New leaders arising and do we really know them?
3-in-1: 3 digital news in 1 minute. On Monday. Episode 203
1.374 subscribers on Messenger follow these Monday news. Now on Medium. Discover 3 original digital news, invest one minute and be a better professional!
News 1: B2B giant Shopify goes B2C
Shopify is the #1 e-commerce framework on which many e-shops are based. Now, for the first time, Shopify offers an app directly for consumers called “Shop”. It features local merchant search, payment (Shop Pay), recommendations and tracking (Arrive). Pay and Arrive are already available on Shopify white-label. Opinion: This is a major news and a valid alternative to Amazon or Ebay. But is Shopify solid enough to advertise, push, seduce million of consumers to use the Shop app? Or is the launch pure PR for good news on sluggish stock markets? B2B Takeout: Canadian Shopify is an “hidden champion” with a strong position in e-commerce, a complete suite of features for any business wanting to open an online shop. Not visible because they don’t have a “pure” version. Now they have Shop. Let’s try it!
News 2: Cerence, a leader in AI. What?
Cerence is a spin-off of Nuance, the historical speech recognition player. It is specialised in voice recognition, AI-based in cars. Fiat-Chrysler selected Cerence as basis of its assistant in all cars. Cerence provides with an SDK, the so-called ARK (AI Reference Kit) to build custom robot conversations. Opinion: Remember Dragon CD-Rom? The first speech recognition software for the masses by Nuance (Boston-based). Nuance built its growth by acquisitions, and weak in AI-engineering. Cerence was the solution: spinn-off applications for the automotive sector and gather all AI talents behind it. B2B Takeout: Voice recognition and AI-based assistants are lagging behind in cars. Car makers are under pressure to catch up but would not take on software from tech giants like Google — hence Cerence as a software-only kit alternative.
News 3: Onfido ID grows and grows
Onfido software compares ID-cards with user faces for identification — an exercise solved by AI (deep learning). The London-based start-up Onfido gets a supplementary 100m USD in Series D. A steady growth of support for the ID specialist. Opinion: Onfido is kind of “the perfect start-up”: clear service (ID), B2B, for several industries, good developer set-up (API, SDK) and solid investors (TPG and in former rounds Salesforce Ventures). B2B Takeout: Typical story of a start-up for Onfido with 3 former students of Oxford University launching Onfido in 2012 and steadily growing the start-up.
Authors are the 10 trend scouters at Space and Lemon, always on the hunt for the newest trends in tech and digital. Gathered here in original weekly news since 2016 — no re-write of TechCrunch, always with an opinion and B2B takeout. Come back next Monday and share your opinion.
