Two highlights from Jan 2020

A recent theme I’ve been thinking of - is that a lot of opportunity in technology is to solve core problems for organizations, that have yet to be solved in a way that’s easily adopted and deployed. Core problems that are much more needed in the short term, than the long term vision apps and services.

One example is the problem of identity management. This raise by Persona is a good example of ventures seeking to solve this:

https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/persona-raises-17-5m-for-an-identify-verification-platform-the-goes-beyond-user-ids-and-passwords/

On an unrelated topic, there has been a lot of talk about Boston becoming unaffordable for entrepreneurs, young startups, and unattractive for those folk who want to take a risk on a job / team / young company. Thereby, there is talk about what the next tech / science / innovation hub in the New England area might be. Is it Worcester, Providence, Manchester/Nashua… or Portland, Maine? With this latest news, my bet is on the latter to become the latest city to attract creative minds, entrepreneurs and bring progress to the world:

https://www.pressherald.com/2020/01/27/maine-native-puts-up-100-million-for-portland-research-center/

Expansion of core tech by the industry

Great to see a top industry player like Google investing in core research that expands the possibilities of tech applications. Just like they did with opening up and supporting Android for developers, this will expand the scope of what’s possible for developers to solve for, using software — in this case, expanding to another one of the human senses.

http://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/learning-to-smell-using-deep-learning.html