The future of Web3 is...free?
Greetings, Pulse Subscribers!
Halloween may have come and gone, but we’ve got a scary-good Pulse ready for you! Here’s the agenda:
An open and free e-Commerce network for web3
Boosting sales through sustainability
Off-the-shelf inventory drones
The next generation of smart shopping carts
The future of artificial intelligence
How VCs think
Ready? Let’s go!
Startup Deals
e-commerce Infrastructure | As web3 continues to grow, with the potential to disrupt almost every industry, how e-commerce will work in this new space is still being determined. One company looking to lead the way is Rye, a startup founded by Justin Kan (cofounder of Twitch), which is building e-commerce developer tools and APIs on the Solana blockchain. Rye gives online retailers the power to integrate e-commerce into any digital experience without the need to bounce to merchant pages. More notably, it lets retailers retrieve product data and sell products from any store in its network, which currently boasts over 390 million products. Rye imagines the future of e-commerce as “an open and free network that could hold the collection of all products, where any brand can plug in their inventory, and any seller could pull from” - allowing everyone to spin up their own stores or monetize their offerings while giving consumers more choices than ever before. Rye’s decentralized vision of e-commerce recently raised $14 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Showing Off Sustainability | Customer demand is making sustainability a requirement for businesses of all sizes, which leads to two questions: How do you become more sustainable, and how do you let customers know about the impact you’re making? EcoCart helps with both. First, EcoCart performs product life cycle audits to help companies calculate, analyze, and, most important, offset their carbon emissions. Then, the EcoCart platform allows shoppers to see how businesses are doing in terms of protecting trees and using clean energy sources. The platform also allows businesses to offer offsetting initiatives within the shopping experience — for example, by inviting shoppers to make their purchase carbon-neutral with a small added fee or showing the number of trees saved from a particular order. EcoCart says its clients see a 10% increase in average order value, a 15% repurchase rate increase, and a 14% increase in cart conversions – all while boosting the business’s sustainability. EcoCart recently raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by Fifth Wall Climate.
Inventory Drones | Warehouses are … huge. One modern solution to expedite inventory management is to use drones. Most companies in this space construct custom drones to zip through warehouses and scan inventory. The problem is these customized bots can get expensive to implement and replace. Gather AI, a five-year-old Pittsburgh startup, offers a simpler solution. Instead of customized bots, Gather AI uses off-the-shelf drones available at any electronics store, then tricks them out with its inventory monitoring system. Scanning an aisle, which can take two hours manually, can be done autonomously by the system in eight minutes. The Gather AI software allows off-the-shelf drones to read labels as they are – no need for customization or reshelving – and should anything go wrong, Gather AI offers free 24-hour replacement. Gather AI recently closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Tribeca Venture Partners.
Smart Shopping | Streamlining and personalizing the shopping experience are two big ways for businesses to win customers and boost sales. Veeve offers a smart shopping cart for grocery stores that does both. The cart itself scans items as they are put in or taken out – it can even weigh produce – allowing customers to get what they need and pay without having to stop by a cash register. Additionally, the cart can save shopping lists, offer customized coupons based on store location, present useful ads, and guide customers to the items they are looking for – all from a built-in touchscreen display. The Veeve cart can run 18 hours a day and, unlike other smart carts, features a weather-resistant design so it can be taken to the parking lot. Having announced a multiyear partnership with Albertsons earlier this year, Veeve recently raised $6.7 million.
Essential Reads
From smart data indexing and autonomous management systems to language models that can hold coherent conversations and help customers, artificial intelligence is making its way into every corner of the retail industry. What are the risks and ethical considerations we need to consider as we continue to develop these tools? Greylock Partners recently hosted Intelligent Future, a day-long summit with AI experts, visionaries, and early-stage innovators across the field, to investigate these very questions. This series of podcasts from the summit covers everything AI — from self-driving cars to computer-generated art to training AI for human safety and more — with a look toward the future and where this technology could be heading next.
Some of the biggest drivers of the innovation economy are venture capitalists. After all, you can have an incredible business plan, but if no one finances it, chances are you won’t be successful. In this essential read, Mark Suster, managing partner at Upfront Ventures, dives deep into what VCs are currently up to in what he calls a “post-crash market.” Suster not only explores what VCs are looking for in this down market but also where he sees their interests moving in the future. With an insider's view of how the venture capital industry actually works, as well as insights on what makes an attractive startup, this piece gives a rare glimpse behind the curtain into the industry that helps make tomorrow’s biggest companies.
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