Predicting the future of retail

I originally published this post in my weekly-ish newsletter “Drinking from the Firehose.” Sign up here to receive columns like this (and more) in your inbox: tinyletter.com/ataussig.

I participated in a panel discussion a few weeks ago at the National Retail Federation’s “Big Show” conference. The topic was funding innovation in retail and commerce, and the audience was mostly retailers seeking to learn what innovative startups are doing to disrupt the industry.

Rather than rehash the entire discussion in writing, I have extracted timestamps from a video of the panel, so that you can link directly to the specific points below. Click away, and let me know if any of these observations resonate with you!

1. The discovery mechanism for new brands has shifted to visual marketing channels like Instagram. (video, 8:24)
2. How brands resonate with popular culture, with Daily Harvest as an example. (video, 14:25)
3. What does “great” look like for a digital brand today vs. 10 years ago? (video, 15:37)
4. What does true customer obsession mean today? All about collecting longitudinal data. (video, 16:27)
5. Computer vision applied to commerce will change the user interface of how we shop. (video, 22:51)
6. Can retailers really transform themselves with a $1B acquisition? (video, 27:50)
7. We are seeing a re-platforming of retail. What is the “job” of a store today? (video, 35:01)
8. Early stage investors focus more on unit economics than GAAP profitability. (video, 39:04)
9. Why is it so tough to incubate startups inside of a larger company? BigCo’s assets are actually a liability to a startup. (video, 43:16)