Collision 2018: Entrepreneurship is Alive and Well
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend Collision in New Orleans and judged the semi-finals of the conference’s PITCH competition.
There were a few common themes throughout the week — notably, the concerns of data privacy and the impact of GDPR, the steady progress regarding a penetration of robotics into daily life, and the opportunities provided by blockchain as well as the potential forthcoming regulation of cryptocurrencies. There was even an impassioned (and impressively, unscripted) plea by former Vice President Al Gore for the technology community to commit more resources and share of mind toward solving climate change.
My biggest takeaway, however, was the wide-ranging diversity and sheer ambition of the startups that exhibited throughout the three days. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy, and that passion for solving problems — whether they be business- or consumer- related — is alive and well. Certainly, it is important for us as investors to dive deep into the details of a specific technology or industry in order to develop a unique perspective, but it’s equally important to step back and reflect periodically on why we are investing in the first place and the impact that venture capital — and more specifically, the entrepreneurs that we support — can have on the wider economy and everyday life.
Here at Revel, we focus on startups that help enterprises Be Like Bezos – that is, they enable enterprises to compete with the walled gardens of Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. by equipping them with the technology and services needed to survive and thrive in the rapidly-changing times in which we live. We are no strangers to attacking this problem; I’ve invested in multiple companies that are successfully doing just this and am now sitting on the board at Kite, a solution to help enterprise innovation teams discover the best startups to address their needs.
Double-clicking a bit: an increasingly important area for these innovation teams is artificial intelligence, which is becoming more advanced and more prevalent; thus, the focus for enterprises to employ a strategy around this specific area is becoming more of a necessity. The ideal process for doing so, however, is not widely accepted yet; in fact, Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures wrote about this last fall. As such, it’s no surprise that we saw multiple interesting companies tackling this problem in their own unique ways. ELE is taking a horizontal approach and wants to become the universal artificial intelligence delivery platform for enterprises by helping them diagnose potential areas for deployment, select the right solutions, and manage those relationships; whereas Ai Collaborator, led by James Briggs, takes a vertical approach by focusing explicitly on connecting enterprises to AI applications for improved user and customer experience. The jury is still out on which approaches will succeed, but clearly, this is an important and interesting space.
Another area in which we saw interesting companies is around prediction, which can be a major boon to enterprises in multiple ways. Two companies that we saw applying predictive technologies in vastly different ways were Shelf Engine and Poder. ShelfEngine, led by Stefan Kalb, wants to become the layer between grocers and vendors and is specifically on a mission to reduce food waste through better forecasting of ordering needs. Poder is applying prediction on a broader scale, helping companies in travel, CPG, e-commerce, and other industries employ a variety of value-adds such as hyper-personalized messaging, or even finding the ideal location for a new store.
Exciting times in the B2B enterprise tech space and Collision did an excellent job programming excellent content and curating a great group of entrepreneurs and investors. I’m looking forward to next year’s event in Toronto!
