Securing Mobility
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| SKT at MWC2019 |
Last year SK telecom announced our True Innovation program (www.true-inno.com) at MWC. True Innovation was founded to make collaborations with SK telecom fast and effective, whether you are a large technology-driven company or an innovative startup. In our first year, we had several successful collaborations in Korea and with global partners.
But more about True Innovation's inaugural year accolades later, having just returned from MWC '19 I wanted to share one of those collaborations in particular: our V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) Secure Central Gateway. As one of the founding members of True Innovation, I was personally inspired by the overwhelming interest this collaboration received from some of the world's leading auto manufacturers, mobility service operators, and tier-one suppliers. Based on the feedback from several industry insiders, it's fair to claim the V2X Secure Central Gateway is several years ahead of the competition.
The collaboration combines the innovative prowess of two of Korea's high-profile startups Gint and FESCARO, as well as SK telecom's subsidiary ID Quantique. In addition to representing a technological breakthrough for mobility, the collaboration is a symbolic culmination of the past 12 months as both Gint and FESCARO came through SparkLabs, True Innovation's strategic launch partner and Korea's No. 1 Accelerator; while SK telecom also announced the acquisition of IDQ at MWC last year.
The V2X Gateway ensures the safety of passengers by monitoring in-vehicle networks (called CAN buses) in real-time and without omissions for abnormalities. If any unusual activity is detected, this is immediately sent to the cloud where it is analyzed along with information from every other vehicle in the fleet to determine if it is a security threat, and to determine an appropriate course of action. The gateway encrypts both the in-vehicle networks as well as end-to-end communication between the gateway and the cloud, enabling features such as initiating emergency calls, or secure OTA (over-the-air) updates.
Will We Live Forever?
The future is bleak or brilliant depending on who you ask. Whether you consider the displacement of hundreds of millions of people due to rising sea levels, or droughts so severe they force us to abandon entire cities, or food shortages, or the extinction of bees. The list of dystopian outcomes to our collective failure to resolve the most important challenges facing our species is long and intimidating.
Providing a contrary view, futurists like Ray Kurzweil, pioneering entrepreneurs like Peter Diamandis, or visionary researchers like Aubrey De Grey, and ordinary folks like yours truly believe we have a lot to look forward to. Enough to want to live forever, or at least a really long time.
Is this possible? Is it just a dream deferred from a pioneering generation of western yogis and siddhas and vegans? A misplaced optimism instilled in the children of baby boomers throughout western civilization? Can we really live forever?
All Cataclysms Held Constant A Doomsday Lurks
If we hadn’t brought the environment to the brink; if we hadn’t rationalised the deployment of nuclear weapons; if we hadn’t socialised (in the USA that’s subsidize) industries that undermine natural alternatives to chemicals, plastics, coal, oil, etc; if we had been a perfect inhabitant of Earth… we would still be doomed.
Antibiotics have saved lives, tens-of-millions of lives. Penicillin alone is attributed with saving more than 200 million lives. Microbial diseases which plagued families, killing or disabling untold millions of children, have been… well, cured. Today we hardly think of pneumonia or meningitis as life-threatening, and most diseases mean a day-off from work for additional bed rest, tea, and a regimen of antibiotic medicines.
But those days are numbered, the bugs are evolving. As early as 2005 researchers estimated 4% of hospital deaths were caused by antibiotic resistant disease. 25,000 people died a couple of years ago in Europe due to antibiotic resistance strains of disease causing bacteria. More than 10 million people could die each year due to antibiotic resistant disease according to some estimates. Pneumonia, Gonorrhea, Tuberculosis have the potential to be resurgent killers to name a few. In addition to disease, common life-saving procedures become impossible (or life-threatening) when antibiotics fail such as transplant surgery, a burst appendix.
Are we really on the verge of losing our gains in extending life and greatly improving its quality? If we are entering a post-antibiotic era than it seems likely.
Dirt And "Bones"
Doomsday scenarios are both relevant and critical to mobilising people to innovate new ways to cure disease and extend life, and they are successful at doing just that. There is hope, in dirt and "Bones."
