Reviewing Techstars applications from around the world is an amazing way to surface micro trends while also seeing the macro picture. And since my applications were open January-April, it’s been fascinating to see how founders responded and pivoted in the current environment. A few of the trends I’ve observed include:

1. The ‘Future of Work’ is the big winner. Consumer solutions included social networks for remote workers, platforms that help make your living space more suitable for work, and a few video solutions (watch out Zoom!) Another work trend is around team communication, collaboration, and tools that integrate with Slack, Gmail, Airtable, and Asana. I saw dozens of applications in each of these verticals.
2. Professional coaching (formerly known as employee training) is where it’s at. From solutions that lead workers through learning modules to chatbots that provide engagement ‘nudges’ throughout the day, businesses and entrepreneurs are betting that workers crave professional development and employers want lightweight ways to keep employees engaged.
3. As expected, health is at the forefront as regulations around telemedicine and distribution are pressure tested during the current health crisis. From new business models supporting remote diagnosis and treatment to underserved areas around women’s health and cancer, the future looks bright when cutting through red tape to better serve patients.
4. A significant increase in undergraduate student applicants, especially among the Ivy League. In my six years at Techstars, I’ve never seen so many young people apply. From community platforms to campus food delivery to job marketplaces for students, the verticals are diverse but the educational background of founders is less so. Applications skewed towards schools in the East including ones from Cornell, Harvard, Brown, Columbia and University of Pennsylvania. One of my favorite applications came from three students from Brown, Cornell and Harvard who met at a Google internship last summer and decided to pursue a startup.
5. Quick pivots. Applications opened in January when the U.S. was still mostly oblivious to the scale of the pandemic and I saw some applications trickle in around food, hospitality, and IRL communities. By the time applications closed in April, they had all pivoted to remote in some way and updated their applications to reflect the quick change. (It’s true what they say about startup founders being like cockroaches, they are able to survive anything!) Some of the most impactful pivots have been COVID specific: a brick and mortar healthcare startup pivoting into telehealth, or a lunch meetup product moving to at-home delivery to serve the disenfranchised.
6. Oh and two direct to consumer toothbrush companies applied, so don’t forget to floss!

Here’s the sector breakdown of more than 1,000 Techstars NYC summer 2020 applications:

There were, of course, also application trends highlighting industries and technologies that have become less prominent. A few areas that fell off since last year include:

1. Goodnight mindfulness and meditation. Although saturated with players like Headspace and Calm, I was surprised to see fewer solutions in these areas considering the current state of the world.
2. Real estate is taking a pause. This being NYC, I usually see a strong showing of prop-tech applications. However, with a looming recession and the WeWork debacle, there are slim pickings in this space.
3. Logistics and supply chain are nowhere to be found. With the disruption of manufacturing and transportation of goods, I was disappointed that more founders are not working on these problems. Perhaps, there’s a lag and I will see an increase in our winter applications.
4. MBAs are seeking refuge at Goldman and BCG. While undergraduate applications flourished, MBA applications lagged from previous years.

I’ve never been so excited to support founders and help them on their journey to change the world. Learn more about Techstars New York City and get in touch if you’d like to be involved.

We’ve all been bombarded by the stats, Female founded startups are on the rise with the number of woman-led firms up 114% over the last decade. On top of this, according to First Round Capital’s 10-year study, companies with at least one woman on the founding team outperformed all-male companies by 63%. However, despite these positive trends, we still have a long way to go; last year, a Pitchbook report found that companies founded solely by women received only 2% of the total VC investments in the US. So, we asked a few of our female founders, what’s really going on?

Fundraising is less fun

Every founder and company must overcome hurdles, but for women the bar seems to be raised higher. As Christie Horvath, founder of pet wellness company Wagmo, observed, “Women are funded based on progress not potential.” It therefore takes longer for women to secure funding. There are always biases to overcome as a first-time founder, including age and lack of experience, but it can be even more of an uphill battle for women. Ashley Kalinauskas, founder of Torigen, a veterinary cancer care provider, acknowledged that she faced initial challenges in getting her idea taken seriously; at first, a common response was along the lines of “that’s so cute, you’re helping dogs with cancer [rather than] let’s stop, listen, and take this seriously.” Christie also got the “so cute” treatment in her early days. Spoiler alert — both founders are proving their doubters wrong, building high growth companies.

Another ambitious founder, Rachel Renock, experienced similar headwinds in building Wethos, a platform to connect highly skilled professionals with meaningful work; “Many female founders struggle with being strung along as we’re less comfortable being direct.” She noted that female founders approach fundraising with a greater emphasis on relationship building rather than accessing capital in the quickest way possible. This may also explain why fundraising can be a more difficult and time-consuming endeavor for women.

