At OpenView Venture Partners, although our main focus in expansion stage software companies often leads us to investing in high growth enterprise software vendors such as Attask, we do sometimes follow new interesting consumer or mass-market technology companies. While social networks were all the rage a few years ago, and then Twitter and the likes seemed to dominate the last 2 years, we are actually seeing a lot of momentum in the space of smart devices. These are "everyday" devices that are made a lot smarter by enabling Internet connection, location awareness and sensors (light, heat, motion sensor). They are often also aided by great design, ease of use and a companion web-based interface that help extend their reach across the cloud.
Of course, the Iphone can be considered such a device, given that people use the Iphone as much for its bewilderingly wide array of applications that take advantage of all of those characteristics mentioned above as much for its more traditional features of handling phone calls and web browsing. On the other extreme of this is the ever popular Roomba robot, which is "smart", well-designed and does its job very well, even if it is not really that versatile. In between, we are seeing more and more of the likes. Here are just some that I particularly like:
- Mint - the Roomba of vacuum cleaners, created by Evolution Robotics
- Nabaztag - everyone's favorite rabbit which actually comes with a whole family of Internet connected, smart gadget such as the ultra cool Mir:ror.
- Touchatag is a company that is making it easier for people to create their own "smart" device. Formerly known as tikitag, the company provides the software and services that enable programming of RFID tags and cards so that they can get information from external sources and hence making devices "smart".
- Last but not least, Poken is a really smart "business card" that is fun to use and extremely powerful. I would not do justice to the idea here, so please go to the website to see for yourself.
I see great potential in this space, and I believe that this is the way software and technology will truly become an integral part of our life.
Of course, the Iphone can be considered such a device, given that people use the Iphone as much for its bewilderingly wide array of applications that take advantage of all of those characteristics mentioned above as much for its more traditional features of handling phone calls and web browsing. On the other extreme of this is the ever popular Roomba robot, which is "smart", well-designed and does its job very well, even if it is not really that versatile. In between, we are seeing more and more of the likes. Here are just some that I particularly like:
- Mint - the Roomba of vacuum cleaners, created by Evolution Robotics
- Nabaztag - everyone's favorite rabbit which actually comes with a whole family of Internet connected, smart gadget such as the ultra cool Mir:ror.
- Touchatag is a company that is making it easier for people to create their own "smart" device. Formerly known as tikitag, the company provides the software and services that enable programming of RFID tags and cards so that they can get information from external sources and hence making devices "smart".
- Last but not least, Poken is a really smart "business card" that is fun to use and extremely powerful. I would not do justice to the idea here, so please go to the website to see for yourself.
I see great potential in this space, and I believe that this is the way software and technology will truly become an integral part of our life.
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