First, dirt. More than 10 billion bacteria and fungi live in a single gram of soil. Penicillin comes from one of these, as well as “many other well-known antibiotics.” The challenges has been how to discover new antibiotics from this abundance of microbial life. In fact all the medical achievements of antibiotics have come from just 1% soil bacteria. 99% remains to be explored, and if that is any indication of future discoveries (fingers-crossed) we should be able to combat antibiotic resistance for hundreds of years. Imagine 100 years of drugs without resistance for each 1% of soil we explore… doomsday seems really far away.
A new technology called iChip promises to deliver hundreds if not thousands of new antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-virals, anti-cancer agents, and immunosuppressives. This simple innovation has inspired “citizen scientists” to submit dirt samples from around the United States, soon the world. Combinatory innovation at its finest, a simple new device for sampling dirt combined with unprecedented connectivity to crowdsource new soil samples, thereby exponentially accelerating the process of discovery. Undoubtedly we will have to reform regulatory bodies to facilitate new drugs to become commercialized more efficiently.
So we will overcome resistance, can we live forwever? Well, it is a key part to extending life. There are additional advances in other types of treatments, prevention, and procedures which will help us achieve immortality.
Diagnosis by a medical doctor are only correct 55% of the time, according to the team at Tricorder X Prize, sponsored by Qualcomm. And that’s after you wait 3 weeks to see your doctor, feeling sick and getting worse. Often we are forced to take higher doses of medications to combat diseases that have fester for weeks, and nearly half the time we are being treated for the wrong condition.
Enter “Bones,” Doctor McCoy from Star Trek. Among the new procedures on the verge of emerging from sci-fi lore to real-life are diagnostic tools that promise to make anyone with a smartphone a better diagnostician than a medical doctor. The famed character from Star Trek has inspired inventors to create the solution, a real-life tricorder that can diagnose up to 21 conditions including vital signs, allergens, TB, stroke, and more. The prize has existed for about 3 years, and today there are 10 finalists competing for $10 million. It may be unlikely that any of these companies succeed to diagnosis all 21 conditions this year, but within 5 years it is conceivable our ability to treat disease will radically change.
Will We Live Forever
Undoubtedly there are challenges ahead of us, but the rate of innovation… rather that speed at which sci-fiction is becoming reality… gives us much to be hopeful for. The next gen tricorder could even administer treatments, using programmable nanites. Not to mention regeneration to replace failing organs… but will we live forever?
Maybe, if we can effectively extend life to 95. Some researchers have found that aging effectively stops after 95 years old, and today billions of dollars are being invested to understand how. But living forever at 95 doesn’t sound appealing next to living forever at 25, so researches like Aubrey De Grey are trying to understand if it be stopped sooner. The techno-philanthropists of Silicon Valley including Larry Page, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, are all invested in efforts like the Palo Alto Longevity Prize and ventures like Calico.
In other words, it is entirely possible that a healthy person today could live significantly longer, and that the first person to live to 1000 years old has already been born. Assuming other calamities don’t end your life, the potential you will live well into your hundreds seems pretty good. Indefinite supplies of effective antibiotics and other treatments, dramatically improved diagnostics, and a host of new tech like nanotechnology, bionics, and regeneration mean that we will at least live long enough to know for certain whether or not we can turn-off aging indefinitely.
Amazon's future could be acquisition...
Well, it's a gloomy Monday but don't let the weather keep you down. It just means some makeoli and Korean seafood pancakes are waiting for you somewhere. ;-)
Last week most of us witnessed Amazon's unveiling of the new Prime Delivery drones. Bezos says the service will be running in 4-5 years, despite the challenges and many skeptic reviewers it is entirely possible that will happen. The doubters claim three major issues: vandalism, safety, and theft.
The real BIG THREE challenges have nothing to do with these challenges (which anyone with a mild imagination can figure out how to solve). Rolling out a drone delivery network takes... well, first a (1) NETWORK! Creating any kind of network, software or hardware, is not small task and requires lot's of really smart and creative folks from all levels of abstraction to get down. The next REALLY BIG challenge is the (2) OS. What will run these systems? Android? Not likely. Which leads me to the FINAL BIG challenge, the (3) battery. Even if you manage to get the right network, and the right OS... you still need a battery -- of course, if you read my email about Graphene you might not consider this to great a challenge!
