Kyle R's Profile

Such a great post Merrill. I can think of numerous times I would have wanted to use DoNotPay in a refund or cancellation case. But I 100% agree that the subscription model would deter a lot of people from making use of the service.

How much of the product operates as fully automated AI vs needing human oversight? What were some of the challenges in training the AI to recognize the various types of claims in order to create the argument for the user?

Thanks Tim for sharing this experience. Has the AI uncovered any major fraud cases since being enacted?

Super interesting post, Julia! How do you think AI in Ag will impact the labor needed in farming? Do you see a drastic reduction coming in the next 10 years? How does the see and spray impact labor in the short term?

Thanks for the great article, Surahbi. I was using Asos the other day and I started to feel some similarities to Threadless. There are just so many options to choose from and everything seemed to be priced similarly. Another interesting tool they have created, in addition to the ones you focused on, is the size recommendation tool. I am not positive, but I am thinking this tool is also powered by data and ML in some way to provide accurate size recommendations. With the tool you answer a series of preference questions like, “how do you like your clothes to fit”. Asos will then recommend which size you should choose for that specific item. For me this added huge value, because I usually avoid buying clothes online in fear they will not fit well. This simple tool gave me the confidence that I was buying something that fit me based on my specific fit preferences. I am imagining this tool also helps Asos build your profile to better recommend products to you.

Thanks for the insight Molefe! I love how Square has used data in a way that is indirectly helping small businesses succeed and has helped reduce some of the biases built into the financial system. Building on Bruno’s point, it would be great if Square could continue building up the data necessary to start providing credit in the informal economies of the world. Do you think this could happen?

The amount of data coming from IoT in the future just seems incredible compared to the data that exists currently. You touched on the seemingly endless opportunities and I am fascinated by The Anything as a Service (XaaS) idea, where industrial equipment manufactures, with products not typically connected, will see MindSphere as a way to increase the value of an already existing product. I am curious to know how many new apps and linked devices are being added on the platform and at what rate? How is Siemens incentivizing developers to build new capabilities?

Great post Marcos! As you described, the platform really does appear to be reducing barriers and making access to mental health services much simpler (and maybe even better than in person?). You mention using data to improve services but I wonder what the limitations are given health care privacy laws like HIPAA and how this will impact their growth

Seems like a great niche platform. My main concern though is the cost for a massage, which seems to me will limit the scale of the platform and make multi-honing high. There is likely a large potential segment of the population who would be interested in massage services, but will look to new lower cost options, such as The Now Massage ($80 for a 50min massage) which is rapidly expanding locations and building a lifestyle/wellness brand. “Self-care is a necessity and not a luxury” is their philosophy. They also offer a subscription model and have the ability to upsell with additional spa services.

Thanks for the article Pranav. Following up on Francisco’s point of users/influencers wanting to monetize themselves on the platform. I see a major flaw inherently in the ephemeral nature of the platform. Users cannot save any of the content they have produced. Compared to a podcast or other ways of building content, Clubhouse does not seem like a place where content creators will gain much return for their time if their content is immediately lost.

I think Stripe adds a ton of value through the services they provide beyond simply facilitating a transaction. But that 2.9% fee based on transaction value seems really high and perhaps likely deter many small businesses. Is the “payment stack” of the various players who take a portion of the transaction at risk of blockchain technologies that simplify and speed up transactions?

The micro-entrepreneur who was already digitally transformed or who could quickly adapt by going digital in the pandemic were huge winners. In a Deloitte report commissioned by Google in 2017, they found that 80% of small businesses in the U.S. were not taking full advantage of the digital tools available to them. The small businesses that were fully optimizing however experienced 2x the revenue growth per employee, experienced 4x the revenue growth over the previous year, and were 3x more likely to have created additional jobs from the year prior. The story of Renato and Veronica is definitely a common pandemic anecdote for those micro-entrepreneurs who were agile enough to take advantage of the digital tools described in the blog post.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/connected-small-businesses.html

Definitely agree that Nintendo has been a winner during the pandemic! I remember playing Animal Crossing as a kid, but when I saw started seeing clips of the game show up in my social media, I was completely surprised to see that the game had taken on a new life in the pandemic. One particular clip I remember seeing was around the time of the election. The Biden/Harris campaign had made their own Animal Crossing campaign headquarters in the game that you could visit. The clip had 5 million views at the time. A video game that manages to serve as a political tool to motivate young people to vote is next level winning.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/18/business/biden-animal-crossing-island-trnd/index.html