The Clorox EcoClean™ product line, sold via the Clorox Professional business unit, includes All-Purpose Cleaner and Glass Cleaner in addition to Disinfecting Cleaner. Clorox EcoClean™ helps the company deliver on its promise to enhance the sustainability of its products via the use of plant-based ingredient alternatives,

Clorox Wins 2023 EPA Award for Advancing Green Chemistry

The Clorox Company (NYSE: CLX) was named a winner of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2023 Green Chemistry Awards for its efforts to design products that reduce the generation and use of hazardous substances.

The consumer goods industry's largest representative body warned on Wednesday that the cost of load shedding, failing infrastructure and rising poverty were a "potentially lethal cocktail" requiring urgent action by the government. Read this for free South ...

'Lethal cocktail' - Consumer goods body counts cost of load shedding, poverty, failing infrastructure

Clorox Co(NYSE:CLX) recently announced a dividend of $1.2 per share, payable on 2023-11-09, with the ex-dividend date set for 2023-10-24. As investors look forward to this upcoming payment, the spotlight also shines on the company's dividend history,

Clorox Co's Dividend Analysis

The Clorox Company (CLX) has been on a rather steady decline after it went on an unsustainable surge at the start of Covid. Clorox’s near-term outlook appears disappointing, driven lower by a cybersecurity attack that was disclosed in August.

Bear of the Day: The Clorox Company (CLX)

The Clorox Company has long been a household name in the consumer goods market. With a history dating back over a century, the company has evolved and adapted to meet the changing needs of consumers. From its humble beginnings as a bleach manufacturer ...

The History and Evolution of Clorox Company

But we think that this issue is transitory, dividend growth will continue, and the stock is a bargain today. Morningstar chief U.S. market strategist Dave Sekera counts Clorox among his five undervalued stocks to buy for a “higher for longer” interest-rate environment;

A Dividend Aristocrat to Buy That’s 26% Undervalued

Seattle, WA) -- One of Western Washington’s best janitorial and facilities companies is growing under… Ryan Swanson is excited to announce the relocation of our office to Rainier Square in ...

Seattle Consumer Goods News

The Federal Reserve has raised rates by 5.25 percentage points since March 2022, and another increase is possible.

Clorox Company (The)

Palms Trading Company has been servicing the local community ... thrive in Albuquerque and now offers a variety of locally made goods. Palms Trading Co. focuses on cultivating close relationships ...

Palms Trading Company offers locally made goods in Albuquerque

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How Rampant is COVID in Amazon Warehouses?

Back in November, Amazon announced its latest game-changing industry penetration, into the $300 billion pharmacy market. Amazon Pharmacy, according to the company, will allow customers in the U.S. to order prescription medications for home delivery, including free delivery for Amazon Prime members. This move comes just a little over two years after its $753 million acquisition of the prescription medicine delivery service PillPack. While Amazon’s latest announcement is exciting for the pharmaceutical sector and consumers, it does present questions as to the technical sophistication of the fulfillment services industry, valued at approximately $55.6 billion. One month into 2021 and COVID-19 hasn't let up. And as another new year begins, we are again facing second and third-rounds of supply chain shortages. Think back to Costco and Amazon selling out of common household items, like toilet paper. Hell, even a brand like Seventh Generation toilet paper is “ ” on the Prime marketplace. temporarily out of stock For most of 2020, consumers had to fight their way to the grocery stores, however early (or late) just to get toilet paper, hand sanitizer, or clorox wipes. As bad as it has been for consumers not able to purchase these common items, it's been just as bad for ecommerce sellers who have either run out of products, while working with manufacturers, or those who have continued to suffer shortages, convincing themselves they can stay afloat. No matter which way you slice it, fulfillment has been an industry-wide dilemma that manufacturers and sellers in 2021 can no longer afford to endure. And with the Biden-Harris Administration finally making its way into The White House come January 20, it will be interesting to see how small businesses can (hopefully) make a speedy recovery. So what have we learned from the supply chain infrastructures over the course of a tumultuous 2020? #1 - Fulfilment Software is Archaic and It Blows Eight years ago, Rick Nelson and a former partner launched because they noticed that e-commerce sellers were always running out of products while working with manufacturers, similar to what’s been happening for well over a year now, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Fulfillment Lab The problem, which Nelson and his team discovered, resides with the actual fulfillment software on the market, which is fulfillment center-centric, rather than client-centric. “ ,” he says, learning that “ .” We started looking at the software the software was written for many different types of fulfillment centers to fit their models. But it wasn’t written for many different types of clients I spoke with Nelson and his team about the frustration that was walking into a store, only to find essential household items sold out, and why there wasn't a quick solution to get these items to the consumer in the middle of the biggest pandemic we have seen in decades. Currently, shopping experiences on platforms like Amazon are “plain wrapper” and “generic,” Nelson told me. From a branding perspective, there’s no ability for companies to insert customized printing and labeling to the actual fulfillment process. The industry, according to Nelson, has been missing an essential piece to the puzzle: fulfillment software that doesn't blow; which brought us to Nelson’s own proprietary , which allows TFL to provide insight into the fulfillment process, so its clients can customize their packaging to provide an entirely unique experience that increases brand awareness and end-consumer loyalty. Global Fulfillment Software™ The company was previously listed on the Inc. 5000 for two years, in 2016 and 2018 for one of the fastest-growing companies in the Tampa Bay and Salt Lake City regions. #2 - National 'Food Insecurity' Needs to Be Swallowed Up and Fast For nationally recognized meal kit company, HelloFresh, its portfolio just got , announcing on November 23, 2020, that it would be entering into an agreement to acquire Factor75, Inc., a Chicago-based ready-to-eat meal startup. And what a perfect time. $177 million larger The acquisition will expand HelloFresh’s presence in the United States, the companies said in its press release, joining three other brands in HelloFresh’s US portfolio, including , , and . HelloFresh EveryPlate GreenChef As of November 2020, experts projected over 50 million Americans would be “food insecure” by the end of the year, including about 17 million children. Based on , an interactive model developed for Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks in the U.S., there is a . Nevada, for example, jumped from 20th to eighth for the highest food insecurity rate by state. Map the Meal Gap disproportionate ratio of food insecurity by state Specifically, those states like Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and New Mexico who were the hardest-hit states, are the same as they were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report revealed that Jefferson County, Mississippi has the highest food insecurity rate in the country, with a 30.4% food insecurity rate. Direct-to-consumer ready-to-eat meals are a “nascent food vertical,” according to a HelloFresh executive, which is estimated to grow into a multi-billion dollar category over time. “ ,” said Uwe Voss, chief executive officer of HelloFresh US. We have four high-growth food brands in our group, all benefiting from our strong growth engine, technology, and supply chain infrastructure If the global pandemic has revealed anything about the food-service industry, it’s that demographic groups across the country have been impacted differently. Individuals with a college education, for example, have not seen much of an impact on either unemployment rates or incomes. But people in lower-wage jobs tend to be impacted a lot more. #3 - We Can Still Clean Our Clothing While Keeping the Environment Clean If a can create, build, and grow a platform that challenges our world's leaders on the importance of climate change, it's pretty safe to assume that industry-leading brands can take a hint and scale their own products to be more "environmentally friendly." You go, Greta! 17-year-old girl Laundry care is undoubtedly archaic and commodified. I mean, come on, at one point, Millennials were eating Tide Pods, because some moron thought it was okay to create a viral deadly social media challenge. Unreal. Since 2016, FREY has converted the archaic and commodified laundry care industry into a D2C service, delivering products made with natural ingredients and top fragrances directly to their customers’ homes. Back in 2019, I , two brothers, who shared a vision of providing a better world for consumers and their garments. When I first spoke with them, they had just launched their Kickstarter campaign from the basement of their Maryland home, revealing the wide-spread mistrust throughout the industry. spoke with FREY's founders, Erin and Leif Frey Two years later, FREY has continued to grow and succeed, making it to national media platforms that arguably, Greta would be proud of! It recently expanded its business model to include a new personal care line to bring FREY’s fragrances outside of the laundry room, with its latest partnership with OceanX, a modern fulfillment provider for industry-leading brands like Allergan, Proactiv, and Glossier, which all help scale fulfillment operations with a suite of DTC, B2B, and Amazon 3rd-party services. OceanX brings fulfillment-as-a-service (FaaS) solutions to companies, along with a real-time business intelligence platform and scalable customer care service. Leveraging such technology, companies like FREY will be able to offer an approximate 99.5% same-day ship, two-day nationwide shipping coverage, while claiming an approximate 99.8%+ order accuracy, capturing over 3,000 eCommerce orders per minute. One of the biggest nightmares for e-commerce brands is managing inventory for recurring orders and trial sign-ups that they cannot adequately and efficiently track (in real-time). Leveraging OceanX’s technology and fulfillment service, FREY will be able to utilize the company’s real-time business intelligence platform which will allow it to upload and maintain product master data, manage inventory quantity, view shipping, and carrier status, and track trends on order returns. “ ,” OceanX CEO George Richter shared in a press release. This will be a game-changer to maintaining adequate inventory levels in the fulfillment centers “ ,” FREY told me. “ .” We are in this modern era of the conscious consumer—everyone is paying attention to their clothing, fragrance, grooming products, and what they are putting in their hair and on their skin For almost 99% of an individual’s life, they are exposed to the harsh chemicals engrained in laundry detergent—wearing clothes, sleeping on sheets, using towels—all of which goes through the cleaning process. Yet, the entire industry is filled with toxic products

