[Ipg-smz] Story I'm working on

Wed Oct 31 16:00:50 UTC 2018

I remember seeing a C-suite tech exec of iRobot (I forget who) speak at a conference a few years ago. In my personal opinion, I found his presentation to be not only so super phony-seeming, but extremely antipathetic to good security philosophy. And he danced around and outright avoided all the meaningful questions (and, with grizzled devs in the audience, there were a NUMBER of meaningful questions); he only wanted to talk about how great iRobot was.

As a result, I privately resolved to never buy an iRobot product. (I probably wouldn't have anyway, but seeing him speak convinced me.)

________________________________________
From: Ipg-smz <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org> on behalf of Dana Blankenhorn <danablankenhorn at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 7:48 AM
To: ipg-smz at netpress.org
Subject: Re: [Ipg-smz] Story I'm working on

Agreed on all of this. I have been predicting a "marriage" between Silicon Valley and Detroit for years, but Detroit is super-reluctant. I think it's going to have to be forced, by Apple or Google buying a car production company. Ford is down to $31 billion. For Apple, at $1.06T, it would be like buying a croissant with the morning coffee.

I'd love to find a pure play robotics company, but Boston Dynamics has been a bust for all its owners, a toy for cloud czars to show off, but not a source of profit, and iRobot (IRBT) is fading fast, because it's now seen as a maker of vacuum cleaners.

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 7:44 AM Sharon Fisher <slfisher at gmail.com<mailto:slfisher at gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't see Facebook.

There's a zillion tiny ai startups.

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 5:42 AM James Gaskin <james at gaskin.com<mailto:james at gaskin.com>> wrote:
I would throw a couple of robotics  companies into the mix because that's where AI touches the world. Carnegie-Melon spinoffs might be a good article all by themselves.

Thanks,
James

James E. Gaskin
http://www.gaskin.com
Writer / Consultant / Speaker
Member <http: james-e-gaskin="" member="" netpress.org=""> Internet Press Guild
Portfolio<https: jamesgaskin.contently.com="">
<http: b00g6ljxza="" dp="" www.amazon.com="">

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 5:54 AM Dana Blankenhorn <danablankenhorn at gmail.com<mailto:danablankenhorn at gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks. Any other ideas from the group? I'm going to come up with a list of companies to focus on late this week.

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 11:29 PM Joe Stanganelli <rodeojoe at hotmail.com<mailto:rodeojoe at hotmail.com>> wrote:
To me an obvious candidate, and well over $50b market cap, but do you have Salesforce (CRM) on your list?

For that matter, I'd look at the martech area in general -- a lot of AI companies there. Too many to name off the top of my head.

Ditto for Uber, auto manufacturers, and any other company doing self-driving car work. Those working in AI outside of the self-driving-car sector blame that sector for taking all the AI talent.

Likewise for non-obvious sectors with a lot of tech goings-on, like PharmTech and AgTech. Resson comes to mind -- but they're a private company. Also check out Blue River Technology, which was bought by John Deere last year I think. And I'm sure Bayer/Monsanto has some AI goings on in the AgTech arena.

I'm sure I could come up with many more specific companies if I had to.

________________________________________
From: Ipg-smz <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org<mailto:ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org>> on behalf of Dana Blankenhorn <danablankenhorn at gmail.com<mailto:danablankenhorn at gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 8:19 PM
To: ipg-smz
Subject: [Ipg-smz] Story I'm working on

I've been tasked with doing a massive story on AI companies for InvestorPlace.

I know the obvious candidates, including IBM, MSFT, GOOGL, AMZN, ADBE. AAPL I figure the hardware guys like NVIDIA and AMD.

But who might be among the non-obvious candidates, with market caps under $50 billion, or even $10 billion, that I should look into?
--
Dana Blankenhorn
http://www.danablankenhorn.com
http://investorplace.com/author/danablankenhorn/#.WJzBOzsrLIV
</danablankenhorn at gmail.com<mailto:danablankenhorn at gmail.com>></ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org<mailto:ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org>>
--
Ipg-smz mailing list
Ipg-smz at netpress.org<mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>
http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
--
Dana Blankenhorn
http://www.danablankenhorn.com
http://investorplace.com/author/danablankenhorn/#.WJzBOzsrLIV
--
Ipg-smz mailing list
Ipg-smz at netpress.org<mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>
http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
--
Ipg-smz mailing list
Ipg-smz at netpress.org<mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>
http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
--
Ipg-smz mailing list
Ipg-smz at netpress.org<mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>
http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
--
Dana Blankenhorn
http://www.danablankenhorn.com
http://investorplace.com/author/danablankenhorn/#.WJzBOzsrLIV
</mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org></mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org></mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org></mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org></rodeojoe at hotmail.com<mailto:rodeojoe at hotmail.com></danablankenhorn at gmail.com<mailto:danablankenhorn at gmail.com></http:></https:></http:></james at gaskin.com<mailto:james at gaskin.com></slfisher at gmail.com<mailto:slfisher at gmail.com></danablankenhorn at gmail.com></ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org>