What’s the best way to fund the internet of things?

photo: sushi♥ina

SUMMARY:

The IoT community is still debating which of three different funding models will best support development, with some favored by Europe and some by the US. Understanding these models is crucial to understanding where the technology is heading and what region will lead the way.

When it comes to smart cities and the internet of things, everyone asks, “Where is the money?” I have observed very dissimilar points of view on financing for the IoT in keynote topics in conferences and in discussions throughout the year, in particular at the recent Internet of Things Forum in Cambridge in the U.K., and the M2M & Internet of Things Global Summit in Washington D.C. It struck me that the ideas were as far apart as the venues themselves. It’s important to understand these different funding models, because they are driving the development of the IoT.

There is no easy answer to the funding question because the IoT market is still very fragmented. From our perspective of sensors and hardware, we see small pieces of revenue coming from many different verticals. I think of these as trial balloons, just validating the huge potential of the IoT and its power to be the next technology revolution. Even so, we see smart agriculture and smart cities as the verticals with the most traction right now. Differences in these two sectors shed light on the key question of funding the IoT. Will it be public or private?

The three primary funding models

Smart agriculture is privately funded in many cases, and the return on investment has to be obvious from the start. Smart cities have so many more stakeholders and the approach is not so clear-cut. There are many different ways to support their development, some coming from academia, communities, and industry.

1. Public money. In my view, had it not been for the economic crisis, public funding would have been the normal route. Right now European Union funds play an important role in allowing a number of connected smart cities pilots to really test the technology and accelerate the uptake of services. The existence of these European Commission funds makes the difference between what we see happening in Europe vs. the US market, allowing Europe to lead the way.

At Cambridge people thought of Europe as ahead of the U.S. in the IoT, whereas in Washington there were fears that a “go-with-grants” model is harmful because it is an unsustainable business model. The U.S. wants to see how Europe will maintain smart cities projects over time, and several critics point to the lack of a business model in flagship smart cities projects funded with EU funds. It’s true that these projects are usually led by academia, and business sustainability is not usually the focus. But don’t forget: the very first step is validating the technology.

2. Public/private partnership (PPP). In PPP, private companies invest and go on a cost-savings-share model with municipalities. It is a viable funding mechanism for smart cities, and in fact, the US has a history of finding capital for transportation and infrastructure projects this way. PPPs can create new forms of cooperation and resource sharing.

In this model, who would be the perfect private partner? Here, we stumble into a paradox in the nascent IoT market. Due to the similarity between IoT networks and telephony networks, operators should be the logical owners of IoT infrastructure as a new connectivity channel. However, the system integrators are the ones leading the way. This is because an operator needs to cover a whole country, or at least a circuit including major cities, and that requires a lot of investment. On the other hand, integrators can jump from project to project, testing the hottest verticals. But keep your eye on the bouncing ball, because this situation is evolving. Today operators are letting the integrators pay for their education.

3. Citizen participation. Community-led projects that apply the current trend of crowdfunding through platforms like Kickstarter are gaining momentum. I know of a number of civic projects that are spearheaded by citizen activists, such asAirQualityEgg, a device that measures air quality, or SafeCast’s network of individual airborne radiation sensors in Fukushima (Libelium was a partner in this project).

SafeCast’s crowdsourced map of airborne radiation in Japan.

This is such an interesting model, and I wonder if governments can incentivize citizens to acquire the sensors and build the systems themselves, perhaps by offering tax breaks or other benefits.

Investing the funds: hardware or services?

Once the money is raised, how will we spend it? In Cambridge, the prevailing view was that IoT money should be devoted to infrastructure. In Washington D.C. people were not so sure, because they believe in a model where services generate more money than hardware.

For the sake of argument, I like to compare the IoT to the railway age. There are many parallels, not only because both of these inventions are industrial revolutions with the ability to change everything. For a moment, try to imagine railway and train builders pitching to raise money. Would venture capitalists just tell them “Nah! We prefer to invest in companies that will be handling the ticketing system…?” Of course not! No services are possible, nor is any other type of future business, if we do not have the infrastructure in place.

Someday, it is true, hardware will be commoditized, and revenues will come from services associated to data, but if we are in the midst of raising a new market, that day is still really far away.

Alicia Asin is the co-founder and CEO of Libelium, a provider of open hardware for wireless sensor networks used in Smart Cities and Internet of Things projects.

Source : Gigaom

Indiegogo or Kickstarter ?