Amazon Goes ‘Pharma’, Raising Question as to Future of Fulfillment for 2021 

As someone who has used both and Unity to make games, I read with extreme interest a post by about the announcement of AppOnboard's new CEO, Mike Seavers. This could be one of the biggest wins for the company ever since Jonathan Zweig and AppOnboard . himself is an experienced entrepreneur, having co-founded AdColony in 2008 (sold to Opera for $350m in 2014) and co-founded AppOnboard in 2016. AppOnboard has raised $35m from investors, according to , and the new appointment could lead to new funding rounds when the time is right. This is going to lead to a very interesting David vs Goliath battle between AppOnboard's Buildbox and Unity Technologies. Buildbox Venturebeat acquired Buildbox last year Zweig Crunchbase Meet the Goliath: Unity Technologies Unity is a behemoth in the world of games development. Some stats: Founded 2004. .$1.3bn .Led by John Riccitiello. CV includes being CEO at EA, stints at PepsiCo and Clorox and co-founding Elevation Partners in 2004.Unity's engine was launched in 2005.Unity's engine can be used with over 25 gaming platforms.1.3 million developers use Unity's engine. 2,000+ employees worldwide funding raised Meet the David: Buildbox Buildbox is the David in this battle. Firstly, let us look at some stats about AppOnboard, the company that acquired it: Founded in 2016.Raised $35m from investors. Between 11-50 employees . Acquired Buildbox in 2019.Buildbox was founded in 2014 by Trey Smith and Nik Rudenko. The company that over 100 games built with Buildbox have been featured by Apple, with and growing (announced in 2019, the numbers would have grown since then). Some of the most famous games built with Buildbox include , Color Switch, The Pit and many more. according to Crunchbase announced in 2017 500,000 Buildbox users Phases, The Line Zen Why Seavers Is Important to Buildbox's Future Mike Seavers comes from Riot Games. PC gamers will know them as the creators of and . is one of the biggest eSports titles, with numerous competitions and teams vying to compete for titles. Valorant, despite being a newer game, has the potential to be one of the biggest multiplayer shooters, right up there with and . League of Legends Valorant League of Legends Apex Legends Call of Duty: Warzone Seavers has over 25 years' experience in the gaming industry,  as notes: "Seavers is a 25-year game and software veteran who was most recently CTO of Riot Games and was heavily involved in the creation of Riot’s Legends of Runeterra as well as League of Legends." Venturebeat This level of experience will be crucial to help Buildbox grow and compete against bigger competitors such as Unity Technologies as well as smaller competitors such as YoYo Games' GameMaker Studio 2. How Can Buildbox tackle Unity? There are nine key things Seavers can do in the short to long term: Get publishers on board. Challenge Unity Technologies on pricing. Enable console exports. Improve Android 3D performance. Launch an asset store. Add multiplayer. Make the software work offline. Out-innovate Unity. Ensure Buildbox is on the lips of every developer. Get More Publishers On Board If Seavers wants to make waves, he should strike partnerships with as many game publishers as possible. The company has already made a partnership with British mobile game publisher and this is a good start to getting more users. More please. A deal with Voodoo.io, one of the giants of the hyper-casual game world, would be great (the company has published games made with Buildbox before) but a deal with a PC or console game publisher would be a coup.  AppOnboard is young and scrappy enough to make deals to help it grow rapidly. Kwalee Challenge Unity On Pricing If Buildbox really wants to make a dent, make users a deal they cannot refuse. Unity's personal plan is extremely tempting for first time game developers as it offers access to a lot for functionality for free. The company has dedicated plans for businesses, something Buildbox does not. AppOnboard could help Buildbox make a splash by offering a competitive plan for first time users (perhaps by introducing a certain amount of free mobile exports for its free plan) and introducing a business plan for teams of developers keen to use the software. Enable Console Exports In Buildbox Why can't we have Buildbox built games on Nintendo's eShop? Or on the PlayStation 4? Xbox One? This would be a great way to showcase some of the amazing games built with software ( by TapMen would be a good fit, for example) With the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X set to launch less than a few months away, this would make an excellent weapon in Seavers' arsenal. Improve Android Performance In Buildbox 3D GamesThis is where Seavers' engineering prowess could shine. 3D Android games built with Buildbox don't have the same level of performance as their iPhone counterparts. Unity, on the other hand, offers great performance for both platforms no matter the device. An improvement to the engine could help even out the playing field and encourage more Android developers to come on board. One Wheel Launch an Asset Store For Buildbox Users One of the biggest attractions of using Unity is the asset store. You can get everything from templates to asset packs at competitive prices. An asset store for Buildbox users would be a great step in attracting more developers to the software. AppOnboard could even offer a subscription service, offering a certain amount of products every month for a fixed fee. Multiplayer Should Be As Easy As The Software Itself Multiplayer will eventually be coming to Buildbox. This should help attract more users by adding a much requested feature. The company should aim to make it easy as possible to implement, which would lure away any potential Unity users. Make Buildbox Work Offline Perhaps one of the biggest disadvantages Buildbox has over Unity is that you can't use it offline. You need a constant internet connection to use the software. AppOnboard need to get this changed soon. Not every user will have a reliable internet connection and this could be a massive selling point once solved. Out-Innovate Unity Augmented reality, virtual reality and machine learning are just three of the technologies that could potentially be huge in the future. AppOnboard could out-innovate Unity Technologies by partnering with exciting new startups developing new applications in these areas and helping to implement them in Buildbox. Shout from the Rooftops! One of the biggest challenges Buildbox faces is that some developers do not view it seriously. This is a problem that can be solved with the right positioning in the market - perhaps to solve this, there could be another version called 'Buildbox Pro' aimed at businesses and teams of developers. Visual scripting: Unity's Ace? One of the often cited alternatives to Buildbox is . Developed by Hutong Games™, this is an affordable visual scripting tool ($65) for Unity. Games like Hearthstone, Hollow Knight and INSIDE were all created with it. AppOnboard needs to emphasize the value offered by Buildbox to create a compelling argument against visual scripting tools. playMaker™ Conclusion Things are going to get very interesting with the new appointment. There must have been something very attractive about Buildbox to get Seavers on board and it will be very exciting to see what changes he makes to help tackle Unity's foothold in the market. Let the battle commence! Previously published at https://staticcatgames.blogspot.com/2020/07/buildbox-versus-unity-let-the-battle-begin.html

