Thesis 1.0

An obsession to discover our next competitive advantage has led us to the dawn of augmentation and automation.

Introduction

Tucked snugly into your blankets on a crisp winter night, you discover a captivating new app advertised on Instagram. Promising to solve your problems, you swiftly download it. As you delve into the app, you find the platform, its data, content and feature set so unique, it feels empowering. It brings a capability that was not there before, one in which you didn’t even have to learn or practice anything to gain. Realizing this is the only portal to such a power up, you start to seek it out.

After some light use, you start to see this tool as a competitive edge in your personal or professional life. An improved version of yourself compared to the version from mere days ago. Embracing this more advanced, slightly evolved version of yourself, or improved version of your life, you develop a reluctance to let go of these newfound capabilities. The thought of regressing or losing this newfound power becomes unthinkable.

The lesson

Once a competitive edge is gained, we’re reluctant to go back. So much so that in the business world, akin to evolution, provide a competitive edge and it becomes a non-reversible process, leading to mass adoption as even late adopters realize they cannot afford to be left behind.

How can history help us see the future?

In a sense, we’ve always relied on a competitive edge to make it another day. It’s how our ancestors survived and thrived. Humans first harnessed tools to gain a competitive edge, starting with fire and spears, improving our decision making process and agility. As well, human progress can be measured precisely by how much energy we extracted from our environment, making mastery of the environment a competitive edge.

The more informed our decisions, the more capable we are with our hands, and the more tailored our environment, the better chance we have to apply ourselves in a fast-changing world. Historically, advancing our mental and physical capabilities, in a sense augmenting them, and shaping the world to our advantage, in a sense automating it, have led to our biggest evolutionary gains.

This leaves me with a few assumptions:

1. Augment the mind, or decision-making, of humans: augmented reality glasses equipped with AI, neuromorphic sensors, voice assistant, facial identification, biometric authentication, LiDAR, and 5G.
2. Augment the body, or physical capabilities, of humans: gene therapy and regenerative medicine.
3. Automate the world around humans: Robotics equipped with AI, voice assistant, facial identification, biometric authentication, LiDAR, and 5G. This includes humanoid robots, autonomous cars, reusable rockets, drones, intelligent satellites, etc.

A few words

Currently, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to offer significant competitive advantages, thanks to its seamless integration with widely used tools and platforms. However, it’s important to note that AI mainly addresses broad challenges such as personalization, indicating ample scope for further development in core areas of machine learning, neural networks, deep reinforcement learning, collaborative filtering, qualitative reasoning, clustering, ambient intelligence, and quantum computing.

Augmented reality, gene therapy, regenerative medicine, and robotics are not yet widely accessible to consumers. To make these technologies market-ready, it’s crucial to develop their foundational aspects.

Public interest in augmented reality, for example, presents opportunities for startups to innovate in areas like photonics, iris tracking, gesture control, computer vision, facial recognition, adaptive interfaces, and localization. This includes advancements in position tracking, digital twins, and user face tracking.

Omission

It’s important to acknowledge that cryptocurrencies, perceived as a store of value, virtual reality, an entertainment medium, and smart home devices are omissions in this discussion. I don’t believe in them as mass market products in their current market position.

That said, over time, as these technologies shed their existing images, I anticipate cryptocurrencies emerging as a key facilitator in creating a more automated environment, particularly in enabling frictionless transactions, and virtual reality evolving into a powerful medium for augmenting human connection by perfecting presence, i.e. the feeling of being in the same room as another person.

Likewise, smart home systems will automate the environment by harnessing personal sensors to monitor vitals, home-based sensors for environmental conditions, and AI to isolate individual preferences, in order to enable an intelligent home experience that doesn’t require human intervention.

Further advances

In addition to the technologies discussed, the potential advancements in AGI and quantum computing are unpredictable but inevitable.

A blueprint for startup success

Moving from foresight to foundation, the second half of this piece shifts our focus from envisioning the future of augmentation and automation to constructing it. Here, we delve into practical strategies and actionable frameworks for building startups based on these insights.

Ideation

Identify industry leading data by turning random into predictable patterns.

Tap into randomized data, perhaps behavioral, attitudinal, environmental, or lab evaluations, and turn it into predictable patterns with customization tools, data crawlers, sensors, or lab run tests.

With this proprietary information, provide industry leading augmentation or automation by providing a clear, digestible view of that data, providing guidance or solutions for how to act on that data, or acting on that data on your behalf.

Growth

Sustainable growth comes when new customers comes from the actions of past customers. There are two primary strategies to consider:

1. Offer your exclusive content (information) worth money for free to incentivize users to use a referral system. Users should be able to refer to multiple friends via text and communities via promo codes to rack up the reward or get the reward for longer. The goal is to make early users avid “word of mouth” or “as a side effect of product usage” ambassadors for some measure of personal gain. Use time constraints, availability limits, compliments, and action commands to apply pressure.
2. Minimize the cost per acquisition while maximizing the long term value of a customer to create a profit cycle through funded advertising. As long as the cost of acquiring a new customer (the so called marginal cost) is less than the revenue that customers generates (the marginal revenue), the excess (the marginal profit) can be used to acquire more customers.

Revenue

It needs a recurring revenue stream from lifelong users in place from the very beginning. There are two primary strategies to consider:

1. Subscription plan: Customers pay a recurring price at regular intervals to access a product or service.
2. Voluntary repurchases: Customers choose to buy a product or service repeatedly, but without a contractual obligation to do so. Price of the product or service increases depending on the time interval between purchases

Additional rules

1. Churn kills. You’ll know you found product-market fit when every user commits to the same repeatable cycle of core actions, and continues to find it worthwhile.
2. When you settle on a cohort, make sure the candidate you choose has the ability and the willingness to pay.
3. It’s not about what the user does, it’s about what the user gains from doing it. The takeaway once the platform is put down.
4. Don’t appeal to average customers, appeal to early adopters. These customers feel the need for the product most acutely, have the most to gain, need fixes to their problems, and work as evangelists of the product.
5. The product must have mass market appeal towards the core needs of the general consumer (large market size).
6. Narrate marketing around the pain points, figure out how to reach the customers exactly when that pain props up, and settle on early cohorts depending on the regularity or magnitude of the pain points.

Final words

Something to think about

With augmented humans and automated robots roaming around, will the lines of normal blur or standardize? Will the pace of human and political rights excel or stop? As you go on to build the future, keep this question in mind. Try to remember that our bigger picture is The Jetsons and not Mad Max. If not for us, for the kids.

Who am I?

Arieh Movtady is a graduate of Muckerlab ’15, a mentorship-driven, pre-seed startup accelerator focused on working with a small number of exceptional technology entrepreneurs to help them launch and scale their businesses through collaborative ideation, productization, go-to-market, marketing, user acquisition, sales, legal guidance, and fundraising.

Arieh worked with startups his entire career and understands how to organize complex systems focused around early adopters. Managing a successful technology startup requires founders to follow a balanced roadmap between app development and weekly growth targets. Startups need to make something lots of people want and reach those people at scale. Arieh has 4+ years designing mobile interfaces around user data. Much of the research filters user demographics for increased engagement, share frequency, and purchase clicks.

Feel free to say hi at ariehmovtady@gmail.com for startup help or business inquiries.