we’ve hit peak chatbot

Are bots still a thing?

Hi there,

Let’s kick off this Monday with some wisdom from Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. (See The Blurb for more)

Supermarket sweep

We identified over 120 companies offering new takes on healthy beverages, snack foods, plant-based cheese, and more, and mapped them according to the 20 categories they’re operating in.

Strategery

Yes, we do have a bot strategy.

Thank you for reaching out.

BTW, based on CB Insights Trends, it looks like chatbots hit max hype back in October 2016. Despite a number of VC investments into chatbots and corporations building their own chatbots, has this trend already run its course?

To run this Trends search on CB Insights, click here.

Topping transportation

We updated our view on the investor networks of the 5 most well-capitalized private ride-hailing companies including Uber and Didi Chuxing, as well as Lyft, Ola, and Grab. We also added an investor social graph to track the investments and acquisitions made by these companies.

Comparing cities

We looked at deals and funding to VC-backed companies in the LA, Boston, and NYC-metro areas from 2012 through 2016. Equity funding to VC-backed companies in the New York-metro area saw a 20% increase from 2015 to 2016. In line with Boston and LA, deal flow dropped.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right

A look at Nintendo Console sales over time from The FT.

Attention, White House staffers 😉

We identified seven private companies providing encrypted or self-destructing messaging services. Wickr, featured below, offers an encrypted, ephemeral messaging platform for individuals and enterprises.

Global unicorns

Here is an interesting factoid.

There have been 5 new unicorns annointed this year per our unicorn company tracker. Only 1 is in the USA.

The Industry Standard

CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.

Bloomberg. Alex Barinka (@alexbarinka) writes about Snap’s IPO and cites CB Insights valuation data.

South China Morning Post. Bien Perez (@bienperez) digs into Alibaba’s investment into India-based Paytm and refers to CB Insights unicorn data.

Reuters. A report on Spotify’s paid subscriber base with a reference to CB Insights valuation data.

Inc. Bartie Scott (@bartielouscott) on why computer vision is one of the best industries for starting a business in 2017 with a mention of CB Insights investment data.

Happy Monday.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. On Friday, Paytm ($5B valuation) raised another $200M from Alibaba and other investors. Hear Paytm CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, at The Future of Fintech.