There is an “ai” driven chatbot for everything and anything. It is going to be really difficult for startups in the space to differentiate. Most of them are still trying to do everything for everyone. The more interesting plays are solving for specific use cases.
Payment
There are lots of very different takes on the future of payments in physical spaces. From facial recognition to direct debit to using sound as a secure alternative for NFC. There are a lot of interesting plays in payments. It is a tough road to adoption for startups, however, once they are in they could become really big companies. 0 to 1 is tough but it just takes one large early adopter.
Consumer Insights/Marketing
There are a lot of early companies focusing on more targeted marketing in-store. From smart cameras that recognize general demographics to facial recognition, companies are working on ways to recognize customers and then serve them specific ads as they pass windows or walk down aisles. There are some companies doing interesting things here and it is worth keeping an eye on this space. One day Minority Report will prove prophetic.
Startups are starting to think about how to compete with Nielsen to provide a more accurate and efficient consumer insights option for brands and retailers. Several of them are taking it a step further and trying to provide a sales channel for their providers. There is a divide in this space between companies that want to capture data at a POS level and those that are building digital communities. If a company can get buy in for POS integration with a big retailer they will be a giant company, obviously this is a huge barrier. On the flip side there are drawbacks to doing this digitally but it is easier to break into the space. I like the companies that are trying to come up with hacks to get around POS systems (and no, taking a picture of a receipt is probably not the answer). This is a very interesting space if someone can figure it out.
Logistics
Lots of innovators are working on last mile delivery and return management/prevention. Last mile is incredibly fragmented and regional, to the point that there are seemingly identical companies in almost every major city. As you would expect, a lot of these plays are leveraging the power of the crowd. On the returns front most companies fall into two buckets. The first is smart/automated prevention. Second is the optimization of the process. Returns is a really interesting space and the market is ready for it. Someone/multiple companies will build a big company in the returns area.
Image Recognition
Image recognition is hot! There are lots of companies playing in the space and they are taking a variety of implementation approaches. I believe there is room for several big winners here. The question is who can return immediate & accurate results based on mediocre pictures taken on a camera. Use cases of image recognition span from search to consumer insights.
AR/VR
In general the AR/VR space still feels like it is 3-5 years away from mass consumer adoption. One major issue is the cost of digitizing the physical world to make it AR/VR ready. A company that figures this out will be big. Today, most players in the space are trying to provide brands and retailers the ability to provide unique experiences at special events or on location, this feels like the most reasonable short-term approach. Direct to consumer VR/AR still feels far away but if you back the right team it could pay off.
Other
There are still new “stuff in a box” subscription models popping up. Some are interesting but it is a tough market. In general direct to consumer is still very interesting as a path to early validation for a lot of these companies
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