Standard Cognition<\/a> co-founder Jordan Fisher says everyone is chasing autonomous driving \u2014 or, the \u201cshiny object,\u201d as he calls it.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s not the aim of Fisher and his team, who set out to start a company that\u2019s focused on streamlining the checkout experience. That\u2019s the end result of Standard Cognition, a startup that provides technology that helps businesses see what people are picking up off the shelves \u2014 and eventually purchasing. The end goal is for someone to walk in, grab a jar of mustard off a shelf, and walk out without having to wait in line to pay for it. And the idea of just turning every store into a pantry is such low-hanging fruit that the company has been able to attract new financing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe research is so amazing, the progress has been so incredible \u2014 but what we really saw was despite all this tremendous progress and adoption of all the major tech companies in the world, it hasn\u2019t transformed the world yet,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cIt makes Google search better, whatever, fine. But machine vision is the key to unlock the digital world from the physical world.\u00a0We wanted to find what that angle was, and where we could apply this technology [in a way that it would]\u00a0have a huge impact. We were looking for something that was challenging enough so we had a moat for defensibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Standard Cognition said today it has raised another $5 million in a round led by Charles River as well as Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, and other smaller investors. CRV\u2019s Devdutt Yellurkar led the firm\u2019s deal in Standard Cognition, with Garry Tan working with the founders as well.<\/p>\n
The goal of Standard Cognition is to plug into some slightly more sophisticated cameras than the average security camera right now, and then basically just give the average human an app and say go. The cameras identify who walks in, what they\u2019re carrying, and what they end up walking out with and bill them for those products. There\u2019s no facial recognition that goes into it, working in such a way that tries to keep the data anonymized and then removed once the person leaves the store. Part of the way it looks to do that is by hosting all of its processes on-premise, rather than over a cloud-based infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are always bigger competitors, more well-financed companies,\u201d Yellurkar said. \u201cI think these guys, like every good startup, are singularly focused on solving one specific problem. They are solving for small-format retail and trying to get a zero wait-time checkout experience. That focus is going to give them the opportunity to run faster. They\u2019re not solving tech for the sake of tech. They\u2019re using tech to solve a specific problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Technology like Standard Cognition\u2019s seemingly has obvious applications for larger retailers, which Fisher says would \u201clove to\u201d build in-house but have trouble competing for talent and getting it off the ground. But another natural application is smaller retailers, or even the average mom-and-pop or corner store, which can get people in and out faster and help drive more business to those locations based on just the convenience. There\u2019s a bit of a barrier to entry on the user behavior side with downloading the app, but after a few tries people get used to it pretty quickly, he said.<\/p>\n
If this sounds familiar, it probably should \u2014 and in your recent memory too. There\u2019s a startup called Bodega that sparked some controversy<\/a> that was looking to build a process somewhat similar, though it was more geared around having a distributed cabinet network that people could just walk up to and snag said jar of mustard. Advances in machine vision have enabled a whole class of startups that can use the technology to pick off the kinds of low-hanging fruit that Standard Cognition wants to grab, which could lead to some significant competition for the company going forward.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s just gonna be a huge Cambrian explosion that we\u2019re starting to see,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cI think it\u2019s cool, there are things like Focal Systems [or Bodega] that are working on other ways to do check-out. All those are probably gonna have some part to play in the future of retail. But I also think retail is so massive and the existing infrastructure of retail, the 10,000 store fleet of 7 Eleven, or other stores even in Asia. If you want to reach that part of retail, and if you want to repurpose the existing infrastructure, I think you have to have something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/mKm119za_RY\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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