On apples, oranges, and crowdfunding platforms: Indiegogo’s recent growth highlights the difference between it and Kickstarter

Indiegogo, the crowdfunding platform founded two years before media darling Kickstarter, is today revealing its growth over the last few years. The typically tight-lipped company revealed this information exclusively to PandoDaily after disputing data used to create an infographic comparing the two platforms that relied on Kickstarter’s public statistics and third-party information about Indiegogo’s platform. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.)

Slava Rubin, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, says that Indiegogo has now managed more than 150,000 projects and is hosting another 7,000 each week. That’s more than the 4,374 live projects Kickstarter reports on its website, though that doesn’t account for the discrepancy between the number of countries in which both companies operate. Indiegogo allows anyone from some 200 countries to create a campaign; Kickstarter only allows approved projects from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand onto its site.

That discrepancy highlights the differences between Indiegogo and Kickstarter. The former is focused on allowing anyone to raise any amount of money from anywhere in the world; the latter is focused on creating a highly-curated platform that allows a select few to raise money from their fans. This focus has led to rapid international growth on Indiegogo’s part, as Rubin says that the company is now distributing funds to between 70 and 100 countries each month; seen its transaction volume outside of the US triple over the last year; and transferred money to some 190 countries since its launch.

While the numbers themselves are news, their meaning — that Indiegogo and Kickstarter aren’t quite the competitors some might think — is not. As we noted in the revised introduction to our infographic:

We will grant Indiegogo that it and Kickstarter, while both crowdfunding modules, have different models. Indiegogo accepts anybody. Kickstarter does not. Indiegogo gives campaigns the option of keeping all of the money if they miss their goal. Kickstarter does not. So yes, while Lau and Junprung’s data may paint a picture of Kickstarter dominance, it’s also not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Have high-profile Kickstarter projects raised more than similar projects on Indiegogo? Absolutely. Does Indiegogo’s willingness to open its platform for nearly anything, whether it’s a state-of-the-art smartphone or a campaign to send an abused bus monitor on a vacation, allow the company’s service to be used for a wider variety of purposes than Kickstarter? Definitely. These services both have their own strengths and weaknesses, and there’s no reason that they can’t co-exist.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson to be learned from Indiegogo’s revelations. The company has declined to reveal much about itself — using percentages to describe growth is a fickle, easily abused trick — and much of what it has revealed won’t stifle criticism of the service. These numbers are only useful insofar as their ability to lend further credence to the idea that comparing Indiegogo and Kickstarter simply because both operate crowdfunding platforms is as ludicrous as comparing apples and oranges simply because both grow on trees.

[Illustration by Hallie Bateman for Pandodaily]

Source : Pandodaily.com, by Nathaniel Mott

La BPI entend fédérer les acteurs français de la finance participative via une plateforme dédiée

Les pouvoirs publics ont reconnu l’importance croissante du phénomène de crowdfunding, c’est du moins l’impression qui s’impose à la découverte du travail effectué par la BPI auprès des acteurs de la finance participative.

A l'occasion des 1ères Assises du financement participatif qui se sont tenues le 30 septembre au Ministère de l'Economie et des Finances, la BPI a annoncé la mise en ligne de sa nouvelle plate-forme de centralisation des projets participatifs, TousNosProjets. Cette plate-forme n’est cependant pas une plate-forme de crowdfunding comme il en existe dans le privé, elle consiste à centraliser les données des grandes plate-formes privées, c’est à dire centraliser les informations concernant les projets mis en avant, afin d’essayer de donner une information plus simple et accessible à l’utilisateur. Si cette initiative peut apparaître comme une demi-mesure de la part de la BPI, celle-ci se contentant de jouer un rôle de facilitateur dans la transaction, l’importance est d’abord celle de la reconnaissance. En mettant en place une plate-forme dédiée, les pouvoirs publics reconnaissent l’utilité proprement publique que ce mode de financement, solidaire et décentralisé détient.

