This sponsored post is written by Redg Snodgrass, the cofounder of Stained Glass Labs.
Wearable technology is upon us.
In early 2007, I was sitting at the iDate conference with the SKOUT team listening to the ramblings of an extremely successful dating company CEO. His feedback, “Dating apps on mobile won’t work ever.”
Fast forward a few years, and his company is nearly in ruins. The SKOUT team, however, is flourishing. The gang had the right idea, and they hit the emerging market as the industry began to blossom. Today, they have 10s of millions of users and a top venture capitalist with over $20 million in investment reserves to innovate. This has been repeated across mobile countless times today because a group of entrepreneurs got “it.” It is important for those of us in mobile to not repeat the mistakes of the larger Web companies and potentially miss this opportunity like many of our predecessors we scoffed at.
Fact: Wearable is the next iteration in mobile. It will consume our lives and our mobile ecosystem. The purpose of GLAZEDcon is to keep your business from following the same fate. Come learn how to not get snagged and caught flat-footed when these platforms are in full swing.
Here are two quick insights:
1. Wearable = 10 seconds closer to the customer
With wearables, we now live in a world where you are 10 seconds closer to the customer than any mobile device today. That means notifications are immediate, and they are always on in front of the consumer.
How will you compete if you lose the notification ability to your competitors. What happens to your market share if someone has to go through the “impending” arduous process of pulling out their iPhone, entering a passcode, clicking a button, and loading an application. The answer? You will lose out to your competitors because they get something you missed.
2. This is a market that needs a different type of entrepreneur to survive.
You need to understand voice, gestures, augmented reality, and most important, empathy. For those of you who don’t get empathy, it’s a noun that means: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Why? Because this technology is becoming deeply entwined in the human organism. Other pieces of wearable technology that are around today such as the “pacemaker,” the glasses I wear to read this copy, and hearing aides are locked in and blended to fit humanity. They are successful because the inventors and distributors understand the wearer’s need for their technology. However, they have gone through countless cycles to understand the end users. Application startups stepping into the wearable-tech ring must take note. If you don’t understand, empathize, and have a deep affection for your end users, I feel you’ll miss the boat as well. This category is for a different set of end users, a skill-set outside of mobile, and a product person that really can understand the end users in a meaningful way.
We hope to explore these things at our upcoming conference. Our team would love to have you join our conversation as we help to usher in this new ecosystem. Please check us out here and use discount code “glazedvb” for a 25 percent discount off the current price.
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