Enter... the entrepreneur.
Matternet is an awesome startup that will be either the next big platform or, at the very least, a significant acquisition down the road. Backed by Andreesen Horowitz (two guys who have a knack for early-stage investing I'd say) the company is rolling out it's network where the walled gardens have the North can happily get involved... Africa. How do you convince an unwilling populace to adopt the technology? Make it about helping people (since it is ultimately anyway!). How do you get your medicine in 30min instead of 5 days? Drones.
The company was founded way back in 2011, and has since developed it's first drone which can carry a small package. Their ultimate goal is to deploy delivery drones which can carry up to 1000kg.
Enjoy... and BTW if you're from Seoul watch the video for a neat surprise.
https://mttr.net
Bio-hacking, the end of Jolt, and the future of retail
A few years ago I wrote a short essay about “Flow” and how the ideas in that book apply to a world where mobile computing enhances every moment of our lives. I never published it or anything, just showed it to a few friends. However, I did mention those ideas in my first post this year where I said that photo-sharing apps (and other “time-wasters”) are giving people a false sense of productivity and hence happiness.
My point is that mobile computing is going to make us happier, assuming Mihaly’s book is true. We can maximize the output of our day, improving our knowledge about things that interest us, and also ourselves. Apps that allow us to track (or check-in) to routines or habits -- like Lift, backed by Evan Williams -- are becoming very common and fairly popular. Even smarter tools like the products Nike has been pumping out for iOS users, or some of the new health care applications that can track all sorts of data about your body, are getting enough traction today that one can easily envision them becoming part of mainstream medicine within a few years.
Bio-Hacking
Along with all this new technology, an avalanche of information about diet and health has been hitting the bookstores and blogs for the past decade. And it’s only getting better/worse(?). One of my favorite sites, the bulletproof executive, comes right out and says they update the site every few months at new breakthroughs occur (and are hopefully confirmed). This trend have a new name, that’s “bio-hacking” or the idea of hacking our own bodies to improve productivity at home, at work, in the bedroom, on the field, etc.
Are the days of Jolt-powered nerds at an end? It looks like it, sort-of. While there will always be the more cosmopolitan nerd who craves espresso romano, wine, and gourmet cheese -- yours truly ;-) -- the impact of a new generation of super-nerds who are hacking software AND their bodies could be something incredible. Most people will go through a super bio-hacking phase, and return to a better (though not totally ideal) lifestyle. However, the interest in itself means we’ll see more and more software integrating with our lifestyle goals, helping us overcome craving for example, or somehow infusing us with positive reinforcement when embarking on the challenging endeavor to break.. um create new habits.
How this will impact marketing
Data will become more accurate and more specific, of course. Imagine we have these really awesome applications which “speak” to machines at retail shops, and instead of promoting whatever junk-food is the craze… it knows we are on diet (it should even know what our streak is) and it recommends we purchase items that support that diet. Great right!? Furthermore, with the right technology installed at the store your software could be alert when you veer too close to say… the ice-cream, sending some kind of notification that “hey, you should get some apples” or “if you are craving something cold and sweet, why not a fruit popsicle!” You get the idea.
This could transform the image of many retailers, and could really improve the happiness of millions.
Investing In Education
Investment in education startups has boomed since early 2012, with a range of investors pumping in more than $1B into companies and funds. The number of investors in the space is staggering, even Ashton Kutcher is hip on Ed Tech with an investment in Y-Combinator graduate Clever back in 2012.
While Paul Graham’s Y-Combinator has worked with only a few Ed Tech start-ups (other than Clever), a cohort of new incubators and accelerators focusing on Ed Tech are emerging, led by Imagine K12.
Imagine K12
Decades ago schools spent millions on technology (CD ROMs galore), but nothing really changed… just the medium. Today everything from publishing to management systems are up for grabs. Imagine K12 is looking to grow the companies of the future in the space, becoming the first incubator for Ed Tech to support entrepreneurs who all share a vision for truly impactful technology innovation for education.
Founded by a few big names in Silicon Valley who saw the next wave of school reform as Ed Tech’s new moment, Imagine K12 graduated their first cohort in 2011. Their portfolio includes hapara, NoRedInk, LearnSprout, Class Dojo, Bloomboard, and so many more. Awesome.