The vice of advice

An additional challenge faced by founders, especially women, is processing the sheer amount of advice. As Christie jokes, “as a woman, all you get is advice.” And not all advice is made equal. The key issue is separating the signal from the noise. In Rachel’s experience, learning to trust your judgement is key; “Everyone’s got an opinion and it’s really easy to get whiplashed.” All of this highlights the importance of evaluating the source of advice and doing research before taking meetings with potential investors. Identifying a mentor or adviser who can help you navigate the landscape can be critical. Warm introductions to credible funds, preferably those who have previously invested in women, are another way to effectively filter advice.

Looking forward

Importantly, female founders tend to practice what they preach when it comes to diversity. From Christie’s perspective, “You hear a lot of lip service around hiring people with different or atypical backgrounds, but it feels really good to actually give those people jobs.” Founders also highlighted the benefits of diversity from a business perspective. Ashley feels strongly that “hiring a cross-functional team with diverse backgrounds adds value to a company that’s growing,” while Rachel similarly believes diversity inspires innovation and leaders need to recognize their biases and set the standards for the entire firm.

There is a virtuous cycle whereby female entrepreneurs value diversity and ensure that women are appropriately represented in the startup world (#changetheratio). There are positive signs — more women joining the community, as well as a high sense of well-being and work life balance.

CCAT is a nonprofit organization in Connecticut designed to create and implement ideas for applied technologies, IT strategies, energy solutions, and STEM education, so it’s a fantastic place to see advanced manufacturing machinery in action. At CCAT, we were able to speak with some of the engineers and heard an interesting theme emerge — that of the digital thread. During the additive process, individual layers need to be documented with various data points including heat, description, identification numbers and density. Right now, these data points are documented in a variety of file types and few are organized in a way that makes it simple to track, retrieve or visualize. This, of course, is one opportunity that arises from an increase in the use of additive manufacturing at larger scales — the opportunity to ensure that the digital thread is documented, well-managed, accessible, and secure. Certainly, there is no shortage of solutions already on the market to help manage data, but it’s an exciting area as additive manufacturing improves and over time, allows for adoption at greater scale.

At SBD, we heard about another challenge, that of interoperability. As new systems continue to be developed and implemented, a sometimes natural by-product is a lack of interoperability amongst systems, if systems are created with a monolithic approach. This, of course, results in more challenging workflows, as users need to go from system to system, versus interacting seamlessly across numerous steps.

So, in addition to uncovering better ways to increase the speed of printing, and to improve materials used in additive manufacturing, it became more clear that there is another opportunity for innovation, and that is with the digital thread created as a natural by-product of the additive manufacturing process. With this in mind, startups with interesting approaches to data management and integrity, security or reporting should consider how their solutions may relate to the digital thread emerging.

Companies innovating in the space of Additive can now apply to the new Stanley+Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator Program here.

Article credit of my colleague: Claudia Reuter

Consumers are starting to hold food companies accountable by demanding more transparency, so there’s more pressure to provide this along with traceability throughout the global supply chain. It’s hard to imagine that consumers will pay more for an optimized supply chain so the burden will be on brands and retailers to eat these costs.

Food Safety
The Food Safety Modernization Act was a wake-up call to the food industry. This legislation implemented measures to reduce foodborne illness, which is still a significant problem. IoT can help companies comply with these new laws -- and all roads lead back to traceability. Take, for example, real-time temperature tracking sensors that help monitor food as it leaves the factory. Fleet managers leverage IoT to ensure temperature sensitive products don’t spoil in transit through sensor-enabled refrigeration systems. Temperature fluctuations trigger alerts that automatically adjust the refrigeration and notify suppliers who can replace spoiled products before they arrive. Plus, sensor-enabled refrigeration systems can send alerts to the manufacturer, locating the exact point of failure and facilitating faster replacements-- a much better use case than the Egg Minder!

There may not be one aha moment when it comes to IoT and food; however, a steady increase of use cases and benefits will slowly transform the industry, providing more efficiency and ultimately, a better consumer experience.

Speaking of Food...
KitchenMate, a company currently in the Techstars Toronto class, is on a mission to make nutritious meals accessible to everyone. Their FreshCookers prepare meals in under 15 minutes and are starting to pop up at offices, including WeWork, around Canada. I was lucky enough to try a meal on my recent visit (quinoa and chicken - amazing!) Check out the latest from their CEO.