Can BuildBox Challenge The Might Of The Unity Game Engine?

As our world approaches the time where artificial intelligence becomes as widespread as electricity, we sat down with Valeria Sadovykh, a leading expert in the decision making and decision intelligence aspects of AI. Valeria holds a Ph.D. from the University of Auckland Business School and has over 10 years of experience focusing her efforts on emerging technologies with PwC in New Zealand, Singapore, and the US. The future will be focused on collaboration between humans and machines. In your recent piece on VentureBeat , you stated that AI needs human input to predict crises and crucial decisions. On the other hand, you say that it’s nearly impossible to predict an important event because they are all unique. Do you think it’s ever going to be possible to predict the next pandemic like the current coronavirus? How exactly can we train AI for that? Factually speaking, historical data is the key variable for predicting any events, whether it’s a pandemic, financial crisis, or natural disaster. The success rate of a prediction depends on the quantity and quality of the data available so that a data scientist can run successful algorithms. However, if we want to predict a black swan, we need to have a lot more pandemics and crises around us to get better at prediction. Thankfully, such events are sparse. Moreover, to learn from the historical data, we need to generalize rules for the future. AI systems should be proficiently analyzing millions of what-if scenarios to answer and react on in the future. We also need to empower AI through continued model optimization and self-learning. There are more than 2.5 created daily, and that pace is only accelerating. Solutions like (AutoML) platforms can automate the ingestion of a variety of data formats, running several algorithms on the same data set, and selecting the best algorithms for decision-making models. ML will never stop learning with continuous optimization of hyperparameters, random and grid search. quintillion bytes of data automation in machine learning We all know about AI’s ability to remember, but fail to consider its ability to forget the data. During COVID, the AI was partly successful in building models on tactical issues, such as prediction and recognition of symptoms, as well as contact tracing and tracking how the disease spread by reading various data points and other preventive measures. However, it failed at predicting cognitive human behavior, reactions, and its impact on daily decision-making. The irrational behavior of stocking up on toilet paper and Clorox had not been foreseen by either AI or traditional forecasting techniques. This historical experience has been collected in various data points, however, this doesn’t mean that every time we face a new viral disease, AI should push us to the pandemic shopping list. As we are empowering AI, we should make sure it serves for the good. What are the main principles people should follow while working on AI? Do you think there should be an obligatory course on ethics for software engineers as well as scientists, similar to those that doctors and journalists have at universities? What should be included? The AI systems are designed by qualified and intelligent individuals, but it still becomes a victim of biases, because it’s led by humans. An algorithm that was built by someone without proper ethical training and then used by likewise users without established controls and governance could produce serious errors and threats to human privacy, dignity, safety, and even create additional discrimination. We need to educate our society on responsible AI and ethics concerns. Not many people understand the impact of the recent push of face tracking and video surveillance tools. This is the job of our scientists, governments, and policymakers. There are initiatives by government agencies, for example, , as well as by the that proposed an AI Governance Framework and Assessment guide. The tech giants, such as , , and IBM are also proposing their own Responsible AI principles on the development and usage of AI. However, currently, these policies serve as recommendations rather than regulations. AI.gov World Economic Forum Google Microsoft We should also think about the consequences of excessive emerging tech usage in daily life and the impact of it on the cognitive thinking processes. While using predictable mechanisms and recommender systems created by AI, brain cell activation is actually reduced. I would also like to bring attention to the recent hype of the “working from home” trend. I’m not sure organizations, individuals, and the government have realized the impact of it and how it invades people’s privacy. We need to ensure that AI mechanisms are protective and take into account privacy, security, consent, access, transparency, explainability, etc. This requires a serious AI culture makeover, and we need to make sure AI is not only protecting shareholders but also us - average citizens. Where is the fine line between empowering AI and making it lead our decisions? Can you imagine a situation where the machine gets power over humanity? In the late 2000s, when the tech became affordable to the developing ,  people started to handover their decision giving power to machines without even realizing it. As part of my academic research, I’ve been studying how emerging tech impacts human decision-making through the longitudinal convergent observation of online communities for over 10 years. One of the main findings was the evidence that people outsource their decision-making process to the online wisdom of crowds, which is a heavily machine-manipulated environment. Specifically, people bypass their design thinking phase and go straight to the “choice” phase by selecting already available choices that are presented in an online environment for them. Automation of recruitment, credit card applications, loan approvals, robo-advisers, and health checking processes are some examples of machines with applied biases making decisions for us. world For those who doubt the age of spiritual machines, , a prediction model created by Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, has been already proved accurate for several decades and used by many conglomerates to guide long term strategy planning. One thing that AI is not fully capable of yet is capturing our emotions, brain and mind. Our thinking contradicts ourselves, so it’s hard to build a statistical model. On the other hand, cases such as humanity can already be defeated by AI, at least in strategic games. Moore's law AlphaGo beating humans at the game Go shows that We already see how authoritarian governments use technology -  facial recognition, for instance - to keep track of people no matter whether they give permission or not. How can we make sure people in power don’t take advantage of it to the detriment of others? All the technology, including facial recognition, social tracking and activities tracing, are fantastic innovations and have been designed with good intentions. However, they put pressure on privacy and human freedom. This goes back to the educational and policy initiatives which we touched on before. How informed is our society on the usage of those technologies? Have we been transparent on what data we are collecting from each individual? The answer is no. First and foremost, it is self and institutional education that is currently not in place. Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted that “excessive automation” at his company was a mistake, saying that technology can’t really remove humans. Companies tend to eliminate humans because robots are more consistent and cost less, which eventually can lead to overbalance and lack of critical thinking. How should a leader decide where they replace a human with or robot and where not? Many organizations face cost pressure and require innovation to bring more efficiency into their operation. Intelligent Automation is not a radical loss of a job that brings with it less critical thinking. It is actually the opposite -- a loss of mundane tasks and the creation of more critical thinking. Industries are creating higher-value jobs where more intellect will be required and new skills will be necessary. The collaborative workplace between humans and machines will be beneficial in the long term. It’s widely discussed, and many educational institutions and companies are proposing workforce transformation roadmaps. In addition to creating new tech jobs, indicators highlight the need of “soft skills” and “creativity” — skills for problem-solving and working in a team. The danger is within the speed of change and the ability of the workforce to transform fast enough to meet the requirements of automation. The question is whether we can reskill our accountants, auditors and lawyers to become creative data scientists with soft skills within the next few years. Universities already report that by the time students graduate, their job might be replaced by robots or be obsolete. For instance, has predicted that 85 percent of the jobs that today’s students will do in 2030 don’t exist yet. There is a need to create an educational and workforce ecosystem where people are constantly being educated and retooled to stay relevant. The Institute for the Future What fascinates you most about this technology? Where would you like to apply your knowledge most? I am mostly fascinated by the human aspect of AI - how it changes our way of living and impacts our decision-making processes. I am a big advocate of technology being used for humanity and social good. I believe we now have an abundance of tech advances that should be utilized to serve our humanity. Journalists point out many “negative” aspects of AI, however, it's humans who make it work that way. The recent pandemic has exposed fundamental weaknesses in the tech system. It has shown how AI has not been utilized for the prevalence of poverty, weak health systems, lack of education, unstable government support and other global problems. Crises force us to embrace tech advances in renewable energy, education, healthcare, green technology and sustainable new sectors that put humanity on a fast-track path to achieving sustainable goals. The question of whether people will ultimately begin to accept this intrusion into their lives, in return for the increased security and convenience is widely discussed in both the private and public sector. Do you think there will be an increasing trend of people getting out of their devices, canceling social networks profiles, etc, in order to keep their lives private? Will we appreciate our anti-digital world more? We can talk about the concept of neo-luddism — there are people who resist usage of any modern technologies, but we can't really slow down technology's acceleration. One of their arguments is that technologies should be proven safe before adoption, due to the unknown effects that new technologies might inspire. Here again, we come back to the question of policies, education, responsible AI and safety regulations of the AI usage. This pandemic has also shown how powerful they are - during the lockdown, it was the only way to connect with our friends, coworkers and family. Quitting online social media would be impossible now. However, we can change the way we rely on the platforms in our real life. In your research, you’ve focused on the healthcare system. How can AI improve it here in the US? What are the main spheres you foresee being the most disrupted/influenced by AI in the near future? The US Healthcare system acutely lacks a unification of diverse data sources. Patient Data is not matched with Physicians Data which doctors hold at hand, and it is not matched with Pharmacy Data or Provider Data, which hospitals look at. Insurance data is also barely matched with any of those. There are severe limitations to implementing holistic AI solutions that impact a patient's health.  If all of the above systems were connected, a patient who has suffered an incident could be treated better. It’s a complex problem. Moreover, a patient who is trying to recover from a life threatening ailment needs to be guided to live their life well, with the right medication, delivered at the right time, after performing the right exercise before going to bed at the right time. So the healthcare system needs to manage the patient’s lifestyle, too. I agree with Vas Bhandarkar, ’s CEO, who says that a good healthcare system should be able to access this centrally accessible normalized data to deliver all manner of  therapeutic, preventive, and curative treatments. Companies like ScoreData are solving the predictive patient behavior problem by computing propensities for readmission and delivering a sequence of nudges that help the patient take medicines on time, exercise at the right time of day, eat well, and rest well. ScoreData AI has penetrated our daily lives. Banks, health insurance, and consumer companies are all using the technology to improve their services and increase revenues. To me, the most fascinating aspect of AI is coming from its integration with neuroscience and psychology. AI will be most impactful in introducing new ways of interacting with machines, by using robots or building human-level general AI (AGI). This is when a computerized system exhibits abilities similar to those of the human mind. However, currently most of the disruptions are happening around deep learning — the use of computing power, which is trying to detect patterns in mountains of seemingly unrelated data.

"We Know About AI's Ability To Remember, But Forget About Its Ability To Forget." - Valeria Sadovykh

