Shoptalk 2018

Shoptalk is billed as the world’s largest conference devoted to retail and e-commerce innovation. Conference organizers expect more than 7,500 attendees at the event this year, which runs March 18–21 in Las Vegas. Coresight Research is again partnering with Shoptalk to host the conference’s annual startup pitch competition. On March 20, Coresight Research CEO and Founder Deborah Weinswig will also participate in a Shoptalk session entitled “Overview of Retail and Ecommerce Innovation in China.” Zia Daniell Wigder, Chief Global Content Officer of Shoptalk, will interview Weinswig and Hans Tung, Managing Partner of GGV Capital, on topics that include technology and business model advancements in areas such as checkout, payments, delivery, logistics, the IoT and robotics.

Startup Competition

On March 18, Weinswig will emcee a startup pitch competition between 15 early-stage companies. Each company will present its business to a panel of judges from the investment community and to the audience. Two winners will be announced, one chosen by the panel of judges and one by audience vote, and each winner will be awarded $25,000. Shoptalk curated the participating startups based on their solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing retailers today. As we highlight in our 18 Retail Trends for ’18: Preparing for Another Year of Change report, the retail industry continues to undergo transformation, characterized by five key factors that are either driven by or affecting consumers and retailers:

1. Consumers continue to switch from conventional retail formats to new, alternative formats and channels.
2. Shoppers value life-improving services from retailers and technology providers.
3. Brands, retailers and technology firms are offering new types of interactions, rewards and experiences.
4. Industry changes are compelling closer collaboration among retailers, technology giants (including Amazon), logistics technology vendors and social media influencers.
5. Retailers are leveraging technologies as diverse as blockchain and 3D printing to make their supply chains smarter and fitter in an increasingly competitive market.

In response to these trends and opportunities, retailers in all channels are changing to accommodate shoppers’ shifting preferences. Below, we profile Breinify, one of the companies participating in the startup pitch competition at Shoptalk 2018.

Breinify

 

Company Description

Breinify is an e-commerce recommendation engine that combines external data sets on factors such as weather, events and holidays with user behavior and location data to enable brands to deliver hyper-relevant customer engagement in real time. The company’s AI engine combines machine learning with time-interval algorithms to predict an individual’s time-sensitive interests and drive spur-of-the-moment purchases. The company blends machine learning with more than 100,000 distinct temporal models to predict an individual’s upcoming time-sensitive interests. In terms of user behavior, the company tracks online-shopping data such as products consumers view, which links they click on a retailer’s website and location. The company’s targets include B2C retailers, consumer packaged goods brands, quick-service restaurants and e-commerce brands. Breinify is working with customers such as BevMo!, Round Table Pizza and others to enable them to act on time-sensitive insights through SMS and existing marketing channels. Breinify customers have seen an average increase of 34% in individual spending with a 17% reaction rate, according to the company.

Market Overview

Research firm Research and Markets estimates that the AI marketing market will reach $6.48 billion in 2018 and that it will grow at a 29.79% CAGR, to $40.09 billion, by 2025. Market intelligence firm IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on AI software, hardware and services will jump from $12 billion in 2017 to $58 billion by 2021.

What Problem Is the Company Solving?

Consumers now expect personalization that goes beyond a “Hello, Joe” greeting sent at a predetermined time. But brands’ marketing promotions are often static, and setting up individual marketing rules such as “Send SMS and push notification whenever the temperature is over 70” can require countless hours of labor.This often leads to rules that are too general to be effective, resulting in low response rates and shoppers receiving nonrelevant alerts.

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Funding Stage

VC-backed seed

Business Model

Breinify’s clients pay a yearly licensing fee to use the company’s platform-as-a-service,which enables them to access the predictive capabilities of the time-driven AI engine. Breinify charges integration fees if customized implementation is needed and offers one time purchases of impact reports that analyze user behavior data in a temporal context (seasonality, day of week, etc.) in relation to weather, events and holidays.

Competitive Landscape

The company competes with predictive intelligence companies such as Amplero, Blueshift and IBM Predictive Customer Intelligence and with personalization companies such as Monetate.

Management Team

Breinify CEO and Cofounder Diane Kengis a technology entrepreneur who previously sold a company to AOL and worked at Apple and Symantec. CTO and Cofounder Philipp Meisenholds a PhD in data science and is the author of the book Analyzing Time Interval Data as well as more than 20 research publications.

Company Outlook

Retailers and brands are under pressure to meet customer expectations with exceptional experiences and meaningful engagement. In order to differentiate themselves from competitors, companies will look to AI technologies that activate micromoments for individuals rather than analysis on demographic segments.