Four well-known venture capitalists will not be impressed with startups that simply integrate big data with sales or marketing software, VentureBeat reported.
Speaking at the O'Reilly Media's Strata big data conference in Santa Clara, California, Data Collective Managing Partner Matt Ocko said, "The most grotesquely overinvested category I have seen is anything that has to do with sales and marketing." This means taking marketing automation software such as that offered by Marketo or customer relationship management software like Salesforce.com and then adding natural language processing or even artificial intelligence to it, the report said.
Ocko added that if startups want to get funded, they have to be original. That means not being "the eleventh [person starting] a Wi-Fi chip company, the fourteenth [person doing] scale-out storage."
The hesitancy of Accel Partners Partner Jake Flomenberg lies in startups that utilize machine learning algorithms to give more accurate results as more data is revealed. He said, "I think the disconnect that I far too often see is that people are focused on the technology in and of itself, more than the direct use cases." He added that the size of the market is also limited to a certain segment of data scientists.
Meanwhile, O' Reilly AlphaTech Ventures investor Roger Chen is concerned that those companies that promote devices with data-generating sensors do not have a "clear pathway toward being part of any bigger system later on." Consequently, the potential results based on the data will be limited, the report said.
For Canaan Partners Venture Partner Ross Fubini, startups have a better chance of getting funded if they come with technology that promotes compelling user experiences on mobile devices. He added, however, that venture capitalists are also going to be interested in applications that are going to have that magic feel. He said, "The applications that we don't see - the technology behind it - that's the stuff that's going to be interesting to me."
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