When we started MarkUp, a visual collaboration tool for digital content, we expected to see user growth from much of the design and developer communities, because of the problem we are solving in those fields. MarkUp is a platform that allows users to place comments directly on any piece of digital content, closing the notoriously cumbersome feedback loops between designers, developers, project managers, and every stakeholder in between. What we couldn't predict, like many others, was how a major pandemic would affect the world in 2020 and displace most of the workforce, with those in the fortunate position of still working, many doing so remotely. In moments of turmoil, there is ample opportunity to support people through technology and innovation. We’re in the fortunate position to be able to do so in these unprecedented and uncertain times. Last month alone, MarkUp added more than 3,500 users who are looking to collaborate remotely on digital content–an increase of 302%, compared to signups from the month prior. This growth speaks to the fact that, now more than ever, people are seeking out solutions to more efficiently connect, communicate, and create with their teams and communities. While there are many platforms for design prototyping, including InVision and Zeplin, none provide a platform for collaboration on staging or live sites. A common workflow might see a designer creating a web design in InVision and having their development team create a build based on it. Once the build is finished, designers and developers typically revert to taking screenshots of the design and comparing it to InVision for feedback. Add in email threads, comment-filled Google Docs, and phone calls, and the QA process gets messy. Whether you are working on a website, landing page, sales collateral, or anything with a URL, users simply add their site URL and MarkUp renders it into a canvas ready for feedback. Users can seamlessly invite colleagues and clients to collaborate and comment in real-time, all in one place. While this process is typically done between designers, developers, and PMs, we're now seeing different facets of an organization leveraging MarkUp due to an uptick in remote working. Whether it's marketing and communications teams that previously collaborated on landing pages in the office, or sales reps syncing with the creative team on collateral before going into a demo, for many people, that’s now happening from our homes. As a result, we're seeing a shift in MarkUp's user base that encapsulates essentially any role within a company. There is an organizational-wide effort to produce and review content, faster, cleaner, and more transparently than ever before. One of the most encouraging things we've seen was how two companies directly responding to COVID-19, Clorox and the UN, both needed to produce communications at an electric pace in order to inform their stakeholders of the pending crisis and what it would mean in the months ahead. MarkUp helped their teams review, edit, and push content to their stakeholders with remarkable speed and efficiency. We're proud to have provided a product, for free, that could support them in their crisis communication efforts. Remote working has fundamentally shifted how an organization communicates and collaborates. MarkUp is here to support anyone at an organization, from designers and developers, to marketing and communications teams, to the CEO, create, edit, and publish content faster than ever. Check out MarkUp at www.markup.io. It is completely free to use, and we hope it can serve your team as well as it has served over 7,000 people so far. ( : ) Disclaimer The author is the Business Brains at Markup.io

How MarkUp Reshaped Digital Collaboration for Remote Workers...and Grew 302% in One Month

Soothsayer Sequoia Capital warned its portfolio companies in a memo—how can startups stay healthy? “Stay healthy, keep your company healthy.” That was the end of Sequoia Capital’s to its —which includes the likes of Airbnb, Evernote, and MongoDB. With billions of dollars worth of assets under management, Sequoia Capital is one of Silicon Valley’s (and the world’s) leading venture capital firm, with a penchant of being a periodic soothsayer. memo portfolio companies The memo, titled “Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020”, was sent to its portfolio companies’ founders and CEOs, in a bid to offer guidance as to how they can navigate this coronavirus outbreak. Much like a similar, ominous missive called “ ” sent during the depth of the 2008 recession, this memo immediately drew attention to many pressing issues startups can face as the effect of the virus ripples. RIP Good Times As the stock market continuously plunges and with wiped off the market, the global economic downturn has led to a series of watershed changes: a worldwide movement into , draconian in the worst-hit nations, and a exacerbated by the virus’s effects. $9 trillion remote working social control measures recurring fear of a recession For startups, the virus is doubly unforgiving. In the U.S., where the Trump administration has moved from “containment” to “ ”, tech earnings have been . According to Goldman Sachs, only the contributed to S&P 500’s year-on-year earnings-per-share growth. US stocks are also deep in a sell-off, with trading even suspended after . mitigation impacted severely big 5 tech companies falling by 7% Startups that are fortunate enough to close a fundraising round during the outbreak will heave a sigh of relief, as venture capital firms after venture capital firms predict that startups will struggle to raise funds. Singapore-based VC fund Velocity Ventures anticipates a of 25% for startups in Southeast Asia (SEA). apart from Sequoia Capital also predict the same for startups throughout the tech world. Zhao Chenxi, a partner of SB China Capital, suggested that startups should even prepare for the worst: where . drop in funding Multiple VCs no venture capital fund will be available for all of 2020 Another Chinese VC even told its portfolio startups to . rely on their cash flow for at least one to quarters In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, some startups are already feeling the pinch. Softbank-backed hotel chain startup Oyo, , is now prepared to in a downsizing effort. WeWork, now a , was forced to in China temporarily, knocking necessary earnings down a notch. deep in its own troubles cut about 5,000 jobs Softbank-owned company close its 100 sites At this point, startups should be hunkering down as soon as possible, or they’ll wind up shuttering instead. When China Sneezes, The World Catches a Cold The impact of China’s economy on the world and how dependent countries are of it has already way before the COVID-19 outbreak. been noted When China plunged into a health crisis, every country saw a rippling effect—the first being countries dependent on . China supply chains When China closed its factories, plants, and ports to contain the virus, the effect was . Automakers depend on parts from China and this loss came at a time where the auto industry is worldwide, from to obvious already struggling Japan the U.S. Fashion companies are scrambling as they for garments, manufacturing, sewing, cutting, trimming, and a host of other productions. lost their sources While the world gets hammered by the , the mounting number of cases in Japan and South Korea are also on top of the Chinese supply chain havoc. Analysts are predicting a second blow to the global industrial chain, especially on Chinese companies. supply chain disruptions threatening to layer For instance, China heavily depends on Japan for semiconductor materials, industrial robots, engine parts, and cameras—a majority of companies are already deeply affected by the coronavirus, according to a , TSR. survey by a local marketing research agency The travel industry is also suffering a blow of similar severity. With travel advisories escalating to full-blown travel bans, the tourism industry suffered over the past few months, especially for countries that depend on Chinese spending. a huge downfall For instance, is comprised of Chinese spending. bookings, and saw earnings decimated by the lack of Chinese tourists, prompting the Japanese government to provide an to keep them alive. 