How AI is Leading the Shift from Screen-Based to Multi-Sensory Experiences

In the rapidly advancing digital age, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a central pivot reshaping societal interaction and consumer behavior. The convergence of societal trends with the meteoric rise of AI compels forward thinking entrepreneurs to rethink what and who they are designing for. It's no longer about crafting for a screen; it's about envisaging multi-sensory experiences in a data-driven landscape.

My first investment in an AI company was over ten years ago in 2012. Kairos is focused on facial recognition and was ahead of its time. They were championing privacy when, frankly, it wasn’t really the thing to do in tech let alone AI. Investing in Kairos gave me first hand knowledge of the complexities of building, especially so early on, for AI but also a glimpse at what the future would hold.

During this time period I began to shape how I invested in and selected forward thinking companies that I wanted to partner with in my accelerator. Prior, my process had been just like everyone else:

Call for applications > review applications > select top companies based on current market trends > interview founders.

The market trends I was analyzing at the time were mainly made up of what other VC’s were investing in and what growth markets were currently trending up. For instance at this time it was all about mobile so many of my investments shifted from web app to mobile app companies.

My investment in Kairos stretched me because I wasn’t really investing in AI at the time. It required me to do a ton of research that expanded beyond the current hot markets. The US and China have been in a technological tit-for-tat for some time so my research led me there. I understood, from being so entrenched in the startup space, that many technological trends will begin in Asia and migrate to other parts of the world; some morphing for their origin to a more localized version of the technology. I began to update my investment methodology to take this into account and make bets on what technology trends I felt would be localized and take root in the US.

When I explain to people what Streamlytics is and how I came up with the idea for it I’m often met with “Oh, wow how did you come up with that?” The stares of confusion I got in 2018 when I launched Streamlytics morphed to interest and then intrigue year after year.

The truth is when I sold my accelerator in 2017 and was thinking of what I wanted to do next I decided to apply my investment methodology to myself. I researched the market trends that were happening globally, starting in Asia, and saw a convergence of societal trends:

• A growing negative sentiment among consumers of exploitation from tech companies

• An awareness that these companies are using their data

• An awareness the consumers have data and are actively creating it

• A small but growing market of data ownership and monetization solution in Europe

• The regulation of data privacy globally by many countries

• Privacy policy regulation in the US at the state level

• The growth rate of AI via Internet-of-Things products

This led me to rethink beyond just building an app as my next thing and to build a solution that, hopefully, would help shape this new world that technology was creating.

As you can see above, innovation is not necessarily just divine insight. It’s looking at where the world is at beyond your local community, seeing independent signals and trends, converging those signals to create something new and novel, and then brining that innovation back to your local community (or country).

This week’s analysis delves into how a convergence of societal trends, the growth and creation democratization of AI are catalyzing a paradigm shift in entreprenuership and birthing a renaissance in how we define user experience.

Why does this matter?

Well, because you don’t want to be focused on building some little AI app while the innovators are moving in a different direction.

Let’s explore….