The new Hot Off the Crowd edition is online! Our watch based on crowfunding and crowdsourcing platforms: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, AngelList, Product Hunt… FABERNOVEL is digging the gold out of the crowdfunding mine: emerging trends and tomorrow's it technologies. This edition of HOTC newly reinforces one of FABERNOVEL’s most tenacious convictions, and serves our mission of “distributing the future in the most equitable way.” The human beings who constitute our teams remain better than robots and their algorithms, and we hope – because we are optimists – that they become our best friends. *** La quatrième et nouvelle édition de Hot Off the Crowd est en ligne ! Les pépites et les tendances telles qu’elles émergent sur nos plateformes de crowdfunding et de crowdsourcing préférées : Kickstarter, Indiegogo, AngelList, ProductHunt. Cette édition de HOTC renforce de nouveau une de nos convictions les plus tenaces chez FABERNOVEL, pour servir notre mission de “distribuer le futur de façon plus équitable” : les humains qui composent nos équipes resteront meilleurs que les robots et leurs algorithmes, tout en espérant – parce que nous sommes optimistes – que ceux-ci deviennent nos meilleurs amis.

2. The technological singularity, that "hypothetical future point in time when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and be
able to self-replicate and improve itself autonomously" is no longer hypothetical. In any case, they'rebecoming more and more numerous,
this "nerd nation," as their prince Marc Andreessen likes to call them, considering them eminent, and even preparing for their reign.
Like the police and the thieves who pursue eachother, humans and robots challenge each other, but no longer only at chess, like Kasparov
and Deep Blue. Tomorrow, we will no longer differentiate between a powerful machine (who will, of course, borrow Scarlett Johansson's
voice in Her) and Turing and his test. This is a prominent trend in our crowdfunding trendwatch this trimester.
But just like in Terminator, resistance is activating, and in Hot Off the Crowd, one can see the growth of the sensitive human being, like for
example, since the advent of the Internet, the increase of hand-written letters. We return to the operator of the speaking clock that wakes
us up in the morning (Remember Aurore, in one of my favorite films, well before Her). Also at work here: if Uber uberizes us and one day
replaces drivers with robots, and if tomorrow, as LinkedIn predicts, we are all self-employed, then new services should accompany this
revolution of the workplace.
This edition of HOTC newly reinforces one of FABERNOVEL's most tenacious convictions, and serves our mission of "distributing the future
in the most equitable way." The human beings who constitute our teams remain better than robots and their algorithms, and we hope
–because we are optimists – that they become our best friends.
And while someone may still ask if androids dream of electric sheep, there's no doubt about human "startupers": they dream about
Goliath's fall.
It's this very human side that characterizes our latest trend: one always finds gentle entrepreneurs to create the next social network.
INTRO
Stéphane Distinguin
CEO FABERNOVEL Group
INTRO

3. Ex Machina
_
Human After All
_
Remote Work
_
Rise of the Contractor Ecosystem
_
Better Call My Startup
_
Reality Live Stream
_
The Return of the Facebook Killers
SUMMARY

4. Ex Machina

5. The Turing Test is obsolete. Algorithms are the new
biggest manufacturing secret of the connected era.
The tasks algorithms now manage were until recently
considered as chiefly human due to their dependence
on communication skills or deep knowledge of
financial institutions or creativity - all skills that would
seem difficult to replicate. Yet algorithmic
science keeps expanding artificial intelligence by
copying the human brain mechanism. And some
companies aim at going further.
Why should you pay attention to it?
The advent of algorithms is repositioning human
thinking. Can there be a limit to algorithmic expansion
expansion? The science fiction vision of a world
dominated by machines seems to be fast becoming
reality. Algorithmic reseacrh is not limited to GAFA:
many startups break into this lucrative market of
predictive algorithms, as we can see on CrunchBase,
AngelList, etc.
CAN YOU PREDICT THIS
IS AN ALGORITHM?
EXMACHINA

6. Three projects stood out on our favorite crowdfunding
and crowdsourcing platforms. These projects seem to
challenge human skills with predictive analytics.
Kensho is a cloud-based AI system. Backed by Goldman
Sachs and Google Ventures, Kensho is capable of
answering complex financial questions asked in natural
language in real-time, such as "which Apple supplier's
share price goes up the most when the company
releases a new iPad?"
Blab is a predictive social intelligence platform that
enables brands to know what customers of a specific
brand will talk about on what platforms in the next few
days.
Crystal is a new email advice service which claims to
know how you like to be spoken to. It offers guidance on
how to speak, write, and sell something to the targeted
person.
HELLO, IT'S NOT ME
EXMACHINA