40% of Japan’s tourism economy Tourism spots, local attractions emergency economic stimulus This problem isn’t just unique to Japan—Chinese tourists are amongst the in the world. An increasingly affluent middle class and easing of movement restrictions have led to Chinese spending reaching in 2018 and the for outbound tourism. Behind them, it’s the U.S., with an overseas tourist expenditure only half of what the Chinese have spent. largest spenders US$277 billion globally world’s largest market The sudden plunge in the number of Chinese tourists traveling out of China has caused Southeast Asian countries to feel a huge burn. For Thailand, according to the Tourist Authority of Thailand, it’s a , despite the government giving the for Chinese travellers to enter at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. $3.1 billion loss green light Other countries like , , and are also suffering billion-dollar losses. Singapore Malaysia Vietnam Like with any crisis, there will be companies that stand to gain—also noted in Sequoia Capital’s memo. For instance, South Korea’s e-book subscription service allowed free access to its library of . It also provided access to quarantined residents through a , in a bid to aid the government in tracking these people who have been ordered to stay at home. Millie’s Library 50,000 titles government app Other startups are helping medical professionals combat the illness in multiple ways. Beijing-based startup Infervision is using AI-based software to help doctors so that medical staff and prioritise those likely to have the virus. Boston-based startup Biofourmis is using AI-based wearable technology to patients, so that the data can be used to provide more effective interventions. diagnose the coronavirus faster remotely monitor infected and suspected Ro, a DTC tele-health company, offers a free digital assessment specifically for COVID-19. When people who think they’ve contracted the illness answer questions about their symptoms, Ro will connect them with a doctor who will provide a free video consultation—essentially, . triaging patients and educating the public Other notable companies like Clorox, Netflix, and Campbell—technically most brands of canned food, toilet paper, and face masks—are . profiting from the crisis For many other startups, they might not be so fortunate. Plum Ventures’ founding partner, Wu Shichun, terms it a “ ” test. Judging from the way the coronavirus outbreak is panning out, it is already becoming one. hell model As such, rather than soldier on with artificial positivity, it is a good time to apply to assess the survivability of a startup. doomsday mentality Running Out of Cash… Startups are notable for bleeding cash and companies like WeWork have shown that it isn’t sustainable at all. Investors are often banking on a final IPO or public listing for an exit, or that one day the company will eventually dominate the market so much so that their lion’s share is enough to profit. With a sputtering economy, startups need to rethink their runway: do they really have as much runway as they think? Essentially, it’s about keeping the business afloat. Things like contingency plans, liquid cash to absorb poor quarters, and trimming expenses are great survival methods. Not every startup can be as lucky as Netflix to experience more growth as more people stay at home, and those who have had their supply chains disrupted will be the worst-hit. This also means that startups have to take a second look at the way they spend their money. …and There’ s None to Found Elsewhere Not in the investor’s pockets, definitely. Private financings will inevitably fall as investors fall back to assess the market and many VCs are already giving ominous predictions. Past indicators are also showing a trend: funds don’t come when there’s a health crisis. According to , fundraising activity plunged during the Zika and SARS outbreak, bouncing back after containment. If they are of any use to predict the future, it’s fairly certain the private financings will have to wait for recovery, likely after the outbreak is successfully contained. CBInsights Forecast Every Sale Like its the Worst Don’t get caught flat-footed with changing spending habits and unclosed deals. Rather, forecast terrible quarters and work with it—anything positive or extra is a bonus. Marketing in a Crisis Sales are dwindling and customer lifetime values are declining. To keep up with customer acquisition efforts and ensure that current customers are constantly coming back for more, startups can consider increasing marketing budgets or driving higher quality in marketing work. Check the Headcount Downsizing, restructuring, however, the startup can name it, it’s a good time to rank employees and find “non-essential” employees. Layoff seasons are already in full swing and it’s a good time for startups to look at themselves and see if they really need that many people. The key is to be productive: having more than one employee being less productive than the others is already a luxury. Being Preventive while Being Reactive Leadership is crucial during such crises as employees look towards the founders and CEOs for guidance. While maintaining a sense of flexibility, it’s also important to adopt a realistic mindset to avoid any trap of not making a contingency plan. Find the Next Bright Idea To lessen the contact between health-conscious customers and delivery couriers, Postmates introduced a delivery option where the outside the door like a stork with a baby. Instacart did something similar as well. If there’s any time to be of a startup, it’s today. Innovate on a current solution or think about how things can be changed in the business to suit the environment today. delivery courier places a food order more Ultimately, startups that can endure these hardships will eventually emerge victorious. As , a General Partner at SOSV, puts it: “It is the cockroaches, the survivors, who can really take advantage of this tough environment that will build the next generation of leaders.” William Bao Bean COVID-19 has been nothing but gloom and doom for not just companies, but societies as well. Nationwide lockdowns, draconian social measures, and companies struggling to work remotely are all risk factors. It will be difficult for companies to climb out of this if they are in already. Hence, it’s a good time to be extremely negative with their numbers: don’t massage the financial sheets, and mark everything down by a notch. That way, even if the worst happens, startups can at least say that they saw this coming a long time ago—then react accordingly.