The “Most Active” Investors
While the list of firms and funds investing in Ed Tech is long, there are some standouts. In addition to the new incubators or accelerators focusing on Ed Tech, including Imagine K12, lot's of funds specific-to education exist in addition to older VC firms.
Some of the more active investors in Ed Tech are:
NewSchools Venture Fund
Founded way back in 1998, this fund is unique because it operates as a non-profit. The fund has invested “nearly $180 million” in “more than 100 nonprofit and for-profit organizations” and claims that through its investments reaches 12 million students in the United States. Impressive… most impressive.
Relatively recent investments in companies that I think are pretty neat are edSurge, hapara, and NoRedInk.
500 Startups
So much can be said about 500, it’s pretty much just awesome. Some recent investments in Ed Tech have been MindSnacks, Magoosh, and Motion Math. Looks like 500 is focusing on Game-based Learning and (the cash-cow of education) Test-Prep.
Learn Capital
These guys are rocking Ed Tech, boasting the most impressive portfolio of investments. No kidding, the founders of Learn Captial are seasoned Ed Tech entrepreneurs who have exited several companies to big players like HMH, Marvel.
Investments by Learn Capital are truly press worthy, check out their coverage including Edmodo, Coursera, Udemy, ClassDojo, Kalibrr, and more.
ReThink Education
New York City is in the Ed Tech game too, that’s where ReThink Education is leading the way to east-coast incubation for the next big-win. While a new fund, they have made some exciting investments including Bright Bytes, Education Elements, and Smarterer.
Sequoia Capital
Finally, the world-renowned iconic VC of Silicon Valley. Sequoia has not been too active in Ed Tech. However, they did invest in one of my absolute favorite companies: Inkling.
Inkling has been around for awhile now, having been developing interactive content for education since 2009. You could say they are the leaders in the space.
Getting Buffer
A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to what was then a relatively new service called Buffer. It instantly became one of my favorite applications, since I like to share what I’m reading online but only have a set time during the day when I get most of my reading done. For many people this is a problem because we are in multiple time zones, or because it means we are slamming the network all at once.
Buffer solves this by allowing you to share organically but schedule those tweets or posts to a predetermined schedule on whatever networks I choose. Sounds like Hoot Suite or Tweet Deck, but Buffer is much simpler and feels a lot more like the way I want to share. In other words, this utility really nailed the user experience.
Getting Buffer
Buffer has gotten way buffer since the release of their iOS application -- beefing up on lot's of nice integrations. The once little known web application with a Chrome plugin is now a platform supported by dozens of applications, as well as the big boys Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. According to TNW, Buffer reached 500K users earlier this year and continues to grow. No doubt, since they continue to iterate with new and very useful features like “buffering” retweets for Twitter, and integrating with super products like Feedily.
Filler Features
Buffer does what you have always wished a social media utility to do:
1. Painlessly add stories or your own content to your “buffer” from awesome services like Chrome, Feedily, Twitter (retweets too!), and more.
2. Share them to your network via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn... you can choose which one as you’re adding to your buffer -- some content is appropriate for LinkedIn, others just twitter, etc.
3. Adjust your post schedule to meet your audience’s needs and keep yourself from spamming them with an barrage of posts -- without complicated excel spreadsheets.
4. Killer analytics to better understand your audience.
Buffer Rocks
Buffer has been slowly building an incredible product. I’ve worked with dozens of people (entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs) during the past 3-4 years who focus on 1M downloads, or 10M users, perfecting (identifying?) that killer feature, etc. It’s discouraging. Sure, those are important milestones, but the focus both early-on and for the long-term must be on building a great product.
Buffer should be praised for their resilience and for remaining focused on building a great product, that people want to pay for. They nailed the user experience, building a useful product that their target audience loves.
TNW interviewed Buffer’s CEO Joel Gascoigne, you should check it out! He really nailed the pain points of professionals who want to -- or have to -- keep up with their social media but just have 15-30 minutes in the morning or evening to really focus on trends in their field.
Buffer is your elixir. If you aren’t using it yet, best start now!
The Future Of The Cloud? The Crowd.