Here are three areas where we’re seeing the intersection of supply chain management and IoT:

• Asset Tracking: Tracking numbers and barcodes used to be standard methods for managing goods and inventory throughout the supply chain. These methods are now largely obsolete since they are limited to collecting broad types of data rather than precise items — like the exact location or condition of specific products. IoT solutions can track products individually and obtain granular data like storage temperatures, time spent in transit, or days on the shelf. These granular insights into the supply chain coupled with cloud computing and data analytics can inform predictive models that allow for up-to-the-second delivery information, creating efficiencies across the stack in everything from delivery times, quality controls, staffing levels, product forecasting, and even security. Blik, one of our portfolio companies, provides a unique approach to managing logistics operations by ensuring full transparency and real-time tracking of goods in the supply chain.
• Inventory & Warehouse Management: RFID tags, LPWANs, satellite trackers Bluetooth tags, beacons, and NFC all contribute to the evolving (and fragmented) solutions to inventory management. With smart sensors and connected devices, IoT solutions are enhancing the visibility and transparency of inventory tracking methods. IoT can also use sensors on manufacturing floors to manage planned and predictive maintenance and prevent unnecessary downtime. Amazon is harnessing the power of IoT to improve its inventory efficiency by using robots that can not only scan QR codes on products to track orders but also automatically retrieve items in its massive labyrinthine warehouses.
• Fleet Management: Companies that manage large numbers of vehicles are using connected fleet management solutions to streamline logistics and make them more efficient. It’s estimated that connected fleet management solutions will be installed in 180M+ commercial vehicles (90% of the US market) in the next two years. Your average FedEx driver delivering packages throughout a city is impacted by everything from weather to traffic, time of day to a sick co-worker — and these factors impact warehouse to customer delivery times. With so many shifting variables, aggregating data from the fleets, traffic models, and weather reports can lead to more efficient routes and planning.

As new technologies such as edge computing and blockchain emerge, IoT’s future in the supply chain looks promising with more companies beginning to embrace adoption, which will, in turn, strengthen the global supply chain.

Here are some trends that we hope will take shape in 2018:

• 5G technology will bolster sensor capabilities and improve connectivity among our IoT gadgets. Existing devices like public safety cameras will be able to work more easily and efficiently, enabling municipalities to introduce new offerings like autonomous vehicles.
• Lack of Electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure is a huge impediment to EV adoption and also a huge friction point for EV owners who have trouble finding accessible charging outlets. However, as municipalities pass new regulations that require EV infrastructure construction in new residential and commercial developments, this will change. TEQ Charging is tackling this issue by reducing the cost of EV infrastructure hardware by moving it to the cloud.
• City-wide digital platforms that can collect, synthesize, and analyze data from different sources will make cities stronger and more intelligent. Edge computing will also enable faster data processing at the source and therefore allow for more precise impacts.
• Greater real-time citizen interaction with government through personal wireless devices will be driven by new collaborative tools like real-time video and data sharing, and basic AI.
• Microtransit will gain more traction. City governments are starting to recognize the convenience and efficacy of ride-sharing technology by integrating it into their existing transportation systems. Municipalities in California have partnered with TransLoc for a rideshare/transit hybrid, and Phoenix partnered with Lyft to transport riders to and from bus stops.
• Cybersecurity​ will be at the forefront of policy agendas since more connected devices will render networks vulnerable to cyber attacks. A data breach at the municipal level could possibly result in power outages or jeopardize sensitive data about millions of people.

While horizontal platforms will be busy duking it out, vertical voice applications will become more prevalent and distinguish themselves to build a loyal following. Since they collect specialized data, they will likely be able to outperform Google and Amazon’s horizontal applications. Right now, healthcare is one of the most popular verticals where voice technology is being applied — followed by finance, e-commerce, and manufacturing/supply-chain management.

With speech recognition technology advancing rapidly, the future of voice tech looks very promising. With this in mind, here are some of my picks for up-and-coming vertical voice apps:

1. Health

• Aiva Health is a platform designed to connect patients with a care team that can properly address their bedside needs.
• Cardiocube is a voice assistant helping patients manage their cardiovascular health while providing medical insights to doctors in real-time.

2. Automotive

• Apollo is an intelligent voice assistant that seamlessly enables drivers to communicate, navigate, and play music without touching their smartphones, making the modern driving experience more safe and convenient.
• Capio combines speech recognition technology, natural language processing, and machine learning to provide a context-aware, human-like conversational interface.

3. Education

• Soapbox Labs provides speech technology specialized for children that third-party hardware and app developers can use for educational tools that foster reading and language development.

4. Tools / Foundation

• Jovo allows developers to build cross-platform apps for Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Home.
• Storyline lets users create voice apps without coding, which is an example of startups tackling this opportunity.