Takeaways from Sequoia Capital's Black Swan Memo

Founder Interview Please welcome Chris Messina to Hacker Noon! Chris is internet famous for inventing the hashtag, and his new company, Molly.com , is more than MDMA’s namesake. It was great to learn more about how he sees the internet and why he does the work he does. I hope you enjoy, and if you have another question for Chris, you can ask him on Molly :-) David : Molly’s been described as a “automated, 24–7 AMA service.” How much of the product/service is aggregating content you put out on the internet versus actually writing new content about the content you put out on the internet? : Molly is still in her early infancy, and we want to provide a service that is straightforward and useful before we get too fancy by generating answers on behalf of people. To begin, we want to make it easy and enjoyable for Molly users to ask and answer questions directly, in their own words. At the same time, we believe that many answers to the questions that people have are already public and available on the social web, but are hard to find or are inconveniently spread across a number of platforms. Therefore, we encourage our users to connect to third party platforms like Medium, Twitter, Instagram, and others — so that we can automatically pull up content that Molly thinks might be related, or might help provide more context. Chris We have a long way to go to improve the relevance of some of these supporting results, but already we’re seeing thematic connections emerge across what were previously disconnected media sources… for example, a lot of people want to know about how Ryan Hoover built Product Hunt’s vibrant community, and , we automatically surface YouTube videos and podcasts he’s produced that allow the viewer to go much deeper into his thoughts and experience. in his answer on Molly Molly has major personal branding implications. Personalities could in theory be interactive and accessible without the person spending the time to communicate… As more AI shapes brand interactions, how will authenticity be maintained? Authenticity is closely connected with trust, and trust is a measure of consistency, predictability, and evolution across changing circumstances. Authenticity, therefore, is incredibly important in establishing, building, and maintaining human relationships over time. While, yes, we see a world in which AI counterparts like Molly can act and answer questions on behalf of people, they are not substitutes for the real thing as they lack qualities that make humans so interesting and so confounding. To draw a crude analogy, if the car is a massive evolution in the capabilities of a bicycle (mobility, range, protection from the elements, capacity, etc), an interactive, personalized, and adaptive service like Molly will become a massive evolution over email vacation auto-responders, away messages, or phone answering machines — rather than a replacement for a person. Throughout time, people have always found themselves too busy or unable to get meet all the demands for their attention; Molly is an attempt to give people more focus on the interactions and connections that matter to them by taking care of some of the more rote or tedious requests for information that’s already been shared. In the answers that Molly generates, the voice of the individual should persist and be maintained. She simply augments the ability of the individual to marshall the efforts and energy they’ve spent in the past to meet the demands of the present. A first name dotcom! That’s awesome. How much did Molly.com cost? Or if you can’t say the amount, can you share some details from the negotiation process for such a valuable property? We can’t disclose how much we paid for the domain, but that’s actually the least interesting aspect of the story of how we ended up with molly.com. It turns out that the domain had been owned by one woman since the 90’s — . Molly is one of the first web standards pioneers and has spent her career advocating on behalf of the open web, among other things. I met Molly many many years ago through the web standards community and felt a kinship in our values and ideals about what the web represents as an open and free platform for publishing. We had already come up with the name Molly and so I thought — what the heck?, why not reach out and tell Molly about what we’re up to and see, in the off chance, if she might be interested in helping out? Molly Holzschlag After we told her our story and the problem that we were interested in addressing, she loved the idea and graciously agreed to let us use the domain for a fair price. Given how personal this story is, and in honor of Molly’s contributions to the web platform itself, we’re proud to be able to share her story and her symbolic contribution to what we’re doing now. Molly’s homepage has some of the who’s who of personal branding in tech ( Michael Seibel , Nisha Dua , Gary Vaynerchuk , Ryan Hoover , etc). Could you share a bit about who’s invested in Molly and who’s building Molly ? Our current investors include Betaworks, BBG Ventures, Crunchfund, Halogen Ventures, Y Combinator and a few strategic angels. The Molly team is made up of three co-founders and a few remote engineers — definitely a scrappy crew considering we’ve built products on web, iOS, Messenger, SMS, as well as an Alexa skill in the relatively short period we’ve been working on this! My background is in product design, UX, developer platforms, and building online communities. I spent several years at Google working on their APIs and social platform, and then a year at Uber where I lead developer experience. was one of the first YouTube stars and translated that success into a successful consultancy helping large CPG brands find their online audiences. Later she helped smaller startups find their voice. has been hacking since he was six and has spent a lot of time working at startups and running machine learning projects related to personality and psychographics. Esther Ethan What’s Molly’s long-term vision? Molly will be one of the first brands of the conversational computing era. By learning about the kinds of questions people ask each other and how they answer, she will be a resource that people consult when they want to learn about others or recall information that they may have forgotten. She will be one of the first post-feed, post-camera social agent platforms on the internet. What are Molly’s KPIs and short term goals? We’re primarily chasing after product-market fit right now — seeking engagement, utility, and helping Molly’s first users answer the questions that their friends and fans have for them. We want to encourage curiosity and learning about people’s experiences and perspectives — in fun, efficient, and creative ways. In terms of short term goals, let me draw an analogy: if you think back to the era of landlines telephones, one of the inventions that made it easier to stay connected without having to be stuck by the receiver was the answering machine. Indeed, in the era of AOL Instant Messenger and other chat services, we had the Away Message, and now in iOS there’s the Do Not Disturb and Do Not Disturb While Driving modes. These are all useful ways to respond to someone that needs or wants your attention when you don’t have any to offer, or would prefer to get back to them later. But they’re also very dumb. We believe that there’s already a lot of useful information that people often want to know about you that’s already available to them, but it’s just too hard for them to find it easily, quickly, or in a context that they’d think or know to look in. For example, if you wanted to know whether I like green tea or not before you invite me to meet at Samovar, you can ask Molly, and , you can see from the Instagram photos and tweets that Molly found that indeed, I’ve certainly had some good looking green tea before! even though I haven’t specifically answered that question before I didn’t have to do anything extra for Molly to learn this information — she pulled it out my public archive of photos and tweets that I previously shared. In the short term, we think that Molly can answer these and many other questions that you otherwise wouldn’t bother to ask, simply because the likelihood of getting a satisfying answer would be too low. The cost of asking these kinds of curiosity-driven questions (or even those that are pragmatic, i.e. about what kind of beverage to meet up for is) is too high, and we’re going to use AI, good product design, and emerging conversational interfaces to help lower those costs so that we can have our personal curiosities satisfied more quickly and easily than before. Are you concerned or excited about the branding overlap