Leading In A Crisis: Four Startups Betting on A New Normal

Startups are to innovation what wood is to fire. They are the fuel that ignites new markets, new ways of doing business, and new consumer behaviors. Following the 2008 financial crisis, we witnessed a group of emerging companies challenge business models and create solutions to problems we didn’t know existed. Think AirBnB, Venmo, Slack, Uber, and WhatsApp. Now will be no exception.

You don’t need us to tell you, 2020 has been a year of unrivaled change. Yet, in this change, the principles by which a startup company is built on–resilience, adaptability, flexibility, and speed–are the principles that will bring to bear, a new set of companies amidst chaos. COVID-19 has become lighter fluid for what’s next.

Whether a startup is currently thriving or coping in this new climate, the path of innovation is still being pursued, impacting areas in need of the most attention. While COVID-19 has merely accelerated–not created–certain consumer dynamics, over the last couple of months, we have seen significant shifts in consumer behavior, providing room and opportunities for new players to shape the new normal.

Today, we’re already witnessing the acceleration of such behaviors in a time of uncertainty:

• Contactless Experiences: Consumers want more touchless experiences as a way to practice social distancing and to protect themselves.
• Digital Demand: There’s an abrupt change in consumer demand for gig-economy based mobility and delivery services — like Uber and Seamless.
• Staying Connected: We are now spending even more of our lives online, pushing us to use our devices for work, play, and connection.

Here are four R/GA Ventures portfolio companies who are reacting to these sudden shifts, solving for the new normal in consumer experiences ranging from contactless payments to next day delivery.

LISNR is helping consumers evolve to contactless experiences in the era of social distancing.

LISNR has a history of turning mobile devices into a personalized tool, filtering relevant and helpful information, content, and experiences to consumers without ever needing to interact with anything outside their screen. Yet one of the pandemic’s most pressing challenges is how to recreate our experiences in a touchless or contactless environment.

“Our core premise in developing LISNR was to introduce a wireless data technology that would utilize the flexibility of software alternatives to hardware connected devices. This translates to a solution that can be implemented across any mobile application and device with a speaker/microphone, offering the application owner the ability to tailor a wireless or contactless experience completely,” says Rodney Williams, CCO & Founder of LISNR.

For context, LISNR’s technology translates to mobile payments, purchase pickups, ticketing, delivery confirmation, and authenticating experiences all from 10ft away.

As social distancing guidelines put forth by the CDC continue, LISNR wants to help retailers, mobility enterprises, delivery platforms, and venues institute contactless services amongst the ways their consumers pay, enter, authenticate receipts, and access services safely.

We are now a society where everything is consumed inside our homes. This new normal demands businesses to creatively redesign consumer experiences. Customers must be able to shop, pick up, or receive delivered goods in a safe, frictionless, and convenient manner.

LISNR can seamlessly bridge this gap between an online purchase and offline presence by using its patented data-over-audio technology as a reliable wireless solution. Check out more about LISNR’s initiative here.

Relative Insight is leading conversations around market research in language analysis.

“We are in the business of understanding consumers and optimizing their experience. Traditional face to face ways of gaining consumer insight clearly isn’t happening right now. The crisis has accelerated a need to gain deep understanding through analytics and this is where we will be even more valuable. When we start to look back at this period, there will be some big insights into how different groups reacted, what the important language really was, and how that moved policy and action in the right or wrong direction,” said Ben Hookway, CEO of Relative Insight.

Relative Insight has been publishing an analysis of weekly conversations found in a host of online forums to map the last seven days of discussion in order to understand more about how people are feeling about the life-changing virus. By charting topics of weekly conversations, set against a specific event or moment in time, their team is able to discover the nuances of the public psyche. This can help brands, agencies, businesses, and organizations see the world as it is, and adjust their communications effectively.

In their latest report published on April 7th, Relative Insight noticed a spark in dialogue around food bringing people pleasure. People are thinking more about what they’re going to cook, they are looking at their storage cupboards, and the ingredients they have, in a different way. There’s talk about creating meals that they couldn’t have imagined eating a month or so ago, and using their ingredients in a more inspired way than normal.

In contrast, there are fears about ‘other people’ not sticking to social-distancing rules and concerns about crowds in grocery stores.

You can download their latest report here. Relative Insight is also hosting webinars every Thursday to accompany each week’s digest.

Popwallet is enabling contactless consumer experiences through mobile wallet marketing.

Popwallet enables brands to deliver contactless consumer experiences through mobile wallet marketing including coupons, loyalty, and gift cards, tickets, and other light-weight branded content that lives in mobile wallets like Apple Wallet and Google Pay.

With handling dirty cash and coins, germ-laden credit cards, paper coupons, and plastic loyalty and gift cards no longer being an option, Popwallet sees this as an opportunity.

“People will be different post COVID, and will increasingly look for contactless ways to interact with the world around them. Dirty cash and credit cards will no longer be an option for many. People will still shop in stores, and will still attend events and go places, but their expectations will be different than before as they demand contactless transactions and experiences. Popwallet can help brands satisfy this new demand,” says Elias Guerra, CEO, and Founder of Popwallet.

Click here for Popwallet’s guidebook for brands to learn how mobile wallets can enable contactless consumer experiences at scale.

You can also see their COVID-19 Resource Center here.

AxleHire’s No-Touch Delivery supports social distancing with same-day delivery.

AxleHire, a same-day and next-day delivery platform provider, announced the deployment of No-Touch Delivery, a suite of tools for consumers to be able to receive their same day and next day deliveries but maintain their distance from the driver.

“We quickly put in place preventative measures to help with No-Touch Delivery to customers. We are continuing to help deliver groceries and essential items to people at their homes, and have participated in donating some meals to hospitals,” said Daniel Sokolovsky, CEO of Axlehire.

AxleHire has donated its services to help feed healthcare workers at a local hospital by providing free delivery of over 250 meals donated by one of their clients, a meal-kit vendor.

“I believe there will be more demand for those servicing e-commerce businesses, but less overall for logistics companies who aren’t,” Daniel comments. “We are hoping to stay at the forefront of this shift and apply our innovative attitude to deal with rapid change.”

R/GA Ventures helps corporate partners tap into innovation through the startup ecosystem. Over the past six years, R/GA Ventures has facilitated dozens of transformative projects between our portfolio companies and major corporations — all meaningful work that proves new ground and creates lasting business impact.

To learn more and stay in the know, visit ventures.rga.com and follow @rgaventures on Twitter and Instagram.