Edge comes of age

The promise of Edge and distributed computing, may seem like old news, however, much of enterprise processing still takes place on-prem or in the cloud. Corporate change management (painful) coupled with the cost of supporting both Edge and core (expensive) are contributing factors to slower adoption. However, as the rate of IoT deployments increase more generally, Edge processing and storage will take hold more quickly across industrial use cases (utilities, energy, transportation) where assets are often remote and further away from central infrastructure. This will significantly cut data ingestion costs, reduce network latency, increase security and help turn streaming data into real-time decisions. By some accounts, 40% of IoT derived data will be stored, processed, analysed and deployed at the Edge by 2019.

Enterprise adopts a voice

Consumers have embraced voice applications through beloved connected home and wearable devices. This makes sense considering that we type 40 words per minute and speak closer to 150 words per minute. However, the utility around consumer voice apps pales in comparison to the Enterprise. From robots to automotive, manufacturing to construction, voice provides a flexible, fast and cost efficient way to communicate and collaborate especially when hands and eyes are not available. There is little written about industrial IoT voice use cases, but watch this space in the coming year.

Blockchain rising

We hear a lot about Blockchain solutions, however, questions around scalability, privacy and reliability have resulted in limited deployments and small scale pilots. However, the case for Blockchain IoT solutions is mounting with greater understanding of the benefits including, faster transaction processing, protected data transmissions, greater reliability and stability, and more efficient integration with existing technology infrastructure. And let’s not forget IoT cryptocurrency, IOTA, totted as a fast and safe way to buy and trade datasets.

Health is everything

Healthcare IoT had a slow start, falling prey to the usual slew of regulations, data security and device management concerns. Now on track to spend over one trillion dollars on healthcare IoT solutions by 2025, the impact on patients, doctors and hospitals will be profound. While consumer adoption of connected home devices and wearables has started to take hold, it’s enterprise solutions tapping into big data, payments and medical records that will reshape healthcare at scale. IoT can help force the industry to move more quickly towards adopting standards that unite disparate data sources, allowing for a comprehensive view of the patient. Many believe that data is the key to patient care, disease management, remote monitoring, predictive analytics and more…

Security — ugg!

On a more somber note, even as IoT security awareness comes to the forefront, factors such as time to market, cost and user experience often take priority over basic security. As such, we will likely see more attacks on vulnerable endpoint devices as well as cloud platforms and therefore more exposure of sensitive customer data. On a positive note, more risk and breaches will force IoT companies to come together to work out broad standards, although doubtful this will happen in the next year.

Startups play a starring role in this story as insurance companies are increasingly paying attention to all the new companies collecting and analyzing device data. We have seen first hand an upswing in pilots and partnerships as well as funding for startups. In fact,insurtech funding is up 30% from last year to almost $2 Billion. Although the math gets fuzzy with many startups monetizing through insurance companies but not self-identifyingas ‘insurtech’, I’m seeing the number of insurance companies on cap tables at an all-timehigh.

Take Muzzley, for example, a data analytics platform working closely with insurance companies to provide real-time analytics from IoT devices, smartphones, and contextual data. Muzzley partnered with over 200 devices and uses the data to create behavioral profiles of insurance customers. This allows insurers to offer new services (such as safe home assistance), improve their underwriting models and offer dynamic pricing. By leveraging real-time IoT data, insurers are able to increase protection of the assets they are insuring and mitigate risk, improve their pricing and increase customer interaction and positive behavioral modification.

We first saw this trend a decade ago in the auto insurance industry with the use of connected car data to improve car insurance offerings. The connected home and home insurance is the next clear trend in IoT and insurance.

Looking beyond the connected home, I’m even more interested in the connected community where devices are linked up across multiple dwellings. Imagine a network of devices that can light up entire neighborhoods, provide a virtual neighborhood watch, like Nextdoor, but connected in real time.

One bright spot is Google’s Project Loon who teamed up with mobile operators to deliver basic internet connectivity to thousands of people in Puerto Rico while they wait (likely for months) for the island’s basic infrastructure to be restored. Project Loon first launched in 2013, and uses a series of stratospheric balloons floating 20km high to beam internet down to the people below in disaster areas. Earlier this year, Project Loon helped restore internet access after a series of terrible floods in Peru.

Mesh networks can also be used during emergencies to help spread connectivity over various nodes / connection points that communicate with each other. goTenna, for example, uses low-frequency radio waves to send text messages and GPS information — working independently of traditional mobile phone networks. Using a mesh network, if one connection point goes down, others take its place. If there is no internet connection, a mesh network can still operate, providing emergency info and the ability to send text messages. The more distributed the communication and utilities, the less vulnerable we are when centralized points fail.

Communication systems that work during crisis literally save lives. Consider a company like RapidSoS, that has recently launched in offering to respond to storms like Harvey, Irma and Maria. The 9–1–1 infrastructure dates back to the 1970s and the company is offering an updated way to reach outdated emergency response systems. The company is offering its service for free for the next users who sign up using this link.