top 10: what you read in 2017

Awards season

Hi there,

A friendly reminder that when you update your company or investor profile here, you should write like a human being.

If you use excessive jargon / marketing language, it won’t be accepted and you hurt your chances of being featured in the work of our Intelligence Analysts.

Don’t do it.

Speaking of jargon…

Congratulations to the Jargon Winner of 2017.

The startup, which just raised $36M in 60 seconds via ICO (of course it did), describes itself as below:

Its business as the above passage reveals has:

✔️ blockchain aka distributed ledger
✔️ AI
✔️ P2P
✔️ identity management
✔️ marketplace
✔️ robots (detailed in article — not passage above)

You should probably get in on this.

Note: The above is not investment advice. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite.

More awards — the Oscars of tech research

We put out hundreds of briefs this year, covering every topic from AI to blockchain to healthcare. Lots of good stuff in our research portal — but here are some standouts. Below, check out our top 10 research briefs of the year.

What’s been most interesting is the interest in our quantitative intelligence to discern corporate strategy, as you’ll see below.

10. Banking Is Only The Beginning: 30 Big Industries Blockchain Could Transform
Banking and payments aren’t the only industries that could be affected by blockchain tech. Law enforcement, ride hailing, and many other sectors could also have blockchain in their future.

9. Oscar Strategy Teardown: How The Health Insurer Is Beginning To Hedge Against Obamacare
Oscar has tried to disrupt health insurance with a focus on customer experience and technology, but success has been mixed. As the company changes tack, what does the future of a next-gen US health insurer look like?

8. The Ag Tech Market Map: 100+ Startups Powering The Future Of Farming And Agribusiness
Corporate investors such as Mitsui, Monsanto, and Syngenta have backed startups improving irrigation, crop spraying, harvesting, and more.

7. Big Tech In AI: What Amazon, Apple, Google, GE, And Others Are Working On
Combined, the 10 largest tech companies have acquired 50 AI companies in the last 5 years, targeting facial recognition startups, chatbots, chip makers, and more.

6. The United States Of Unicorns: Every US Company Worth $1B+ In One Map
Collectively, US unicorns are worth approximately $360B. Combined, these companies have raised just over $73B.

5. Uber Strategy Teardown: The Giant Looks To An Autonomous Future, Food Delivery, And Tighter Financial Discipline
The $68B gorilla continues to expand globally in places like India and Brazil and is still chasing autonomous driving. However, it will have to stem its losses ahead of an eventual IPO, which may lead to rollbacks in contested regions like Southeast Asia.

4. Amazon Strategy Teardown: Building New Business Pillars In AI, Next-Gen Logistics, And Enterprise Cloud Apps
Seattle-based Amazon is doubling down on AWS and its AI assistant, Alexa. It’s seeking to become the central provider for AI-as-a-service.

3. Apple Is Going After The Health Care Industry, Starting With Personal Health Data
The market opportunity in health care is huge, and Apple sees health care and wellness as a core part of its app, services, and wearables strategies. Now the company is aiming to become your personal health record, jumping into research, medical devices, and more.

2. Blockchain Market Map: 135 Blockchain Startups That Have Raised Money Through ICOs
We identified 135 blockchain startups that have closed significant initial coin offering rounds for their tokens since 2014 and organized them into sixteen categories, from healthcare to computing to gambling.

1. What Is Blockchain Technology?
Few people understand what it is, but Wall Street banks, IT organizations, and consultants are buzzing about blockchain technology. It’s hard to remove blockchain from Bitcoin, so we’ll start with Bitcoin as we work to understand this technology’s potential.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal