The San Jose Convention Center hosted the Fall 2014 installment of the DEMO Conference which brought together venture capitalists, technology business professionals and corporate IT professionals to view, interact with and provide feedback on cutting edge products that are ready for the market. More than 70 companies from the U.S., Europe and Asia offered solutions to problems ranging from online marketing security analysis to finding student financial aid to clothing which measures the body. It was a chance for attendees to meet and network with peers, entrepreneurs, CIO’s, marketing executives and the press while gaining insights on new trends in business.
Of the many products demonstrated, three caught our eye…and we’ll try to distill each offering down to the 60 second elevator pitch.
Ghostery Marketing Cloud Manager (Ghostery MCM)
Based on anonymous data collected from users, this product creates a visual representation (The Tracker Map) of all of the marketing links (tags) which connect to your site and shows how your user’s information is shared with your marketing vendors (including the complete path(s) the data travels to each vendor). This is especially important for the enterprise because a fully described network shows where insecure paths are present in your company’s supposedly secure pages (which could lead to data loss and security/privacy gaps). Latency (interactions with vendors which take more than 500ms) is displayed so you can also see who is slowing your site down. Summaries of all links are presented in a “Data Governor’s Report” so you can see which vendors are present on each page of your site and that they are collecting the data you’ve requested.
Student Loan Benefits (The 401K for Student Loan Debt)
If, as the presenter stated, 50 million people are struggling with student loan debt, then this product is positioned as an employee recruitment/retention benefit. After a brief survey, the whole of an individual’s student loan debts are summarized on one screen. Several options are presented describing how the debts could be paid off including a path in which the company provides matching funds. A private financing option may be available to a sub-group of users (we assume based on credit score, income, etc.).
Like A Glove (The garment that measures you)
The wind up: By knowing your exact size and ordering that size from a clothing manufacturer’s website (or by logging into the Like A Glove website and using them as an intermediary who knows your sizes / personal tailor), this reduces returns. It is a combination of their new, smart fabric and a data collection app that makes the magic happen. A variety of garment forms are available including leggings, pants, shorts, dresses and bras. It is thought that a retailer could offer the Like A Glove kit for a nominal charge plus a coupon to recoup the full price when ordering a subsequent purchase.
The feedback from the panel was encouraging but did ask a few tough questions:
(1) People may return an item saying it did not fit but what they really meant was that the cut or style or drape was not flattering. These factors don’t come across based on simple measurements.
(2) What about the two thirds of the populace that are considered obese? Instead of displaying their form in an app, perhaps a simple summary of their measurements would be less confrontational.
(3) As a follow-up to #2, this technology seems best suited to those who are looking for close-fitted garments.
The DEMO Conferences (as produced by IDG), are held in the United States, China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam and focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as Launchpad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Salesforce, Webex, Tivo ,VMware and Fusion-io and thousands of others, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters.
The DEMO Scholarship Partner Program, subsidized by corporate sponsorships, offers multiple scholarship opportunities to ensure that deserving entrepreneurs have the chance to introduce cutting edge technology products at DEMO that might have otherwise gone undiscovered.
This Year’s Winners (DEMO God Awards) – One from each category as selected by those in attendance included: pathSense, Celect, Curb, Ghostery and Student loan Benefits SLB.