Iran isn't the only one launching monkeys to space these days. Launch Festival 2012 winner of best startup, Space Monkey, finally launched last month on Kickstarter. Boy I’m so excited and so should you!
What Clouds Are You On?
For most people, the cloud is an amorphous thing that exists somewhere online. In reality, the cloud services consumers use (i.e. Dropbox, iCloud, etc) are supported by massive data centers and enterprise software built and operated by Amazon, IBM, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and a host of companies you've probably never heard of. New players are entering the Big Data fray too, such as VMWare, whose data centers are scheduled to go live next month in a few US states (more locations coming soon).
While most people have at least heard of Dropbox, the Big Data vendors are where the real monkey is. An open source professional community called Wikibon published a list of Big Data vendors, along with their revenues which exceeded $11B in 2012. Gigaom reported that IDC forecasts Big Data revenue will reach upwards of $70B... or $20B by 2017 -- um, yeah they’re not sure, it's “like herding cats."
Anyway, according to the Wikibon community, these companies should have a 31% compound growth rate for the period of 2012 - 2017. Holy Cow! Indeed, we are all moving to the cloud. What’s next, outer space? Sort of.
Monkeys Astronauts Are Everywhere!
Most cloud services are built on these massive Big Data vendors, and the migration to cloud based computing means these vendors are building new data centers in rural (supposed secure) locations in the rural United States and elsewhere everyday. However, two guys set out to change the way we do we use the cloud.
Space Monkey has a different vision for the cloud, and it starts with you. When you subscribe to the service you get a 2TB storage device. This device (which looks really awesome - btw) is connected to all the other Space Monkeys in the world, each sharing 1TB or 50% of the storage space available to distribute the data across the Space Monkey network.
Sounds like it would be hard to do right? Well, the device itself is apparently not that complicated... but the founders are geniuses so no kidding! The really amazing part of this company is not just the technology though, it is they are really building a distributed storage network with real users. While Dropbox and other cloud services are forking out cash to rent space at Amazon’s (et al) data centers, Space Monkey is building a crowd-based data center where each user is contributing to the total capacity and efficiency of the service.
Is It Better?
Ten Times Better. They don’t have to lease from Big Data vendors so Space Monkey can offer x10 more storage for a fraction of the price. Don’t believe me?
1TB of storage on Google Drive will run you $50 per month. Dropbox... forget about it. When you sign-up for Space Monkey, you get a 1TB for $10 per month... $120 per year. Plus you get this really rad looking device to show-off to your friends. The user experience is way better too, since you can store everything virtually without taking up precious space on your local disk. Basically you can afford to have enough storage where backing up and storing files you can access from anywhere is a totally pain-free experience.
… There Is Another
Interestingly, all the hype around Space Monkey has overshadowed a very similar product.
Symform also offers a new type of cloud that also leverages distributed data storage in a similar way to Space Monkey (or kind of like torrents actually). Symform allows you to use your local hard drive to contribute to the cloud community, and offers a really unique pricing scheme. 10GB is free, and you get 1GB for every 2GB you donate. Cool!
Getting Beta Users
Building in the wild. While in SV this term got tossed around a lot, so what is it? Basically it just refers to the fact that most of the time you won’t get it right the first time. You have to get feedback. Beta testing is a great way to do that, some would say it’s essential.
Why You Should Beta
If your service is released as a beta, you get to say sorry. People who signup for your beta will assume your product is a work-in-progress, provide you with feedback on features and brand choices, and forgive all the bugs and errors and system crashes along the way.
In fact, if your service is not bulletproof you should release as a beta, or else. While many product teams tell themselves “well, so it crashes; everyone crashes at first,” that is not the way consumers see it. Only 16% of users will try an app more than once if it crashes... that means MORE THAN 80 PERCENT will ignore you forever if you fail. So please, go beta if you think you are going to crash.
Finally, when you work in a bubble your ability to observe objectively becomes hindered. People tend to reinforce bias in each other, you could call it group bias. This can even lead to members of a group to ostracize those with dissenting opinions. Getting objective feedback from users solves all this. No one can argue with the market, the idea sticks or it doesn’t . Of course, that assumes you recieve objective feedback... so how do you do that?
How To Beta
There are several resources that can help get beta users. However, there are several important things to keep in mind before you start.
