Oil and Water

Some companies produce a product and sell it directly to the people, or to distributors who then sell it to the people. These companies are the ones we see most often, all the ads we see, the stores we enter, the apps we download mostly fall into this category. This entire business position is, however, simply the surface layer of a much richer market. Selling to other companies.

I remember I was shocked to find a picture of a magazine online, this catalogue of products was completely different to the ones I normally see on the rare occasions I go shopping.  This catalogue of products was targeting other companies, and contained things like industrial equipment, bulk services, logistics products and technology. I thought I was delving into a whole new world, a secret layer of oil sitting atop the water. But I soon learned, after speaking to the CTO of MyWave, James Ladd, that these two worlds can collide. And in that collision, value is created.

MyWave is a technology company for sure, and a perfect example of how dynamic a technological product can be. MyWave has developed Frank, an intelligent assistant much like Siri, but with a greater problem solving ability and a greater skill set. Frank can soon be downloaded and used to find restaurants nearby, check the prices of the housing market, and do much much more. An example of what Frank offers can be seen in this video:

The technology for creating Frank has been around for quite some time, though the ambition for taking on such a project in a market which already contains assistants such as Siri and Cortana, is quite recent. MyWave is one of the few companies who has this ambition.

The business, an ‘other incorporated entity’, lives in Australia, and flaunts its female CEO, Geraldine McBride, something rare for a technology or app company to have. She claims that their company’s point of difference, their unfair advantage is the fact that their intelligent assistant gives users control over their data collection, and which brands can use it. This point of difference alone has raked in as much as $4 million, which they have used to double their Melbourne based development team. Her point on privacy, however, I feel is merely the water sitting quietly beneath the more important point of difference, the unfair advantage for the other market, other businesses.

Frank is a different sort of intelligent assistant, not only because it values privacy. The clever people at MyWave, led by their CTO, James Ladd, created this intelligent assistant to be transferrable and adaptable. Frank can integrate into any other app which requires a pseudo intelligence to operate. Something which is not valuable to the everyday citizen, but extremely valuable to corporations. Here is a keynote where McBride explains further:

This value has already been confirmed with MyWave gaining their first customer while still in development. SaveAwatt is a New Zealand based company which allows power companies to access markets which they would normally never be able to access. Most people will never switch power companies as long as they don’t move house, simply because the hassle and bureaucratic complexity is too great for the everyman. But SaveAwatt found their secret weapon. Using MyWave’s Frank. 

With Frank people can switch power companies automatically, without the hassle, and SaveAwatt can get ludicrous commissions from power companies who now have access to the market.

MyWave’s technology, while not solving any problems on its own necessarily (there are many intelligent assistant apps around), has an enormous capacity to assist other companies in solving other problems. This is all because the development took adaptability and transferability into consideration. Frank can be used for the purpose of another app, in situ, something which has not been done with an intelligent assistant yet so far.

In a sense, MyWave and Frank do not represent how technology is profitable on its own, because quite frankly, creating yet another intelligent assistant is not particularly exciting. MyWave’s Frank represents how the ability to integrate, to assist a wide variety of clients, and remain adaptable is essential for gaining the lead in the app and technology industries. Geraldine McBride has said that they are a leader in intelligent assistant privacy and customer management, but I completely disagree. I believe Frank is a leading example of adaptability, something more valuable than money itself.

I feel this picture sums up life for most of us.

Because, as we all know, even though something might be better suited to our needs, if acquiring it is difficult, we really wont bother. Humans are lazy, stupid things, and that is why businesses and customers need something adaptable, like Frank.