Simplifier le contact entre particulier et porteur de projet

Cette initiative a pour objectif, selon Benjamin Richard, Chargé de Mission auprès du Directeur général de la BPI, “[...] d’offrir un point d’entrée unique pour les particuliers qui souhaitent financer des projets.” Si une offre solide et consistante existe bien au niveau du crowdfunding, avec de nombreux acteurs reconnus pour leur efficacité, l’offre est encore particulièrement morcelée. Afin d’éviter le développement d’un phénomène “communautaire” auprès de chaque plate-forme, ce qui irait à contrario des principes mêmes de la finance participative, la mise en place de TousNosProjets pourrait permettre d’offrir une visibilité améliorée aux porteurs de projet, indépendamment des capacités communicationnelles propres aux plate-formes privées sur lesquels ils sont présents. Il faut cependant nuancer cette assertion. En l’occurrence, le site de la BPI ne recense que les acteurs ayant déjà atteint une masse suffisante pour présenter une réelle crédibilité. Ils sont ainsi déjà 14 à avoir adhéré au projet, à l’image de Babyloan ou MyMajorCompany mais aussi SmartAngels ou KissKissBankBank. Il sera dès lors possible pour le particulier d’affiner sa recherche de projet au moyen des nombreux filtres mis à sa disposition, afin de connecter au plus proche attente des particuliers et celles des porteurs de projet.

L’amorce d’une politique plus large? 

Si de nombreux événements, de nombreuses rencontres ont été financées grâce à des fonds publics, TousNosProjets est la première initiative d’ampleur qui vise à s’intégrer complètement dans l’habitus du financement participatif. Le choix de la BPI pour porter ce projet n’est pas étonnant, ses missions visant avant tout au financement de PME et projets innovants, mais traduit aussi ce que Benjamin Richard appelle “[...] un engagement pris par Bpifrance pour le développement de l’Economie Sociale et Solidaire, dont les activités sont fondées sur un principe de solidarité et d’utilité sociale avec des modes de gestions démocratiques et participatifs”. Devant la place de plus en plus importante prise par le crowdfunding, la BPI ne pouvait réellement se permettre de ne pas accompagner le mouvement. Plutôt que d’appréhender ces plate-formes comme des entités concurrentielles, la BPI entend se placer comme collaborateur, pour, continue-t-il “développer des outils de financement complémentaires aux notres.”

Source : L'Atelier

La ville de Boston entretient ses bouches d’incendie grâce au crowdsourcing

 

Grâce à l’application web “Adopt-a-Hydrant” les habitants de la ville de Boston ont la possibilité de prendre soin de l’une des 13 000 bouches d’incendies de la ville. Des initiatives similaires dans d'autres pays font appel à la foule pour résoudre des problèmes de service public. 

Créé en Septembre 2009, Code for America est une organisation non gouvernementale dont le but est de fédérer le monde du web autour des problématiques de la ville, et donc par extension à travailler en collaboration avec leurs responsables politiques. Pour ce faire, l’organisation a développé trois programmes principaux. Le premier, “the Fellowship” tente de mettre en relation les designers et les développeurs avec les gouvernements locaux. Le deuxième, “the Accelerator” fournit des fonds, un espace et du mentoring pour les start-ups qui touchent à des engagements de politiques publiques locales. Enfin, “the Brigade Code” mobilise les communautés locales à s’engager sur des projets dans leur ville. C’est dans le cadre de Code for America et par l’intiative de l’un de ses anciens “fellow”, que l’application web “Adopt-a-Hydrant” a ainsi été développée pour mobiliser les citoyens de la ville de Boston. Celle-ci leur permet de prendre soin individuellement de l’une des 13 000 bouches d’incendie de leur ville.

Une problématique simple mais déterminante au niveau sécuritaire
Les intempéries sont monnaie courante à Boston. Cette ville connait un hiver très rude, ponctué de tempêtes de neige, et dont les températures sont particulièrement basses. Ainsi, des objets d’utilité publique comme les bouches d’incendie, sont facilement victimes de dommages importants, provoquant souvent l’incapacité des pompiers à intervenir lors d’urgences. L’entretien régulier de ces bouches représenterait une entreprise non seulement longue et fastidieuse, mais également très couteuse. Un budget que la ville de Boston pourrait allouer de façon plus utile à d’autres projets. C’est pourquoi l’application web “Adopt-a-Hydrant” propose aux citoyens de Boston de s’occuper personnellement de l’une des 13 000 bouches d’incendies que compte la ville. “Adopt-a-Hydrant” est une application intégrée à une carte de la ville de Boston pour laquelle chaque citoyen, mais aussi petit commerce ou organisation a la possibilité de se porter volontaire pour prendre soin d’une bouche d’incendies qui lui est donc assignée. Pour cela, il est nécessaire de s’inscrire sur le site et de s’assigner l’une de celles encore disponibles dans sa proximité.

