Mobile Trends in the Valley(Hot Investment Areas)

Mar 31, 2016

Raj Singhraj@rajansingh.com

@mobileraj

@mobileraj

Big data is transforming every (mobile) experience. Data Scientist is the new iOS Developer.

Mobile Lifecycle

Facebook, with look-alike campaigns, enable publishers to target ads against users similar to their users whom perform the best (in terms of engagement and retention)

Customer Acquisition

AppSee enables heat maps so you can better understand what a user is doing on a screen vs just a “drop-off” event

User Experience

Example Verticals

Tact and Clari look at historical CRM workflows to assist you in the sales process to close a deal.

Sales

Wealthfront and Betterment use data to better manage your money in an automated way.

Finance

Descartes Labs analyzes satellite imagery to better predict crop yields

Maps

Pindrop uses big data to determine if the call is fraud by analyzing voice and more.

Customer Service

@mobileraj

AI is the new layer. Machine learning is creating new breakthroughs. Every mobile service is thinking about predictive & context.

Google Photos is one of the largest demonstrations of a CV neural network. Sentient has developed a CV cloud.

Computer Vision

AlphaGo beating a Go master was a significant milestone in that a brute-force tree crawl will not work in Go given the number of possible moves.

Machine Learning

Siri, Cortana and Alexa have brought voice & natural language interfaces into the mainstream. Conversational interfaces are next.

NLP

Google Now and Foursquare anticipate based on context. Wearables anticipate based on health data.

Predictive

@mobileraj

Messaging as a platform may potentially be as disruptive as the App Store itself creating new billion dollar opportunities.

Messaging has overtaken social networks themselves in reach and engagement.

Heavyweights

WeChat, Line and others have shown that messaging can be used to drive primary workflows such as commerce and customer service.

Platform

The next gold rush as brands build bots for messaging apps.

App Store

An ecosystem of bot enablers have cropped-up over the past year. Some develop 100% machine conversation, others human/machine hybrid. Some focus on industry verticals, others are industry agnostic and focus on specific platforms. Some are speech only and others messaging only.

Bot Enablers

@mobileraj

VR is the current Silicon Valley rage

25+ VR headsets have launched over the past year, some funded over Kickstarter, many venture-backed. Every major platform company has a VR initiative.

Headsets

At GDC, many smaller game publishers are focusing on VR. Large publishers such as EA, Activision, Blizzard are taking a wait and see approach.

Gaming

Floored provides VR modeling of real estate. Next Galaxy provides instructional VR content for doctors to practice. Esi provides virtual prototyping to automakers like Ford.

Enterprise

Major content producers like Fox have announced new VR groups. Startups have created new tools for production. Pornhub and others have launched VR/360 video channels.

Content / Production

@mobileraj

Substantial investment continues into vertical drone applications

Skycatch is used for mapping terrain for construction.

Area17, spun out of SRI, enables indoor mapping via a drone

Honeycomb allows farmers to survey land.

Skycart like Amazon and others have developed drones for product delivery.

Perceptiv assists with film-making

Lily makes a drone for taking selfies

Vires Aeronautics has kits to convert planes into self-flying planes (similar to Cruise Automation acq’d by GM)

3D Robotics makes drones/software for the enterprise (eg land surveying, farming)

@mobileraj

Privacy is a recent hot topic

vs

The FBI recently asked Apple to help them unlock a criminal’s phone. Case was going to court although it seems FBI has determined a work-around.

Rumor has it that Apple is improving encryption with the next iPhone to make devices that are impenetrable.

Apple’s approach has been to generally keep data and compute on-device. Google, Facebook and others keep user data in the cloud.

Fundamentally different approaches and pros/cons. The cloud enables learning and deeper assistant experiences at the trade-off of privacy.

IOT, self-driving cars and wearablesare collecting substantially more data about one selves. Who becomes the gatekeepers?

@mobileraj

Unicorn valuation markdowns. Increased focus on SAAS metrics and getting to profitability.

@mobileraj

On-demand has created new economies. It is the biggest impact on productivity since the personal computer.

API Economy Access Points Context Gig Economy

@mobileraj

Some investment areas have slowed to a trickle.

Consumer Mobile Apps

Appendix