7. Human
After All

8. Robots and algorithms may be taking over the world
but some new services underline their technical and
emotional shortcomings. Despite the astronomic rise
of algorithms, there remain tasks for which
computers offer at best a mediocre alternative to
human labor. In these areas, human touch is still
considered important - but not too important, since
we are ready to delegate it to outside services.
For instance, Fountain Greetings turns your typed
text into handwritten letters, like a computer-
simulated scriveners. The value of the human touch
is shifting from "usefulness" to "nostalgia". As the
divide between our expectation of "human touch"
and machines' capacity to provide this emotional
element narrows, the necessity for human labor in
these areas will wane.
Why should you pay attention?
The projects we have found do not prove that
human is better, in the Promethean sense - it could
even be the contrary. Instead, what they do is
re-create interpersonal relationships, mutual help
between strangers. Their assumption: the service
could be used if it is human - all too human.
ERSATZ HUMAN
HUMANAFTERALL

9. eAngel offers a Gmail plugin
that provides proofreading
and grammatical correction
for email. Their conviction:
nothing can replace a human
brain.
Wakie is a social alarm clock
that provides a human
wake-up call from a member
of the community — a total
stranger.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM STRANGERS
Spare5 gives small paid tasks
to the users of its app who
have spare time, such as
tagging pictures - a chore still
too complex for a machine to
carry out, but for how long?
HUMANAFTERALL

10. Remote Work

11. Work conditions are going through an important period of
changes because nowadays, an increasing number of
people want to work remotely. The number of jobs which
are unattached to a specific physical space is growing,
and these jobs benefit from an expanding range of
dedicated services. Consequently, plenty of new projects
have emerged. Classically, there are some job boards
specializing in remote work opportunities. But we also
observe that dedicated newsletters, productivity tools, and
even a kind of community spirit have developped.
Apparently, jobs and place of work are not the same
anymore.
Why should you pay attention to it?
At the start, only the tech-heavy professional circle was
affected but the trend has spread thanks to the high
correlation in location and cost of living.
This phenomenon shows a paradox of modern living:
physical proximity has become more valuable whereas
technology and transportation have made connections
across long distances cheaper. And it creates a brand new
ecosystem with its own actors and services.
HOME NOT ALONE
REMOTEWORK

12. Remote work is booming, and job boards are the first resource for workers looking
to find a gig that will give them this crucial flexibility. We Work Remotely is a catchall
of remote jobs from customer service to web design to programming. It hosts
remote opportunities at some of the hottest tech companies.
WorkingNomads delivers a curated list of remote jobs right to your inbox.
Remote work also appeals to venture capital firms. Andreessen Horowitz has
invested in Teleport, which compares startup cities. It aims at helping a community
of mobile workers to find the jobs and places that maximize their quality of life,
based on their pay and interests. It introduces itself as a « life search engine ».
Remote Year allows participants to travel to12 different locations in a year to give
them the opportunity to connect with business ecosystems. They offer workspace,
activites, and events in each city.
There are more and more tools for remote workers, like Remotive, a specialized
newsletter, Airety, an online hiring tool for tech companies and Deekit, an online
whiteboard for remote teams. All these services point to the emergence of a unique
remote work ecosystem.
OFFICE NOT REQUIRED
REMOTEWORK

13. Rise of the
Contractor
Ecosystem

14. As we can see above, work is currently changing: by 2020,
independent workers will make up 40% of the workforce in the
United States. People will have more and more control over
when, where and how they work. More freedom means more
responsibilities, but also more precariousness: what about job
security or working tools? More and more services rely on an
army of contractors on the field, such as Uber, Instacart
(delivery of groceries) or even TaskRabbit (marketplace for
small tasks).
Why should you pay attention to it?
An ecosystem of complementary services rises to serve
contractors, who are free but lacking any kind of safety net.
These services help them to find gigs and rent out their
working tools. There are also some services supporting
startups in their hiring processes.
YOUR JOB, YOUR RIGHTS
THERISEOFCONTRACTORECOSYSTEM

15. Checkr runs background
checks automatically and
makes pre-employment
background screening
fast, legal and ethical:
they are compliant with
state and federal
employment laws.
Zen99 provides support
services for independent
contractors, starting with
taxes management and
insurance.
Burst finds on-demand jobs
and gigs in a users' area.
LEGALIZE IT
RISEOFCONTRACTORECOSYSTEM

