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To keep pace with the ongoing shift toward e- and m-commerce, retailers are turning to chat apps, where smartphone users spend considerable time each day.

One way they’ve been accessing consumers on these platforms is through chatbots, or software programs that use business-to-consumer (B2C) text-based messaging as an interface through which customers can communicate with merchants in a question-and-answer format. 

For merchants, these offerings are valuable because sales increase as customers communicate with and shop from their brand on more channels. But there’s considerable friction — in chat apps, payments offerings are limited, which means users who might be browsing in a messaging app will still be redirected to another app or the mobile web to complete a purchase. 

This is creating an opportunity for payments processors and card networks, which are beginning to partner with merchants to capture potential volume from chat apps. And as the hype increases, other payments firms, like remittance providers and banks are also entering the game, in the hopes of increasing user engagement or attracting new types of clients.

There’s a long road ahead: We’re just at the beginning of what’s likely to be a long adoption cycle, with payments firms only starting to dip their toes into the space. But improvements in the ecosystem, combined with rising consumer appetite for these services and increasing trust, will eventually lead to moderate gains in usage that open up a massive volume opportunity for Western firms.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a detailed report on chatbots' role in the payments ecosystem.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

Chat apps are the next frontier for digital commerce, but without payments functionality, the opportunity is extremely limited. Customers can — and do — ask for support, take advantage of deals, and browse many stores within chat apps. But when it comes time to pay, users have to switch to another app or the mobile web — a turnoff that could hinder adoption and lower conversion rates.Most payments firms are teaming up with retailers, often those they already count as clients, to enable customers to make payments using their mobile wallets or processing features within chat apps. That’s allowing retailers to get to the space faster while opening a revenue opportunity for payments players. Others are taking less direct approaches, working to increase consumer engagement in a way that promotes more spending offline.We’re at the beginning of an adoption curve, so digital payments providers shouldn’t expect massive success quickly, but in the long run, it’s likely to be a large market. As firms work to grow consumer awareness and improve the experience, the technology will eventually become mainstream, which makes getting in early and becoming established worthwhile. 

In full, the report:

Explains why the chat app is the next frontier for commerce, and why payments functionality is a linchpin of that success.Details different types of chat app payments and their potential use cases.Evaluates the hurdles that could prevent consumers from using chatbot payments.Suggests ways firms can overcome these hurdles and begin seeing adoption.Sizes the potential long-run market for chatbot payments in the West.

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Original author: Jaime Toplin

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street" 20th Century Fox

When it comes to Uber and its tough-talking founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, the word "greed" just keeps coming up.

News stories used "greed" in their headlines to describe many of Uber's decisions under his reign, like taking investment money from Saudia Arabia, a country that outlawed women from driving; or firing up Uber's high-cost vehicle leasing program (expected to be shuttered soon); or the lawsuit filed against Uber by Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google's parent company, Alphabet.

The key engineer at the center of that lawsuit, Anthony Levandowski, once even joked that Kalanick should pull a Gordon Gecko, referring to the infamous character from the 1987 movie "Wall Street."

In a text from March, 2016, publicly released thanks to that trial, Levandowski told Kalanick, "Here's the speech you need to give ;-) http://youtu.be/VVxYOQS6ggk"

That's a link to Gekko's famous "Greed is Good" speech in which he passionately declared:

"Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. ... The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Meanwhile, on a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Alsup, who is overseeing the Waymo v. Uber case, warned Waymo's lawyers that greed is not good.

Waymo is accusing Levandowski of stealing its self-driving car trade secrets and taking them to Uber.

Travis Kalanick (left) and Anthony Levandowski Associated Press

As lawyers from each side debated the potential damages at stake, Waymo tried to add more trade secrets to its list of allegedly stolen items.

Alsup was having none of that. He told the lawyers, "You can’t have everything. We can push this out another couple of years and they’ll have cars on the street because you’re being greedy," as reported by Forbes' Biz Carson.

Greed wasn't good for Levandowski, either. Uber fired him in May over this lawsuit and if Uber doesn't win the case in court and vindicate him, his name will remain infamous in the Valley.

Please remember, too, that by the end of the movie, Gekko was sentenced to prison for insider trading and securities fraud. 