Mobiliser une communauté citoyenne à l’échelle individuelle
Ce type de projets, qui sont souvent développés par la branche “the Brigade Code” de Code for America, permet ainsi non seulement aux citoyens mais également à toute communauté, de s’impliquer dans des projets ou problématiques locales de façon simple et souvent plus efficace. Ce projet est d’ailleurs réutilisé dans d’autres villes pour mobiliser les citoyens face à ce types de problématiques liées aux intempéries, et par extension à des phénomènes naturels imprévisibles de manière structurelle par les pouvoirs politiques locaux. A Chicago, “Adopt-a-Sidewalk”encourage à nettoyer son trottoir en cas de tempète de neige. A Honolulu, “Adopt-a-Siren”vise l’entretien régulier des sirènes anti-tsunami. Ces projets sont intitulés Gov-to-Gov re-use car une fois lancés en open-source, ils peuvent ensuite être réutilisés de gouvernement en gouvernement pour des initiatives similaires. Dans un esprit différent, le projet Open311permet aux citoyens de signaler et de suivre des problématiques locales.

Source : L'Atelier

From Kenya, robust, mobile ‘brick’ provides internet access when the internet is down

Having successfully reached its Kickstarter funding target, BRCK will now keep Africans connected even when the power turns off and the internet drops out.

While slimline routers and ultra-thin batteries may be suitable for urban environments where mains electricity and wifi hotspots are in abundance, it’s not the same in rural Africa. We recently covered the rough-and-ready eChaja kit, providing solar-powered device charging for remote areas, and now the BRCK aims to keep Africans connected even when the power turns off and the internet drops out.

Created by Kenya-based nonprofit tech startup Ushahidi, the device is designed to be used in tough conditions and takes the form of a rugged metal brick. BRCK is essentially a modem that is able to connect up to 20 devices at a time and seamlessly switch between wifi, 3G, 4G and Ethernet connections automatically, depending on what signals are available. In moments of very low connectivity, BRCK uses the best available source to provide uninterrupted internet usage. Even if there’s a power blackout, the device comes with a battery that provides up to eight hours of use that is automatically activated when the AC is disconnected. BRCK also offers users an interface accessible from their devices, providing data about signal, usage and performance, as well as management of the network. The video below is taken from the project’s successful crowdfunding campaign:


BRCK reached its Kickstarter funding target this weekend and is now hoping to provide secure and failproof internet access to areas that are remote, have poor web infrastructures or suffer from extreme weather conditions that affect connectivity. However, the device may prove just as useful for city dwellers wanting a more reliable connection to the net – as Ushahidi’s motto attests: “If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.” BRCK is still available to pre-order from USD 200 for the next week. Are there other ways to ensure that remote communities aren’t left behind when it comes to technology access?

Website: www.brck.com
Contact: info@brck.com
Spotted by: Murtaza Patel

Source : Springwise

Meet The Next 10 Companies To Come Out Of StartX, Stanford’s Student Startup Accelerator

Stanford’s student startup accelerator, StartX, had its eighth demo day tonight in Palo Alto, showing off the latest class of 11 companies* to go through the program. The accelerator, which just raised another $400,000, has already had about 100 startups go through, raising $100 million along the way between them. This next batch is hoping to follow that lead.

Here’s the next class of Stanford StartX companies, in the order they were presented:
Pixlee. This startup wants to use user-generated photos to help brands market themselves. The idea is not just to collect and curate photos that will resonate with consumers, but also to present them in a personalized fashion. The idea is that everyone will get a different experience, not just see all the same photos. The company had been chosen by the 49ers for a fan-engagement campaign around the Super Bowl, which had more than 50,000 photos submitted. It’s also being used by brands like Yamaha, Major League Soccer, and the NBA.

Distinc.tt. If you’re gay and new to an area, how do you find out where gay people hang out? And how do you find out whether or not someone hanging out in one of those places is also gay. That’s an overly simplistic description of a very complex problem that Distinc.tt hopes to solve. The mobile app shows nearby places based on the measured popularity among the gay community, and allows its users to check in and help identify other gay patrons in those locations. In just a few weeks, the app has garnered about 40,000 users, who log in twice a day on average. The company has also attracted Peter Thiel as an investor in its seed round.

VipeCloud. This startup provides a “video business in a box,” allowing independent content creators, B2B companies, and other niche video producers to quickly get up and running with video distribution. VipeCloud not only provides a platform for sales, but also customer relationship management, enabling clients to build relationships with their audiences and determine what’s working and what’s not, what’s selling and why.