with the other Molly (MDMA)? We named our company Molly for several reasons: In the era of conversational brands, “billboard brand names” like Clorox and Duracell don’t work as well — you don’t really want to talk to them. This is one reason why, I’d wager, that Alexa has such an edge over the Google Assistant — it’s more natural to say out loud “Alexa, what’s the weather today?” than “Ok Google, what’s the weather?” The latter is simply more robotic and forced. “Molly”, meanwhile, is clearly a name that you’d call someone by. It’s friendly. When it comes to talking to Molly (say, via a voice or messaging interface), it’ll feel… . normal Another reason why Molly is a good name for our brand is recall. I install all kinds of apps and have enabled dozens of skills, but remembering the name of each one is incredibly challenging. We think that using a name like Molly makes it easier to remember her. The connection to MDMA isn’t lost on us, and the connection is also not unintentional. But while many people only think of MDMA as party drug, we’re thrilled that last year. This year we’re going to see the first , and presuming they’re successful, will help to lessen the stigma associated with this substance. The effects of MDMA have been well documented and suggest a powerful ability to create deep empathy, connection, and understanding between people — and that’s absolutely an inspiration for the kind of effects we hope our products might create. MDMA was recognized as a “breakthrough therapy” for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) FDA-approved Phase III trials of MDMA to treat patients with severe PTSD How far down the AI writing original content rabbit hole will Molly go? We imagine a time when Molly will be able to synthesize answers on behalf of people, but that day is not today. We are already experimenting internally with different approaches to answer generation based on recent machine learning techniques, but the state of the art is still immature and prone to error, due to the complex nature in how humans form questions. A step towards what you’re suggesting is Molly suggesting relevant media or content that you’ve shared with her and she helps you to assemble an answer. For example, if someone asks you what your favorite book of 2017 was, Molly could show you all the books you’ve read to help you remember. Down the road, we’ll be able to highlight snippets of content that you’ve previously written or shared that might also answer the question — offering a kind of beefed up, personalized autosuggest tool. There’s already a tool in our alpha iOS app called “Ask Molly” that attempts to offer content to you to help you answer questions that you receive — but it’s rather limited so far. In these early days, we’re spending a lot of effort figuring out how to consume content that people have published online and making sense of it, so we can repurpose it to answer questions automatically. As we get better at understanding the kinds of questions people ask and what typical responses look like, we’ll be able to automate more. For the near term, though, it’s going to be important to keep a human (you!) in the loop until we start composing original answers on your behalf, in your voice. You invented the hashtag, launch tons of product, helped scale Mozilla, headed key roles at Goole & Uber and now you’re founding another tech company — where do you find the time? Can you walk us through what tasks you did over the last week in your work life? It’s funny — day to day I feel pretty easily distractible and not that productive (just ask my colleagues, and they’ll confirm this!). That said, when I get into something, I really get in to it, and I tend to the thing that I’m pursuing. I’ll give you a high level sense for a typical week — which admittedly is somewhat unusual because we’re at the tail end of Y Combinator’s Winter ’18 batch: become Hunted half a dozen new products (including a few YC batchmates!) Got some by Molly over at The Ringer great coverage on Molly Invited 1000 people to the brand new Molly community on Discord Tweaked the design of our answer cards Designed our Twitter answer embeds ( ) example Designed and produced a bunch of animated Twitter promo cards ( ) example Attended an afternoon + evening YC event Attended a book launch lunch event with Chris Hughes (co-founder of Facebook) Attended a Designer Fund/YC design workshop Tweeted a bunch Otherwise did a bunch of outreach to a lot of the first Molly users — gathering feedback, tracking down and filing bugs, backfilling content (interviews, AMAs, etc) and otherwise making small design and UI improvements I’m sure there was more — but that covers some of the highlights! AI in text based communication is growing like crazy. I think it’s about to blow up customer service. In the future (say 5 or so years), what percentage of text based customer service/support do you think will be powered by AI? I don’t know if that’s exactly the right way to frame that question, although I agree with your general assertion. A better way is to ask: what experiences are humans really good at creating that machines aren’t, and which jobs can machines be trained to do better? My hope (though we’ll see how it plays out) is that humans and machines can become better collaborators, focusing on what each does uniquely well. In that light, 100% of customer service and support can be assisted by AI in the future, but that doesn’t mean that 0% of those tasks will be handled by humans. In fact, I think there’s an entirely new domain that will emerge in this space that I call “relationship design”, and it goes beyond just mapping the customer journey and addressing pain points… it really requires an entirely new way to envision the relationships that people have with brands — as extensions and augmentations of themselves. AI will absolutely be part of that trend, but so will human curated experiences, insights, and creative innovations. It’s wild that you changed the dictionary. “Inventor of the Hashtag.” If you could invent another word internet function and have others adopt it, what would it be and why? Ha! Well… I tried! In 2009, two years after I proposed the hashtag, I proposed . The idea was simple enough: “separate the meta from the meat” — i.e. add helpful information about your content to the end of your tweet, to make it easier to read and connect with people. A few friends use them, but they never really took off. Still, to this day, you see people really scatter hashtags all over their content, especially on Instagram, and it just makes it harder to read what could otherwise be simple and straightforward text. So — I think it’d be cool if more people adopted the behavior, but it’s not quite a widespread or painful enough problem to really catch on. another convention call the “slashtag” Also, we’re now in the era of visual and aural communication — so things like stickers, GIFs, amoji, voice recordings, and the like are crowding out the written word for some users… in order to influence the semiotics of a generation at this point I think you’d have to focus on multimedia rather than text. You’ve hunted 1,468 products on Product Hunt. What’s the most common misconception about how to launch products? It may seem obvious, but it’s really important for makers to engage the Product Hunt community with the story of why a product exists, what problem it’s trying to solve, how it solves it, and why that solution is meaningful or important to the maker. I mean, it should be common knowledge, but people are attracted to and compelled by stories they can relate to more than they are by ideas alone. The more that your product fits into a known, familiar, or relatable narrative — the more like I think you’ve got a chance to perform well when you’re hunted. If you could change anything about how the internet functions today, what would it be? This may sound funny — but I kind of wish that people had to look at a mirror when they published online. Like, there’s research that shows that putting mirrors in department stores deters shoplifting because it causes people to think twice about their actions because suddenly they’re confronted with an image of themselves that they don’t like. The internet has become a pretty hostile environment — and it makes it hard to have meaningful and useful conversations that reveal commonality and connection. Rather than starting with trying to merely improve the connection between people, I think if we improved and strengthened the connection that people have with themselves and their behavior, some of what made the early social web so great and fulfilling might be restored. Learn more at & ask Chris your own question at . Molly.com Molly.com/Chris