All the same, here's the speech that Levandowski jokingly encouraged Kalanick to give.

Original author: Julie Bort

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Original author: Nick Vega

August 16, 2017

I read Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant’s book Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy a few weeks ago. It’s a must read for every human on this planet.

Some of you know that I’m a huge fan of Adam Grant. His book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success is a key inspiration for the #GiveFirst moment, my own personal philosophy, and my upcoming book #GiveFirst: A New Philosophy for Business which should be out in 2018.

I’m also a huge fan of Sheryl Sandberg. I don’t know Sheryl well, but we hung out a few times 15 years ago and both Amy and I thought she was awesome. It’s been awesome to watch what she’s achieved – first at Google, and now at Facebook.

It’s even more remarkable to read the clarity with which she has processed the sudden loss of her beloved husband Dave Goldberg. I met Dave a few times in the last 1990s when he was running LAUNCH Media (we were investors via SOFTBANK) but didn’t stay in touch after Yahoo! acquired LAUNCH. However, many of my Bay Area friends were close to Dave and viewed him reverently.

Amy and I have lost several close friends in the past three months to cancer and suicide. Another friend was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We are getting older and death is becoming a more visible part of our life experience.

Exploring how to process mortality is hard. I talked to a friend on my way home last night who is struggling with this. While these conversations are hard, I learn a little with each one.

Recently, I’ve been referring friends to Atul Gawande’s amazing book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End which is the best book I’ve read so far this year. I also send them to Paul Kalanithi’s book When Breath Becomes Air, which was one of the best books I’ve ever read. I know “best” is a weak qualifier, so just know that they are both in the same league as Norman Cousins’ classic Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration which had a profound impact on me in my mid-20s.

I just added Sheryl and Adam’s book to this league. Life and death are complicated. If you, like me, are constantly exploring it and trying to understand it, and yourself, better, I encourage you to read Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. Sheryl and Adam – thank you for writing it.

Also published on Medium.

Previous PostBack From My Blogging Break Next PostWhat Are The Limits of Tolerance?

Original author: Brad Feld

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: MitraSramana

Original author: Sramana Mitra

I took the last two weeks off from blogging. It was a nice vacation.

While I try to blog every day, I don’t have a daily ritual like Fred Wilson does. Fred and I have talked about this a few times – for him, it is meditation, discipline, and ritual. I’ll let him say it in his own words.

“But I’ve come to realize that the daily post, and its quality or lack thereof, is not really the thing. It is the ritual, the practice, the frequency, the habit, and the discipline that matters most to me.”

In the past four years, I’ve tried to move away from time-based disciplines. I realized that my obsession with time and schedule, such as waking up every morning at 5 am no matter what time zone I was in, was one of the inputs into my depressive cycles. My weekly “wall of blue” (what I refer to my calendar – and what it looks like – basically fully committed between 9 and 5 from Monday to Friday) was another.

About four years ago I started removing time-based disciplines from my life. I still have many time-based rhythms – often imposed by others – that I adhere to. Most of the business world runs on a time-based rhythm (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually) so that’s a background that I have to operate within. However, I’ve systematically tried to eliminate as many of these self-imposed rhythms as I can.

I wake up whenever I feel like it. I try to schedule less, not more, phone calls. I try to leave an increasing amount of time unscheduled. There are long stretches of time where this is difficult, and the wall of blue takes over.

As I rolled into August, I knew I was facing an intense two weeks. I foreshadowed that in my post Total Failure at Summer Maker Mode. After writing one more post on July 31st, I gave myself permission to take a two-week vacation from blogging.

Regularly readers notice when I go off the grid for a vacation, which varies in length from a week to a month. This wasn’t a work vacation, but it was a blogging vacation. It felt good not to think about writing for two weeks as I just focused on work, running, resting, and being with Amy.

While my schedule is still pretty full, it’s not as full, and as I look forward the wall of blue has some space in it. Between that, and a nice two-week break, writing once again appeals to me.

Also published on Medium.

Previous PostBook: The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries Next PostBook: Option B

Original author: Brad Feld

Original author: MitraSramana

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: MitraSramana

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: jyotsna popuri