1. Know how much you can spend. You have to assume the cost of future iterations, as well as the value of any users you acquire. If you get all this great feedback and can’t capitalize on it by improving your product, well you’ll have to start begging for money. Anyway, if you’re beta you shouldn’t be spending a lot of money on marketing. Wait until you have a sticky product.
2. Be sure you have a way to engage with users. Believe it or not, I’ve seen people set up services and have no means to engage with users. No email, no social media, it’s really incredible. Trust me, it’s not an ideal situation. To set up your beta, you can try a landing page host like Unbounce Pages, or Launchrock. These services will collect contact information for you. Better yet, integrate with Mail Chimp and really stay engaged with autoresponders and lot’s of other valuable bells-and-whistles.
Acquiring Beta Users
The easiest tool is you. Go to Meetup.com and find events where your target users exist. Show them your prototype and ask them to signup. They will also tell you how cool it is, and if they mean it they won’t mind signing up on the spot... so ask them to. If you get to know the organizers of a group or event, then ask them how you can participate. Offer your help and be sincere, eventually it will pay off. Organizers will appreciate your efforts and will promote your little beta, or give you the chance to as a guest speaker.
Next, use StumbleUpon Paid Discovery to direct targeted users into your acquisition funnel. This is probably the most cost-effective way to promote anything on the web. In one case study, a company got 6000 signups for $0.03 each in one week. OMG that’s cheap! You probably won’t get that good of a deal, but at most you’ll spend about $0.25 for high quality leads. Your retention will be higher if you’ve tested your landing page first (show it to people at meetups, etc), and if you are using Mail Chimp to send people autoresponders and informative email.
Beta listing services are also a good way to promote your product early on. These services let you list your beta with all the fun and fancy you desire: landing page screens, app screens, descriptions, etc. Users will discover your beta there, and try it. Here are a few:
Get Professional Help
The methods above are great because while you’re acquiring beta users you --hopefully-- build some buzz around your product. It’s a beta release, your marketing while improving your product. However, sometimes you just want to test and get it done.
If that’s the case, I recommend Center Code. They offer a variety of “managed testing” for hardware, software, and mobile. There are lots of benefits, and if you don’t have a QA team to support you (do you?) then this is probably a good idea. It’s $3000 to test a mobile app for 2 weeks... which is a real bargain considering the consequences of a buggy launch.
Lessons Learned... R.I.P. Flapon
R.I.P. Flapon... but thanks for the memories.
What now seems like an eternity ago, I graduated from Penn with a MS in Education. I had every intention of getting a second Masters in Korean Language... then entering a global education publisher. I saw the Ed Tech boom coming (it came) and was rearing up to go, planning to spend a few years at Pearson to round-out my skills, then hit the Ed Tech startup scene.
Instead, my wife and I had our first child... the incredible lil' tortuga. My how life can change.
Returning to Korea with every intention of moving on to Hawaii, a friend of mine kept asking me to join his Gangnam startup... "we're gonna be millionaires!" Naturally, I was skeptical. At first I focused on how to get to Hawaii, but it just made more sense to stay. Working with the Founder of a Vancouver-based Ed Tech startup for a few months, my "friend" finally convinced me to join him in his venture.
Truth be told, his over-confidence was a big reason why I eventually joined up. He was my friend, and his burn-rate was ridiculous... he was heading for suicide, figuratively, so I had to help. Anyway, I signed up for a small equity share and the promise of an epic adventure in California... win or lose it would be epic. It was epic.
Flapon actually did pretty well, getting about 80K signups (pretty active too) in just a month. Sure, it wasn't a Pinterest or anything, but we were growing steadily. That was pretty amazing considering everything that was going on internally post launch (epic man, just epic). The twitter account is still up (though inactive) as well as the facebook page.
Sadly, after the "founder" ripped-off everyone (except for maybe one person) including me , a couple of talented developers who worked around the clock, his own cousin, and who knows who else... the "founder" had no idea how to run Flapon and it was taken down. Basically, he'd put in a terrific sum of money (really stupid amount of money) and had not made "the next Facebook." Um, oh well...?
Thanks to Evernote... I still have screenshots! Enjoy ;-)
