Just add A.I.
Next Wave of Startups Looks Awesome
The first time I talked to Amy, I wondered “how in the world does this guy afford a personal assistant.” It wasn’t until a few days later when I asked that my friend broke the news that Amy isn’t human. I should have known since I’ve been known to get caught talking to Alexa for hours on the occasional tipsy weekend evening. Don’t laugh, you could have been talking to Sam today as she answered your technical support questions. You looked surprised. Don’t believe me? (That’s what Project Oxford told me. Go ahead, ask him how you look today...)
Project Oxford also told me you’re looking a bit burnt out. Time to text Claire — she can help you book your next flight while cross checking your company’s travel policy. Now you can use the extra time to read up on your stocks in the Associated Press earnings reports — Quill does a heck of a job with research and writing these days. So good AP predicts that all of their reports will be written by Quill in the future. Is your Tesla stock giving you heartburn? Don’t worry Ensa is about to provide a personalized wellness recommendation based on your medical records, health, and exercise. If you can’t find a cure, then I’d call up Atomwise to speed up it’s deep learning drug discovery platform. They just had a huge announcement for Ebola earlier this year:
The first evidence has been found that two drugs predicted by Atomwise’s artificial intelligence technology may significantly reduce Ebola infectivity.
“Atomwise’s data-driven approach and technology could help address the health crises of our time and improve the lives of millions,” added Jerry Yang, Founding Partner of AME Ventures. “Their vision for a healthier world is inspiring. ” Because Atomwise can explore chemical space so quickly and affordably, it is well-suited to help fight difficult or neglected diseases which might otherwise be economically infeasible to address.
Artificial intelligence for drug discovery. That is damn cool. (Hey, Atomwise… are you hiring?) Your site is beautiful, by the way. I wonder if Grid automatically assembled it for you. But, no one may be more powerful than Watson. Does he really need an introduction? SocialBro told me he has a very insightful personality. Now all of your Twitter advertising can be personalized to your target persona’s personalities.
Stressed about holiday shopping? No worries, Watson Trend can help you with that. Don’t ask M yet, Zuck is still refining their service with humans.
All of this is a lot to take in. If you feel like you’re drowning with all this new data, Arria can help you write a report in seconds with insight and actionable analytics for any industry. There’s gonna be a lot of A.I. as a Service offerings to choose from. Orbit will be for publishers. After all, why would you spend the time creating topic pages for SEO when it can be done for you. Why stop there… bring your webpage to life and create an army of Chatbots so your audience can start conversations with topic experts that live on your page. Don’t worry, your will have automated support backup from DigitalGenius with a humanlike communication channel. And, if you actually need to get on the phone to speak to your user, then Cogito will coach you in real time on how to better communicate and read emotional cues on the phone.
The future wave of startups is here. And, it’s bound to continue — it’ll become as easy as to inject artificial intelligence into your apps as it is to spin up a server in the cloud. If you’re not speaking to AI already, it’ll be very likely in the coming future:
The app economy is in full swing, projected to grow to $143 billion in 2016* with applications catering to every conceivable interest and industry. At the same time, IDC predicts that by 2018, half of all consumers will interact with services based on cognitive computing on a regular basis.
Will artificial intelligence be equivalent the industrial revolution for the internet? Factories and infrastructure provided humans with new levels of output and productivity. The same could happen with how we use software. The next wave of startups is incredibly exciting. We’re starting to see it.
Instead of “Uber for ____”… just add A.I. to your startup idea.
If you enjoyed this post on startups, then you’ll also enjoy “Customer Experience & Dopamine — Why Customer Experience is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage.” Or, follow me on Medium where I share learnings from being at an early employee at early stage startups in Boston. So far, Acquia, Influitive, and Outlearn.
