Saving the bees with AI 🐝

#21 2022 | Sparkmate

Ever heard of “If the bees die, we die”? It’s not an exaggeration. More than 70% of the world’s crops - including fruits, vegetables, oilseeds (and even coffee for our coffeeholics) rely heavily on bees to pollinate plants.

But bee colonies have been decreasing at an alarming rate due to habitat loss, pesticides, diseases and parasites - mostly caused by human activities 😔 In Israel, 20-30% of hives disappear each year. So, how can we use technology to help? More about this below - a startup is on it! 🤓

Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:

• Intelligent customer engagement with Twilio: Perks for mates ✨

• Show it, say it and send it with Loom 🎥

• Check out the pitch decks that created unicorns 🦄

• Saving the bees with AI 🐝

• Give the Spark: Coming to 🇫🇷

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💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATES

Intelligent customer engagement with Twilio: Perks for mates ✨

Twilio is a customer engagement platform for anyone to create unique experiences for their customers worldwide. Used by hundreds of thousands of businesses (including Deliveroo, Stripe, GoCardless) and 10M developers, they have several tools that allow you to integrate powerful API’s to build interactions specially for your solution/company - from as simple as conversing with customer support and pushing personalized coupons to a client’s inbox, to enabling video conferencing with your doctor and automating appointment reminders.

Our mates at Twilio are giving startups in our ecosystem US$2,500 in credit to get started! With a few eligibility points:

• Your company is less than 5 years old

• You have raised less than US$5 million

• You are primarily a technology-based business

• Have a Twilio account and/or SendGrid account

• You have not previously received startup credits

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🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVE

Show it, say it and send it with Loom 🎥

For remote and distributed teams, we couldn’t emphasize the importance of asynchronized communication more. What do you use when you need to explain something on the screen, and the other team is still sleeping?

Maybe the native screen-recording app on your device, which works fine too. But if you ask us, we’ll have to say Loom - it’s our go-to and here’s why 😉

Features:

• Record your screen. For anything, really. Show your team what you mean, or easily demonstrate how to complete certain tasks.

• Add a cam bubble. As you record your screen, you have an option to also record through your camera - perfect for adding that extra “human touch”.

• Edit instantly. Cat just sat on your keyboard? Spilled coffee while recording? No problem, just cut those parts out. You can even remove filler words!

• Generate transcriptions. So when your team doesn’t have time to watch the full video, they can just read through and find what they’re looking for.

• Add emojis. React to different parts of a recording with just a click (or tap!).

• Add video comments. Your teammate isn’t seeing the same thing? Let them show you and include it in as a comment.

• Add time-stamped comments. For specific parts to point out, or questions to be answered.

• See viewer analytics. So you can see who’s seen your recording or who hasn’t.

• Restrict access for certain people. Ensure your confidential recording is only seen by those you’ve approved.

• Use on desktop, mobile and as a Chrome Extension. So you’re ready to record whenever!

• Integrate with your favorite work apps. Including Slack, GitHub, Notion, Salesforce and more.

Who it’s for: Remote and distributed teams to work efficiently and asynchronously 💙

Price: All the features above are free with up to 25 recordings/person. Their plans start at US$8/user if you need more features like drawing tools and mouse emphasis, custom branding and engagement analytics.

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💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The pitch decks that created unicorns 🦄

Yup… that used to be Airbnb 😬

Looks a lot less sexier than today’s, but this was the exact pitch deck that got Airbnb to raise US$600K in 2008 when they participated in Y Combinator. 2 years later, it’s what also helped them raise $7.2M and then a whopping $112M in 2010-2011. Then it wasn’t long until they achieved a valuation of $10B in 2014, and world domination over homestays and vacation rentals!

This should teach us one thing: it doesn’t matter how blinged up your pitch deck is - what matters is your ability to convey your goals clearly, prove there’s a problem, be able to validate the market and its size, and showcase that your solution could be the best there is - all in 10 slides. (Here’s a detailed article breaking down Airbnb’s pitch deck and why it works!)

We stumbled on this site that showcases hundreds of other startups’ early pitch decks that you can use for inspiration, as well as a look-back at how they’ve have evolved. From YouTube, Mixpanel and DropBox, to Intercom and Linkedin, check them out!

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🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Saving the bees with AI 🐝

Israeli bee tech (it’s a thing now!) startup called Beewise have designed “Beehomes”, robotic beekeepers that can house 24 hives for 2 million bees! These Beehomes are 12 sqm containers that run on solar energy and are fitted with 24-hour monitoring system and AI technology.

“Our software knows what the bees need”, director of operations at Beewise Netaly Harari says. She explains robotic beekeepers are the way to go as human beekeepers usually take several months to realize a problem, which affects the mortality of the bees. The robot automatically dispenses sugar, water, medicine when it detects it’s needed, and can even extract honey - leaving the heavy lifting of beekeeping to technology. And when a problem comes up, beekeepers are alerted through an app to allow remote intervention. How amazing is that?

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💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATE

Give the Spark: Coming to 🇫🇷

Last week, we re-started our Give the Spark events in Hong Kong. Now, we’re kickstarting it in Paris 🇫🇷!

Give the Spark events are meant to do exactly that - give the spark. As we always say, it only takes a little spark to start a huge fire (your big impact!), and that little spark could just be a conversation with an expert who can answer your questions during fun, casual #AskMeAnything sessions.

We’ve got tons of amazing speakers to bring to our mates (you!) who can all cover various topics around technology. We’re just finalizing one we plan to have in June and we’ll start inviting everyone! Should we notify you when it’s out? 😉

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