Investors are well acquainted with the catchphrase “Data is the new Oil” and this is increasingly becoming true for more sectors. Some of the early sectors to benefit from data generation and live insights were the advertising and financial industries. However, data collection and its use for live decision-making have started making waves in the F&A industry over the last couple of years.
On the back of this trend, one start-up has gone against the odds and pivoted from AdTech to AgTech. Xsights had started providing audience measurement services to the advertising industry when they saw strong overlaps with the …. livestock farming space (!) and took the plunge.
Their patented XIoT tag is proposed as a Sensor-as-a-Service solution and thus particularly appreciated for its low entry cost, easily recouped through operational efficiencies. These real-time insights have significant impact as even small improvements can result in massive reduction in young animals’ mortality and speedy disease detection, even in large farms.
With a number of further applications such as provenance tracking at the horizon, XSights has been wise enough to see that live data with actionable insights IS the new oil. A far cry from business models where data acquisition at a large scale precedes its monetization (and burns investors’ cash), as the infamous hockey stick suggests.
Of gazelles, cockroaches, and the elusive unicorns 🦌🪳 🦄
If you want to liken your start-up to a spirit animal, options are aplenty!
Either way, as a conclusion of this series, everything points to the necessity of learning how to sell early in the life of the startup. There is wide academic evidence pointing to the fact that companies that do not learn to sell, whose sales pattern flattens out early as well will eventually fail, even if it takes several years.