23andMe, once valued at $6B was by April 17, 2024 trading at a price that rendered the enterprise value less than zero. A key to this collapse seems to be the fact that customers really only need to take a DNA test once. The core business had no recurring revenue model and seemed to have no answer to the question: then what?

The company has attempted to create additional revenue streams for some time including an entry into the drug discovery market to leverage its massive database of DNA, purchase of a telehealth firm as anchor for entry into the healthcare market, and a failed effort in providing health tests to consumers. For a business heading to a dead end, these were attempts to answer the "then what" question. But none have borne fruit, perhaps because the question was asked too late. Now there may be an effort to take the company private to generate the capital and time needed for new and recurring revenue streams to develop.

It's a stark lesson about why venture investors tend to be adamant about seeing recurring revenue sources in business models and a key reason that SaaS businesses have garnered so much investment over the last couple decades.

Recurring revenue answers the essential question: THEN WHAT?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlights a coming challenge faced by companies deploying generative AI in many domains. Litigation.

Christopher Mims’ article: “The AI Industry Is Steaming Toward A Legal Iceberg” cites a current case in which OpenAI is being sued for defamation by a Georgia radio host who alleges that the company’s chatbot wrote an answer that falsely accused him of embezzlement. The counter argument from OpenAI was essentially that AI is merely a tool used by people to create content.

But with AI it is the tool that is doing the creating. It’s not unlike a customer who asks a company’s employee to conduct an analysis, produce a legal document, evaluate an investment, prepare taxes, offer advice, or even answer customer support questions. When the employee delivers that output, the company is liable for it. Which is why we take such great care to properly train employees.

How are our AI “employees” any different?

What legal liabilities should we take into account when deploying AI?

Among SaaS companies there is a popular metric used to judge the vitality of the business. The “Rule of 40” says that the sum of the company’s growth rate and its free cash flow rate should be 40 or higher. Industry watchers, boards, and management teams like distilling performance into this number, but as McKinsey has found, only about 1/3 of SaaS companies maintain this ratio over time. The Rule of 40 often signifies a midlife crisis for SaaS companies as their early life growth rates decline.

INSIGHT: Of course, one number doesn’t describe the full health or prospects of a company any more than reaching the age of 40 defines a necessary decline in us. But it does signal the need to look at things in new ways. For the SaaS business that means constantly finding new sources of growth, higher customer retention, new efficiencies, and price optimization. For us, it just means that buying a new sports car won’t solve the problem. Mid-life crises of both kinds require fresh efforts to grow and improve, not diversions.

A broad range of vertical market AI tools are appearing on the burgeoning AI scene.

The explosion of these role-based tools is reminiscent of the development of specialized, vertical SaaS offerings that has continued for two decades. But like everything AI, this time it’s happening very, very fast, which means the disruption these solutions bring is also coming fast. (This post written in early 2024)

Some Current Examples

LAW- Harvey is an AI tool that is causing a storm of interest. It supports attorneys in a range of tasks such as contract analysis, regulatory compliance, and due diligence. Though it’s not yet in full release, the tool has already been adopted by some large law firms and it is rumored that PwC will soon adopt it for their legal staff as well. In fact, demand for Harvey is so high that the only current option to attain it is to get on the wait list for “early release” access. harvey.ai

MEDICINE- Abridge was just adopted by UCI Health, the health system of the University of California. This vertical AI tool converts patient-clinician conversations into structured clinical notes in real-time, saving clinicians the burden of note writing and thus returning hours per day to doctors that they can use for actual interaction with patients…

The term “Unicorn company” was coined by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures ten years ago, defined as a US-based, VC-backed startup that grew to be worth $1B+ within ten years. There were 39 Unicorns in 2013, but that number has grown to 532 today as explained in Cowboy’s new report: "Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later."

A few of the current Unicorn report insights include:

• Ten years ago, 38% of unicorns were enterprise products (with the rest being consumer), but today enterprise is 78% of the total. Many new segments have been created, and the relative stability of enterprise customers has been attractive.

• Many companies raised funds during the ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) period, contributing to inflated valuations. But for many of these companies the runway is now growing short, and they are desperately trying to reach profitability on remaining cash. Cowboy anticipates that perhaps 35% will end up shutting down.

• The Bay area has lost ground as the hub of Unicorns although it still holds a significant lead over other regions. But cities including New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Austin, Chicago, and Denver are each home for more than 10 Unicorns. You don’t have to be in Silicon Valley anymore to go big.

The full report offers many valuable insights that highlight just how much new ventures have changed in the last 10 years and offers some clues about what comes next.

A recent study conducted by Boston Consulting Group assessed their consultants’ use of Chat GPT-4 through a structured study designed to simulate actual client work. Managed by leading academics, the study employed 750 consultants divided into test groups who used AI and control groups who did not.

What was found is that those who leveraged generative AI on creative tasks (i.e. generating new product ideas and go-to-market plans) had superior results to those who worked unaided. However, consultants who used generative AI on problem solving tasks (i.e. identify the root cause of a company’s challenges based on performance data and interviews with executives) fared significantly worse that those who used no AI at all.

One might write this impact down to the fact that generative AI is not optimized for problem solving, and fair enough. But the lesson remains: Pick your AI wisely, in the same way that you would pick a colleague to assist you on a task. You want one (whether AI or colleague) who is skilled at the kind of task you are facing. Of course, with hundreds of AI start-ups generating thousands of differentiated solutions there is an ever-increasing range of options from which to choose.