Insynctive. This startup seeks to give companies a better way to do HR, providing the connective tissue between various payment and benefits systems. It’s all brought together by a single, usable, user interface that employees, as well as in-house and outsourced HR, can all use while simplifying the usual crazy HR application stack.

Spot On. Spot On provides time-based search which will give its users more actionable information. The idea is to match the right activity to the right person at the right time, therefore becoming a user’s personal concierge. The app works by pulling temporal data starting with the start and end time, matching items based on location, and then filtering by a user’s personalized preferences. The first market the team hopes to go after is families with kids to help provide activities that parents and kids will both love when they’re free.

NuMedii. This company plans to use big data to shorten the amount of time it takes to develop and test drugs, and, in the process, massively lower the costs associated with drug creation. By matching the molecular profiles of diseases and drug actions, NuMedii can reduce the amount of time for drug testing from 3-6 years down to 3-6 months, and its accuracy has been crazy good, with 6:6 probability of success in early tests. That’s successfully translating big data into effective drug creation at a fraction of the time and cost.

Meet Mikey. We all know email is a pain in the ass, and Meet Mikey wants to change that. The mobile email app, which works with Gmail, is aimed at providing quicker results to questions, with embedded yes and no buttons that can be sent and translated into instant answers. It also can show you who’s opened emails and attachments sent, making sure that everyone on your team is on the same page. It essentially aims to increase productivity and provide easier access to the information users need, in the palm of their hands.

readImagine. readImagine seeks to empower artists and storytellers to create apps for children, with a platform for creation, curation, and distribution of high-quality kids apps. For creators, the platform makes building an app easier than before, and provides distribution through its own network of apps. For parents, it provides a curated group of high-quality apps their kids will love.

MyProject.is. Crowdfunding will be a $6 billion business this year, and that’s set to accelerate, but creators need better tools for managing their campaigns. This company seeks to make building crowdsourced projects easier than ever, by taking the guilt associated with hitting up friends, family, and other members of one’s network to fund their passion projects. The tool works by involving participants early on and making them part of the project’s story well before it gets to the funding stage, making them more willing to give and also making them feel like a bigger part of the creative process.

Kidaptive. Kidaptive hopes to provide better tools for kids to learn and for parents to help them during early development. Starting with its Leo’s Pad app, the company seeks to create a suite of 25 interactive stories that will play out over the course of a year-long curriculum kids can take part in. Better yet, the product helps empower parents to help their kids learn through a continued feedback loop that keeps them informed about how their child is doing, and what they could do to improve.

* For various reasons, one of those companies didn’t want any publicity for its pitch, so we’re excluding it from our coverage.

Source: Techcrunch

Le collaboratif débarque dans la grande distribution

L’économie collaborative et le crowdfunding viennent de passer un nouveau cap en France. Ces nouvelles tendances intéressent désormais le secteur de la grande distribution. Le groupe Auchan a, en effet, annoncé hier avoir noué un partenariat exclusif avec l’américain Quirky.

Fondée en 2009 par Ben Kaufman, 23 ans, la plateforme Quirky permet aux internautes de transformer leurs idées en véritables produits commercialisables pour 10 dollars.
Concrètement, Quirky applique le concept du crowdfunding au design industriel. Ainsi, une fois que l’idée a été choisie par la communauté, Quirky dépose le brevet du nouveau produit à son nom et reverse, en échange, des royalties à l’inventeur et aux internautes qui ont contribué à la naissance du produit. Quirky assure donc le développement du produit, la réalisation d’un prototype, la production et la distribution.
Fort de cette alliance, Auchan proposera donc dans tous ses magasins une gamme de 8 produits Quirky, dès le 14 décembre prochain. Cet éventail aura vocation à s’agrandir au cours des prochains mois.
Par ailleurs, dès le 1er trimestre 2013, les internautes français auront la possibilité de déposer leurs idées de création sur Auchan.fr, via l’un des 100 000 codes promotionnels mis à disposition et donnant droit à un dépôt d’idées gratuit.
Les projets sélectionnés seront développés, fabriqués et distribués par Auchan mais aussi à travers le réseau de distribution de Quirky aux Etats-Unis.
Pour rappel, le 7 septembre dernier, la start-up Quirky a bouclé une levée de 68M $. Aujourd’hui, la plateforme rassemble une communauté de 300 000 membres et revendique 250 produits créés depuis son lancement.

Source: Frenchweb