16. BETTER CALL MY
STARTUP

17. Thanks to crowdsourcing, automation and smart data, a
significant number of startups have started to offer legal
support to individuals and companies, making reliable
legal resources a commodity.
Individuals and companies are increasingly able to
access simplified, fast, and cheap legal resources with
contract templates, lawyers on demand, etc. For
instance, in case of flight cancellation, denied boarding,
or long flight delay, FlightRight renders enforcement of
customers' compensation claim for a share of the
amount collected from the airline.
Why should you pay attention to it?
Many companies are fighting - consciously or not - for
the democratization of legal services, prompting us to
become increasingly litigious. Meanwhile, white-shoe
law firms will move up the value chain by offering
premium advice. What could be the next step? We may
imagine crowdsourced advice, a robot lawyer or even
data law firms.
LEGAL ON DEMAND
BETTERCALLMYSTARTUP

18. More and more legal startups place themselves at the service of individuals and
other startups.
A company needs a legal aid, but a lawyer may cost too much. Captain Contrat is a
startup that offers several categories of legal documents and also the help of a real
lawyer.
Combining the convenience of a handshake and the protection of a legal agreement,
Shake is a technology platform making the law accessible, understandable and
affordable for consumers and small businesses.
Specifically intended for startups, Clerky provides a form library designed for
venture-backed technology companies.
Founded by Daniel van Binsberger, Lexoo is a digital market for legal services. It
brings lawyers with big-firm experience and expertise to the service of midsize
companies speedily and at a significant discount.
BUSINESS TO BUSINESS
BETTERCALLMYSTARTUP

19. Reality
Live Stream

20. Meerkat, the livestream application, and Periscope, its
Twitter-owned competitor, were the talk of SxSW 2015. Far
from only fulfilling information or even social networking
purposes, livestreaming is deeply intertwined with boredom,
as a form of real-time entertainment. It replaces fake
"Reality" TV personalities with "real" people, who are the
novelty promised by livestreaming. For instance,
Watchme24, introduced as an "uncut reality live",
livestreams private lives of families in Israel. They live their
routine lives and anyone can watch.
Why should you pay attention?
Livestreaming represents a breakthrough in the field of
online content sharing. We all remember the fund raising of
Twitch, the video live stream platform for gamers. But
why? First of all, its growth is due to convenience: the ability
to watch on the device of your choice, wherever you are in
the world, particularly since the uptake of smartphones.
Leave nothing to chance: startups profit from this increase
of livestreamed content with a collaborative approach. And
don't underestimate them. Streaming viewers become more
than spectators, they become learners and are free to
switch places and become livestreamers themselves.
CAM INTO MY LIFE
REALITYLIVESTREAM

21. More than just entertainment, livestreaming can also be a medium for collaborative
learning, as it enables viewers to watch and interact with people doing things in real
time.
Watch People Code provides livestreams of people who are coding from the channel
/r/WatchPeopleCode on reddit. In the same way, Live Coding, known as Twitch for
Coders, is a livestreaming platform where people code products. It aims at connecting
professional engineers, students and hobby coders around programming languages.
Livestreaming could be extended to any field. In the arts, Watch Me Work streams
people's processes, creating an online creative coworking space that supports learning
via a collaboration environment. Chew allows users to watch the best DJs perform live so
that they can "learn from the best".
In the financial sphere, Ticker, launched in December 2014,has produced over 25,000
hours of viewed content for an investors-only community.
I WILL SHOW YOU
BETTERCALLMYSTARTUP

22. The Return of the
Facebook Killers

23. Many challengers have emerged since Facebook rose
to power in the social networking world. These
challengers have a shared focus on reclaiming
ownership from advertisers and giving it back to
users. They claim themselves as Facebook Killers,
like Ello: this social network signed a legally-binding
charter never to sell ads or data. Based on love and
respect between communities, its founders believe
that a social network should not be "a tool to deceive,
coerce, and manipulate". Ello is basically a fail.
Why should you pay attention?
For these "Facebook killers", a balance of power
seems to appear. We seek a new era of user
empowerment against big business but none of these
alternative social networks has ever succeeded. We
may wonder why there are still new challengers
throwing down the gauntlet every month. What
additional value do they create? A technical, a social,
or an economic one?
SWEET DREAM
AND RUNNING GAG
THERETURNOFTHEFACEBOOKKILLERS

24. Launched in 2014 at Inside Bitcoins Tel Aviv, Gems is a
cryptocurrency-based project. Its founders aim at
disrupting social networking business through the power
of crypto 2.0 technology and the decentralization of the
network.
Tsu shares 90% of its advertising revenues with all of its
users in royalties, enabling its users to maintain
ownership of the content they post. The more the
content is shared, the more money a user earns. At the
moment, the invite-only platform has garnered 3.5
million users who are musicians, artists and everyday
social media users.
Minds is an open source social network supported by
the hacker collective Anonymous. This social network
vows more transparency, security and privacy than other
social media giants by encrypting all messages, so that
they can not be read by advertisers or governments.
NOT THE SAME
PLAYERS
THERETURNOFTHEFACEBOOKKILLERS