Which begs the question: just which AI can help me do that choosing?

(Source study summary at: https://lnkd.in/gaeeHUw7)[Image generated by DALI-E2. Text generated by human.]

Spotify has long been admired for its product development methodology by digital product managers and also loved for the product by its users. Yet despite the company's scale (30% market share in music streaming), the Swiss company has struggled to consistently earn a profit.

So, over time Spotify has spawned several forays into new territory including direct artist uploading of music, podcasting, concert ticket merchandising, artist merchandise sales, and audio books. It feels a bit like Amazon’s early years- Can’t make money selling books? add toys… still can’t make money? add household goods… still no? add everything. And finally all the Amazoning of this and that worked. Really well.

THE QUESTION: With competitors like Apple, Google, and yes, Amazon, what are Spotify’s prospects as a stand-alone business regardless of how much Spotifying of this and that it does, or is its destiny to be absorbed by someone like Netflix as part of their own “Netflix this” strategy?

Start-up incubator Y-Combinator just published its 2024 wish list. Termed their “Request for Start-ups”, the list enumerates the areas that the group’s partners are most eager to support- areas where they see great promise. While this is not the only wish list around, it’s a useful look at domains where some see significant potential. Not surprisingly, AI features prominently on the list, but there are also some interesting call outs like: “better enterprise glue”, “developer tools inspired by existing internal tools”, and “commercial open-source companies”.

• Applying Machine Learning To Robotics

• Using Machine Learning To Simulate The Physical World

• New Defense Technology

• Bring Manufacturing Back To America

• New Space Companies

• Climate Tech

• Commercial Open Source Companies

• Spatial Computing

• New Enterprise Resource Planning Software

• Developer Tools Inspired By Existing Internal Tools

• Explainable A.I.

• L.L.Ms For Manual Back Office Processes In Legacy Enterprises

• A.I. To Build Enterprise Software

• Stablecoin Finance

• A Way To End Cancer

• Foundation Models For Biological Systems

• The Managed Service Organization Model For Healthcare

• Eliminating Middlemen In Healthcare

• Better Enterprise Glue

• Small Fine Tuned Models As An Alternative To Giant Generic Ones

Y-Combinator provides an explanation of each category on their site.

We’re watching the Labor Department’s new rule stipulating additional tests to determine if workers may be counted as contractors. The new rule identifies such factors as whether a job is permanent or temporary and how much control the company has over work performance. This move represents a new chapter in the conflict that precipitated an expensive 2020 battle in California over similar rule changes. Led by Uber and others, that faceoff was ultimately won by industry through a ballot initiative.

The courts will have their say on these new rules, but already a similar fight is being readied for Massachusetts this year.

The consideration is, just how much such rule changes may impact the business and prospects of current and future app-based companies that leverage gig workers.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal in January, an analysis by employment data provider Live Data Technologies indicated that fully remote workers were promoted 31% less frequently than in-office or hybrid workers. According to the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics nearly 20% of all employees with college degrees or higher work fully remotely.

However, workers’ feelings of engagement are higher overall for remote and hybrid workers and they also feel less burned out. But working remotely comes at the expense of receiving significantly less feedback and reduced interaction with bosses and others, perhaps explaining the lower promotion rate.

THE QUESTION: What more can be done to increase levels of feedback, interaction, and relationship building for remote workers?

Like the three levels of Hell described in Dante’s Inferno (Self-indulgence, Violence, and Fraud), Marketing is also separated into three levels, although salvation is at hand. Appling the right talent to each level, (Strategy, Tactics, and Creative) in the right order can help avert a trip to Marketing Hades.

MARKET STRATEGY defines how you will achieve competitive advantage. It identifies the right target (segments and personas), the right product (strong & differentiated value proposition), the right price, the right approach to reach the market (channels), and other factors. Strategy is informed by competitive and market research and formed by smart business and product people to achieve product-market fit.

MARKETING TACTICS are the particular ways and steps by which you execute the strategy: advertising, public relations, digital and content marketing, social media, influencers, events, coop promotion, sales activities, promotions, sampling approaches, etc. Tactics are created by marketing specialists, often with focused kinds of expertise. Tactics must be data driven and are validated by ongoing measurement.

MARKETING CREATIVE defines the way in which your messages are expressed to the market through words, images, music, environments, and other aesthetic elements to impactfully communicate your differentiated value proposition through the marketing tactics you execute. Creative is developed by, well, Creatives whether inside or outside your organization. The effectiveness of their work is assessed by testing.

Not only does each level require different talents, the three must be executed in the right sequence. It seems obvious that Strategy comes first. Yet it's amazing how many companies proceed to the next level on the back of a weak strategy so they can "get things going!", only to languish in marketing purgatory as they thrash through tactics and creative that never seem to hit the mark. But with a solid Strategy in place, appropriate Tactics can be developed, then Creative can be designed to make your message cut through the clutter. Actually, Creative can help inform choices about Tactics so it's best to get the Creative going while Tactics are still being defined.

Start at the top of the Inferno with the right travelers and your marketing can burn down the competition. But apply the wrong talent or sequence and there’ll be Hell to pay.