ReadyTalk at Disrupt NY — Day 1 Recap
This week, tech blog TechCrunch is hosting its annual Disrupt NY conference at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal and ReadyTalk thought it would be a good idea to send me. If it was because they figured my beard would go over well in Hipster Mecca or because they wanted me to scout out new and exciting tech, I’ll never know. While the Brooklyn I’m in now isn’t the one that Jay and Biggie prepared me for, the pour over coffee here is phenomenal (That said — if I don’t see an artisanal, yet rustic, bespoke frankenbike before Thursday morning, it’s going to feel like a failure). But enough about vegan, cage-free, hormone-free, ‘never said a mean thing to it as it grew’ coffee and onto the tech!
As with most shows, TechCrunch has an all-day slate of speakers and a Startup Alley where companies can set up shop. I’ll walk through the talks on a daily basis and follow with a wrap-up post that talks about my favorite Startup Alley vendors. Here’s some of the highlights from the first day:
Words are Optional with Alex Chung from Giphy
As with most workplaces that use Slack, Giphy is a huge component of my day to day life at ReadyTalk. Beyond that, I’m a huge fan of gifs — particularly gifs of my baby cat, Phyllis.
Alex Chung, Giphy’s co-founder and CEO, made for a great interviewee as he talked about how the gif has changed from being the “Oh yeah, that’s that thing from the 80s. That thing you put on sites to show they’re ‘under construction,’ right?” to the primary currency on the internet. To my surprise, Giphy serves 1 BILLION gifs a day. Perhaps even more interesting than that, was the monetization strategy Chung laid out.
Unbeknownst to me, Giphy enters partnerships with organizations to help create and curate gifs for live events, with the most notable example being The Oscars. According to Chung, the gifs that come from these content deals make up 80% of their traffic. Beyond that, Giphy has ‘terabytes of analytics’ around usage. They have insights into their API usage, where images are going, and their own site traffic that provides the basis for their plans to bring ads to native messaging. The example laid out was, a user is hungry and searches for a ‘hungry’ gif to send their friend, unwittingly they select a McDonald’s branded gif, and boom — just like that Micky D’s is advertising to you and your friends.
Beyond Siri: Viv and AI as a platform with Dag Kittlaus
Without exaggeration — this is this coolest thing that I saw today, and likely it’ll be the coolest thing I see all week. Viv comes to us from the originators of Siri, the assistant everybody loves to hate. Immediately after their presentation, the tech hype machine was in full effect and I was 100% ready to take the train to station.
In the demo, Dag sent money to a friend through Venmo, ordered flowers for his mom for her birthday, booked a hotel, called for an uber, and he didn’t order a pizza! Dag also showed us the Viv Developer Center as well as the Viv Universe, which was one of the coolest visual data sets I’ve ever seen in my life.
There were three things in particular about the Viv talk that were really fascinating to me beyond the demo itself: 1) Viv sees themselves a bit like Apple at the beginning of the App Store age — seeded with some of their own stuff, but on the precipice of the explosion that’s a natural result of opening up a platform; and 2) Viv is “software that writes itself” which is why everybody is so optimistic about its scalability; 3) “[Conversation] is just a natural way for humans to interact.”
It’s exciting to know that Viv isn’t going to try to dictate where their platform goes and what gets developed on top of it. Viv sees a lot of opportunity in the IoT space since the App Store model doesn’t particularly translate well to Cuisinarts. Admittedly, I have no understanding of how this software writes itself. Like none. But I do talk a lot, so the idea of conversation being the future is really appealing to me and it sounds like Viv is onboard with that. My personal belief is that the technology that hangs out in the background and lets humans do human things better is going to win the future. After the Viv presentation, I’d say 10/10, ‘Would recommend’ for that future.
Appifying the Listicle with B.J. Novak and Dev Flaherty from Li.st
If there’s anything in this world that I love more than tech (Okay, Baby Phyllis, my fiancee Erin, and the Florida Gators notwithstanding) it’s The Office. So when I saw that B.J. Novak aka Ryan Howard was going to be at Disrupt NY, I knew I had to make my way to that session. Ryan, I mean B.J., and Dev did not disappoint. Once I was able to get Dwight chanting “Ryan! Ryan! Ryan!” out of my head, it was great to hear Novak’s story from outsider to tech co-founder. As somebody who has moved into a more technical role recently, Novak talking about being sure to do your homework and enjoying the challenge of being the dumb guy in the room really hit home.
The coolest thing about The Application Formerly Known As The List App, was how the platform has evolved over the short period of time its been available. Both founders mentioned that they set out with a really practical goal in mind. People love lists, people write in lists, lists are great — let’s make them easier to share. What they’ve found 150,000 users and 250,000 lists later is that while they initially envisioned a practical tool, it’s become an incredible instrument of self-expression for folks. Dev mentioned, “There’s something cool that happens when you don’t have to worry about syntax,” and I think therein lies the appeal of Li.st. Sometimes I write good prose, more often I write okay prose but that takes time. Being able to just list things as they come into my brain just feels like a way to shorten the distance between what I’m thinking and what I’m saying in a really meaningful way.
Naturally the moderator asked B.J. Novak what Michael Scott’s list would be, to which Novak replied, “He’d probably make a List, tag 99 people, and just ask them to be their friend.” He continued to talk about missed opportunities now that the show is off the air, and “Beets by Dwight” made me chortle out loud to the point that it was uncomfortable for all involved.
VR in the Real World with Dave Cole from NextVR and Shanna Tellerman from Modsy
As somebody who has grown up with computers around since childhood, VR has always felt like the great unfulfilled promise of the age. Because of that, I am really excited about all the stuff happening around VR right now, though I remain a bit skeptical. Dave Cole from NextVR has a really fascinating vision for the future of VR, and thanks to their recent deal with Live Nation, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to refine that. Initially, Cole is hoping to have an event a week at first, with the eventual goal being three to four live events showing in VR weekly. They’ve already filmed an NBA game (naturally, it was the Warriors) and a NASCAR race in VR, so they’re really interested in the sports marketplace as well.
Shanna Tellerman, whose company Modsy provides a service where you can take photos of a room, receive a photo-realistic rendering of their room with new furniture, and then have an opportunity to buy things for their home. They use 2-D and 3-D photos to recreate an environment, though currently they only offer photos and a 360° view. Shanna said what needs to be said at any VR presentation — we need to see consumer adoption to see the more practical side of VR (Working for a cloud communication company that focuses on connection, the “practical side” of VR is what ReadyTalk is looking forward to). She predicts that the path for VR will be the well-trodden path to tech adoption: early adopters and gamers until somebody dials in a form factor that appeals to the masses.
Day 2
I’m excited to see what Day 2 brings me. Of particular interest to me are going to be Mike George’s talk about Building the Amazon Echo, Stan Chudnovsky’s presentation about Facebook Messenger’s big bet on bots, Adi Sideman’s lecture on Live video, and Chris Milk’s address about the era of VR storytelling we’re entering now. Check back tomorrow to see how they went — I can almost guarantee I’ll find a way to sneak Phyllis into that post too!
