Tag: tech investment

Big data trends 20/21

Olivia Ogilvie

BAD times.

Using data and analytics in efforts to digitise and transform business models is not a new phenomenon. Many of the most recognisable brands and companies today have relied on big data to transform and elevate their status and business model. Take Netflix, for instance. Netflix started as a DVD rental company in 1997 and, since its shift to a cloud streaming service, boasts an estimated 182.8m subscribers with a market capital of over $200bn.

While it’s been a trend for some time, it’s still on the rise. And quickly. By 2022, Gartner expects that 90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency. To ensure that your business is keeping up with the latest in big data, here are five trends that we expect to continue throughout the second half of 2020 and into 2021.

The increasing demand for Data Scientists and Chief Data Officers (CDOs)

The Harvard Business Review predicted in 2012 that the role of Data Scientist would be the sexiest job of the 21st Century. Has their prediction come true; is it sexy? You can decide that one, but it’s certainly lucrative.

More businesses are uncovering the value

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Women will be the future of technology

James Dodd

Female founders got just 2.2% of Venture Capitalist Funding in 2018, the same percentage as in 2017.

Okay. TimesUp, Starting Now.

This woeful figure is actually an increase on the 1.9% offered to female founders in 2016, and comes despite female founders raised a record amount of VC funding, at $2.3bn in ten months. This is an issue on both sides of the table: 74% of US Venture Capitalist firms have no female investors. These figures are a stark reminder that whilst the tech industry looks to the future, its decisions are being made in the historical, male-dominated model.

Female-headed businesses have a real potential to make societal change in ways perhaps different from those headed by men. Whitney Wolfe founded Bumble after leaving Tinder and filing a lawsuit against Tinder for sexual harassment. Bumble, where women have to make the first move and start the conversation, has led a revolution in how modern women go about dating, making

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How Improbable’s SpatialOS may revolutionise your business

James Dodd

By now, you have probably heard about Improbable, the virtual simulation start-up that raised $502m from Japan’s SoftBank – but what you might not have considered is how its technology could be of interest to your business.

Founded in 2012 by a pair of Cambridge University computer science graduates, Improbable is now valued at more than $1bn thanks to the investment by SoftBank, which represents the largest-ever venture financing round for a private British company.

The business employs 170 computer scientists, engineers and designers who are all attempting to recreate the most detailed version possible of the real world in digital form.

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Tech IPOs hit a low in 2016 (but 2017 could be boom time!)

OliverLuft

Last year was a busy 12 months in terms of tech business manoeuvring. The big moves, however, were takeovers, mergers, launches and collapses – there didn’t seem to be that many public offerings.

Much of the movement in 2016 was established businesses buying content firms or platforms that provided a link to sizeable audience. Verizon bought Yahoo for $4.8bn, Microsoft paid $26bn for LinkedIn, and we also looked at telco convergence generally. Yet, other than flagging up the expected IPO of Snapchat, Tech IPOs didn’t seem to impact the media world in 2016 to such a degree.

Now, thanks to a study from PwC, the reasons for that have become somewhat clearer – as 2016 marked the decade’s low point for global tech IPOs.

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Facebook buys WhatsApp for a huge $19bn – how does that compare with other recent takeovers?

Albert Ng

Media recruiting: Facebook logoFacebook announced last week that it will acquire the instant messaging provider WhatsApp in a deal worth an eye-watering $19bn (£11.4bn).

The social network already has its own mobile chat platform, but its traction has not nearly been as strong as other standalone chat apps such as WhatsApp and WeChat. The astronomical price paid for WhatsApp reflects how keen Facebook is to get hold of a lithe, mobile technology.

So what exactly does Facebook get for its money?

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