I’ve been laser-focused on machine intelligence in the past few years. I’ve talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs, researchers and investors about helping machines make us smarter.
In the months since I shared my landscape of machine intelligence companies, folks keep asking me what I think of them — as if they’re all doing more or less the same thing. (I’m guessing this is how people talked about “dot coms” in 1997.)
On average, people seem most concerned about how to interact with these technologies once they are out in the wild. This post will focus on how these companies go to market, not on the methods they use.
In an attempt to explain the differences between how these companies go to market, I found myself using (admittedly colorful) nicknames. It ended up being useful, so I took a moment to spell them out in more detail so, in case you run into one or need a handy way to describe yours, you have the vernacular.
The categories aren’t airtight — this is a complex space — but this framework helps our fund (which invests in companies that make work better) be more thoughtful about how we think about and interact with machine intelligence companies.
“Panopticons” Collect A Broad Dataset
Machine intelligence starts with the data computers analyze, so the companies I call “panopticons” are assembling enormous, important new datasets. Defensible businesses tend to be global in nature. “Global” is very literal in the case of a company like Planet Labs, which has satellites physically orbiting the earth. Or it’s more metaphorical, in the case of a company like Premise, which is crowdsourcing data from many countries.
With many of these new datasets we can automatically get answers to questions we have struggled to answer before. There are massive barriers to entry because it’s difficult to amass a global dataset of significance.
However, it’s important to ask whether there is a “good enough” dataset that might provide a cheaper alternative, since data license businesses are at risk of being commoditized. Companies approaching this space should feel confident that either (1) no one else can or will collect a “good enough” alternative, or (2) they can successfully capture the intelligence layer on top of their own dataset and own the end user.
Examples include Planet Labs, Premise and Diffbot.
by Shivon Zilis, TechCrunch | Read more:
Image: Razum Shutterstock
In the months since I shared my landscape of machine intelligence companies, folks keep asking me what I think of them — as if they’re all doing more or less the same thing. (I’m guessing this is how people talked about “dot coms” in 1997.)On average, people seem most concerned about how to interact with these technologies once they are out in the wild. This post will focus on how these companies go to market, not on the methods they use.
In an attempt to explain the differences between how these companies go to market, I found myself using (admittedly colorful) nicknames. It ended up being useful, so I took a moment to spell them out in more detail so, in case you run into one or need a handy way to describe yours, you have the vernacular.
The categories aren’t airtight — this is a complex space — but this framework helps our fund (which invests in companies that make work better) be more thoughtful about how we think about and interact with machine intelligence companies.
“Panopticons” Collect A Broad Dataset
Machine intelligence starts with the data computers analyze, so the companies I call “panopticons” are assembling enormous, important new datasets. Defensible businesses tend to be global in nature. “Global” is very literal in the case of a company like Planet Labs, which has satellites physically orbiting the earth. Or it’s more metaphorical, in the case of a company like Premise, which is crowdsourcing data from many countries.
With many of these new datasets we can automatically get answers to questions we have struggled to answer before. There are massive barriers to entry because it’s difficult to amass a global dataset of significance.
However, it’s important to ask whether there is a “good enough” dataset that might provide a cheaper alternative, since data license businesses are at risk of being commoditized. Companies approaching this space should feel confident that either (1) no one else can or will collect a “good enough” alternative, or (2) they can successfully capture the intelligence layer on top of their own dataset and own the end user.
Examples include Planet Labs, Premise and Diffbot.
“Lasers” Collect A Focused Dataset
The companies I like to call “lasers” are also building new datasets, but in niches, to solve industry-specific problems with laser-like focus. Successful companies in this space provide more than just the dataset — they also must own the algorithms and user interface. They focus on narrower initial uses and must provide more value than just data to win customers.
The products immediately help users answer specific questions like, “how much should I water my crops?” or “which applicants are eligible for loans?” This category may spawn many, many companies — a hundred or more — because companies in it can produce business value right away.
With these technologies, many industries will be able to make decisions in a data-driven way for the first time. The power for good here is enormous: We’ve seen these technologies help us feed the world more efficiently, improve medical diagnostics, aid in conservation projects and provide credit to those in the world that didn’t have access to it before.
But to succeed, these companies need to find a single “killer” (meant in the benevolent way) use case to solve, and solve that problem in a way that makes the user’s life simpler, not more complex.
Examples include Tule Technologies, Enlitic, InVenture, Conservation Metrics, Red Bird, Mavrx and Watson Health.
The companies I like to call “lasers” are also building new datasets, but in niches, to solve industry-specific problems with laser-like focus. Successful companies in this space provide more than just the dataset — they also must own the algorithms and user interface. They focus on narrower initial uses and must provide more value than just data to win customers.
The products immediately help users answer specific questions like, “how much should I water my crops?” or “which applicants are eligible for loans?” This category may spawn many, many companies — a hundred or more — because companies in it can produce business value right away.
With these technologies, many industries will be able to make decisions in a data-driven way for the first time. The power for good here is enormous: We’ve seen these technologies help us feed the world more efficiently, improve medical diagnostics, aid in conservation projects and provide credit to those in the world that didn’t have access to it before.
But to succeed, these companies need to find a single “killer” (meant in the benevolent way) use case to solve, and solve that problem in a way that makes the user’s life simpler, not more complex.
Examples include Tule Technologies, Enlitic, InVenture, Conservation Metrics, Red Bird, Mavrx and Watson Health.
by Shivon Zilis, TechCrunch | Read more:
Image: Razum Shutterstock
