, so for every typical business need we have ROIs. Some of the things that we’re maybe most proud of are the following examples. In Brazil, for example, we were working with Telefonica, and they have a subscriber base of nineteen million people, so that’s amongst the biggest possible operators you could find on Earth. We have a huge corporate department, and all of the corporate departments are prepaid, so they have absolutely no information on who’s who, who’s the decision maker. So whenever they would call the corporate departments to try and upsell something, they’d phone a random number, which wasn’t correct.

Consequently, they asked us to come in, and we created an algorithm to actually predict whether someone was a decision maker or not, if he was a boss, and our algorithm worked extraordinarily well. They had a KPI on am I talking to the right person, it moved from ten percent to ninety percent, and because they were talking to the right people, their sales went up by thirty percent on all of their outbound corporate campaigns.

So the number was so high that the CMO of Telefonica, Brazil actually asked the IT department to check the data because he thought it was a data quality issue, and when he saw the data was actually right and that it was linked to our initiative, he actually said, “We want you to do all of our campaigning for the entire B2C customer base.” And so that’s one of the projects where we’re very, very proud, because we showed kind of rocket science results on a very specific business question, and then they said, “Okay, you’re really good at what you do, now we’re going to ask you to do it across all of our projects.”

Are you looking for any funding or special talent to hire?

Talent’s always a priority. I mean, that’s the only priority, frankly. For the moment, we’re in a stage of the start-up where we’re doubling in size every year, so I told you that we were thirty-five today, we’re probably going to end the year with around sixty people, so clearly attracting “hell yeah” people, as we call them, is the priority. In terms of funding, we’re currently self-funded. We’re managing to generate enough revenue to fund our growth. We’re not looking for any external funding for the moment, but maybe that will change. We’ll see later.

You’ve talked about Africa and Brazil. Are there any other markets that you’re focusing on?

So, we’re trying to keep as much of our focus on emerging markets as possible because that’s where we have really great expertise on what the telecom needs are, on what the realities of the field are, and the competition is much less there in those geographies than they are in, like, Europe or the US. Clearly, for the moment, the objective is to continue with our vision of being the reference for telecom big data. Working for five of the top ten telecoms is already a great achievement, but we want to get into at least ten of the top twenty. For that, it’s a question of moving quickly towards Asia, our next priority telecoms will be Telenor and Singtel. In terms of priorities, it’s always about delivering what your clients have ordered. This year we’re nearly tripling our revenue and by the end of this year we’ll see how we’re able to cope with high growth.

Any last words?

It’s really great to be here at Cebit, surrounded by people for whom big data is in their DNA. One of the reasons why we’re here at Cebit today is to present an innovation where we show how we can use telecom data for other applications than just the telecom needs, and so what we’re presenting today at Cebit is a concept called Data for Good. We’re working with the Gates foundation, with the World Bank, on showing them how we can use telecom data to basically improve poverty alleviation actions. What we showed them is that in country where there’s generally no data at all, we can learn from the telecom data how people are socially excluded, how they are financially excluded. These are two very big drivers that explain why people are stuck in poverty, and so this is an innovation we’re presenting. If I need to conclude on one last word is I hope that as we test our research across thirty countries this year, if it is working, that we’ll get the funding and scale it up to make a public good.

We caught up with Sebastian Deletaille the CEO of Real Impact Analytics. Real Impact Analytics has developed a strong expertise in the emerging market telecom industry, providing solutions that, among other examples, support the management of distribution channels, local/targeted marketing campaigns, and network infrastructure.

Image Credit : Creativity103 (Telecom Tower)