How Chris Messina Works, and What’s the Future of AMAs?

This article was originally published on the Mindtribe blog . By Tom Hsiu, Director- Program Operations, Mindtribe . Technology now touches every industry. Increasingly, consumers and customers are looking for tactile or connected experiences that require hardware innovations or a standalone hardware product. From Clorox to Ikea, Adobe to Johnson and Johnson, companies are experimenting with connected devices. However, many of the world’s largest companies have zero experience in building hardware, even as they contemplate adding a hardware component to their portfolio of products. So how should a company that is in a traditionally non-tech, non-hardware space get started? At Mindtribe, we’ve worked with hundreds of companies, including dozens of Fortune 500s. We’ve seen hardware efforts take many different shapes. Below are the most common approaches we’ve seen successfully employed: OPTION A: LEVERAGE EXISTING HARDWARE BY PARTNERING WITH AN OEM OR ODM An OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) already has a catalog of products they have developed and manufacture. If one of these products matches, or nearly matches, your hardware needs, then the OEM can quickly rebrand the product or slightly customize it to your requirements. ODMs (Original Design Manufacturer), on the other hand, are like OEMs except that they offer more in house engineering capabilities and can do more complex customization. In order to work with an OEM or ODM, a Fortune 500 company would still need to build out an in-house team to manage the project (though this team would be much smaller than if the hardware were being developed from scratch). The internal team could include project management, operations, product security, support, regulatory, and some backend engineers for working with the OEM to integrate any services with existing data systems. Pure Digital, creator of Flip Video, utilized OEMs for their early “disposable” digital camera service. They did not develop those cameras from scratch, but leveraged OEMs to source their branded cameras. OPTION B: LEVERAGE EXISTING HARDWARE BY PARTNERING WITH A HARDWARE STARTUP With this strategy, Fortune 500 companies can license hardware sold by an existing company (often a startup that is focused solely on developing that innovative product) and co-brand or rebrand it as their own. Often, this hardware partner may even take care of manufacturing ramp-ups and product support — both of which are non-trivial efforts that would otherwise take an internal operations team. A startup hardware company will also have already developed the product ecosystem, including the backend and service models. However, a startup company’s product is often new and unproven, with innovation being central to its success. If the partnership goes well, you can move towards an acquisition. Such acquisitions are generally strategic in scope and should fit within the company’s longer-term vision. For these sorts of transactions, financial and legal experts are key to the process. Most Fortune 500 companies will be familiar with the leading of such services. Google took this approach when they acquired Nest and Cisco took a similar route when buying Linksys. providers OPTION C: BUILD FROM SCRATCH BY HIRING ENGINEERING AND PRODUCT CONSULTANTS An engineering and product consultancy can help a large company build a brand new, innovative product. New-to-the-world products that define an industry require new forms of engineering and exploring unproven aspects of hardware. A consultancy is accustomed to exploring new technologies and solidifying nascent product ideas. Consultancies can also help jump start your internal team development by being your initial team while helping you hire your internal team and then phasing out as your internal team grows. Mindtribe assisted Square and Tesla in this manner when their hardware teams were still small. OPTION D: BUILD FROM SCRATCH BY HIRING YOUR OWN INTERNAL TEAM An internal engineering and product innovation team can help a Fortune 500 company explore ideas, prototype, and better understand what products can feasibly be built and model how they might affect the business’ bottom line. In conclusion, there are a handful of ways for large companies to build a hardware product that aligns with their goals and long-term vision. Each option should be carefully weighed — there are always tradeoffs to be made — but inaction produces zero results. As a growing proportion of companies leverage technology to better serve their customers, hardware will increasingly play a pivotal role in enhancing user delight and product utility.

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