AntelopeM's Profile

Hi Tracy! Thanks for the interesting blog post. In echoing some of the previous comments, I see TaskRabbit as primarily a marketplace for errands / chores, connecting labour with those who need it. It would be interesting to understand whether the company has explored partnering with new-age digital startups that could automate some tasks for customers. Through well-negotiated commercial agreements, these could be highly lucrative partnerships, bringing more customers to the automation software startups, and expanding margins for TaskRabbit (A customer needs flight options researched, and wants to identify and book a hotel for a vacation? No need for TaskRabbit to pay the labour cost anymore if they have partnered with a robot company that can essentially do this!).

Hi Ilan! Thanks for the thoughtful article on Salesforce. I think you’ve identified the key success factor here; Salesforce’s ability to offer ancillary services to support IOT platforms and devices will ensure its sustained leadership in the long run. Salesforce has always been a SaaS company, and it has the opportunity here to be the service provider of choice supporting software implementations and maintenance for best-in-class IOT offerings from Google / Amazon / Samsung. Going to service provider route will ensure that Salesforce can participate in an asset-light manner in the large and growing IOT market, without the continuing and expensive and high-risk R&D investments that it would need to develop its own IOT products / software.

Thanks Eugenio for the informative and thoughtful post. I am heartened to learn of Estonia’s success in curbing corruption through eGovernance. The current government in India has also been focused on increasing transparency across the public administrative infrastructure. They have launched a comprehensive initiative to digotize public services through the Digital India programme. Several vocal critics of the government have questioned the wisdom of investing time and valuable public resources in implementing the Digital India initiative, given the apparent dearth of immediate results. However, Estonia serves as a welcome “proof of concept” that transparency through technology can result in superior outcomes for all stakeholders.

Hi AG! Thanks for the interesting post. Has LiveNation considered blending the offline and digital experiences as a potential alternate revenue stream? I’m thinking about TED, and how they have been able to take the offline conference experience online. For fans in rural areas, LiveNation could serve as a provider of experiences – live-streaming conferences in large stadiums, using VR to augment audience perceptions. As a market leader in the space, they have the brand recall and scale to experiment with alternate business models.

Thanks for sharing this article! I had the following thoughts to offer:

1. Competition: In looking into this space, I found several established firms that offered document review services (and outsourced legal processing services in general). These firms are investing in their proprietary software solutions to automate document review and other services. They have existing relationships with law firms globally and could leverage those relationships to upsell their new SaaS offerings, providing competition to the likes of kCura. See http://cobralegalsolutions.com/pdf/cobraTop10.pdf

2. Obsolescence: Technology majors are investing heavily in AI and text-interpretation. These companies have significant cash reserves and human capital to develop new technologies, and pose a high level of obsolescence risk to kCura. By way of example, see the Language Processing research unit at Google http://research.google.com/pubs/NaturalLanguageProcessing.html

Hi Emily – thanks for sharing this very interesting perspective on Arctic cargo liners. As a way to make their business more financially sustainable, I was wondering if the company has explored developing travel and tourism capabilities along these routes. As a business based in the region, the company has the opportunity to be a responsible steward of the burgeoning Arctic tourist industry, by leveraging their own operational expertise for the area, and by pursuing a commitment to sustainable development in the sector.

Hi Matt! Thanks for sharing – great write-up! Sustainability through the company’s supply chain, including through sustainable agriculture like you have identified, is key to driving a truly “green” product. Perhaps Mars should also explore the potential to invest in research and development efforts to develop lab-grown, sustainable, cocoa substitutes to supplement its agricultural procurement. This will ensure a dependable, sustainable, and potentially more cost effective supply of raw cocoa for the company going forward.

Hi RT! Thanks so much, it was great to read about Memphis Meats and its quest to becoming a “greener” or more sustainable alternative to meat. In order to accelerate growth, one other market dimension that the company may consider is ethical / moral / religious vegetarians. That the meat is grown outside the animal’s body leaves open to interpretation its origin and meaning as “meat”. The company should use this opportunity to collaborate with leading ethicists, religious leaders, and morality scholars to foster healthy public arguments about the “non-meat” nature of this product.

Hi Levi! Great write-up, thanks for sharing. I was very impressed to note the expected reduction in carbon emissions with increasing adoption of driverless cars. I was wondering if you had come across any impediments to the large-scale adoption of self-driving cars in your research. In a large part of the developing world, lack of proper traffic signage, and lack of adherence to road traffic rules by manually-operated cars may never allow self-driving cars to take off in any substantial fashion.