The innovative London-based start-up Nested, which guarantees to sell your house within 90 days, has raised a further £8 million in funding from investors.

Launched in January last year, the company has now raised a total of £11 million thanks to backing by venture capitalist groups and individuals.

The ‘Win-Win’ USPs

The big difference between Nested’s and other estate agent’s offerings is that Nested guarantees to sell a client’s house for 95-98% of market value within 90 days. It also says that, if it does achieve a higher sale price than the one it guaranteed/offered, either before or after the 90 days, it will split the difference, up to 70/30 in favour of the property owner.

The big benefit to customers that these USPs provide is to take away the uncertainty that the house selling process brings, particularly where the presence of a chain is concerned, or where the house has been on the market with an agent for a few months or longer, and nothing has happened. In both cases, the seller is essentially looking for speed in what has become a crowded housing market, as well as getting a good price, and the USPs that Nested offers appear to be a way to achieve those aims.

Technology Behind The USPs

How the company uses technology and data to accurately price property in the first place are the competencies that have enabled them to build and deliver upon their USPs.

Who Has Invested?

The recent round of investment saw contributions from Passion Capital, GFC (Rocket Internet’s venture arm), and Tim Bunting, who is a partner at Balderton Capital and former Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

Broke-Even In Month Four

So far, Nested have proven to be very popular, and figures from the company show that they have an average of 5 clients per month. This translates into an annual run-rate of more than £1 million, and helped the company to reach the break-even point in only the fourth month of trading.

What Next?

The founders of Nested are reported to believe that, with the funding, and with their unique position in the estate agent marketplace, they are able to achieve 1,000+ sales per month in the not-too-distant future. This, no doubt, will make them even more attractive to any future investors and potential stakeholders, and could trigger a round of me-too offerings from existing and new competitors.

Companies such as Purple Bricks have already paved the way for customers to be more accepting of (and more likely to consider) different types of less traditional estate agent models.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This story illustrates how technology-fuelled innovations in existing markets that provide solutions to long-standing challenges can be incredibly attractive to both investors and customers. It also highlights how the technology and the web, and the success of innovative, other technology-fuelled companies have given more options for funding, and have speeded-up the process of bringing new products to market. This creates more potential opportunities for all companies, including start-ups. This story also highlights the fact that, if your company can be particularly smart in how it uses data and technology, it may be possible to create a hard-to-copy competitive advantage.

Facebook and Instagram privacy policies are reported to have been updated with the intention of stopping developers and businesses from using the data they find there to provide surveillance tools.

What’s Been Happening?

Facebook, which acquired Instagram in 2012, has reportedly been concerned, particularly in recent months, about how data posted by users of its social networks, such data posted by activists / protesters and other targeted communities, has been the subject of surveillance by developers, businesses and governments.

Facebook also appears to be making the move in response to accusations from rights and pressure groups that Facebook (and Instagram) have allowed these activities to happen too easily. This is one of the main reasons why Facebook has been working with leaders from the Civil Liberties Union of California, Color of Change, and the Center for Media Justice in order to create Privacy Policy changes that meet with the approval of some of its more high-profile critics.

A Commercial Example

One example of a way in which an Insurance Company was almost allowed to use surveillance of Facebook profiles (Facebook said no at the eleventh hour) of individual users was Admiral Insurance. Back in November 2016, Admiral wanted to trial a scheme, with the approval of Facebook, whereby the contents of the Facebook profiles of young drivers would be used in order to judge their safety as drivers (and thereby influence their insurance premiums). It was reported that the insurance company wanted to look at the posts and likes on a young driver’s Facebook profile and to use them in deciding the level of risk of that the driver. These collected details would, therefore, form part of the personality profile that the company would use as a commercial price setting tool.

Some critics of Facebook’s old Privacy Policy have also said that it allowed the promotion of payday loans to Facebook users, and provided another tool to enable the payday loan companies to decide whether they would approve or deny someone a loan.

The New Privacy Policies

There have been reports that enforcement action has been taken in recent months against some developers who have created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of the existing Privacy Policies.

The new Privacy Policies, which have been described as a “first step” by Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice, have made it even clearer that developers and businesses cannot use the data obtained from the platforms to provide tools that are used for surveillance, and more enforcement action looks likely.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Businesses and other organisations hoping to create, provide or use tools that are used for surveillance will now have to be more inventive about where and how they obtain their data, although this change from Facebook is essentially good news for customers. The policy changes could potentially influence other companies e.g. tech companies to better protect users’ privacy, and to refuse to share data for the purposes of wide-scale government surveillance.

Google recently removed an unprompted audio advert from its Google Home smart speaker / digital assistant system after accusations that the piece was simply an unrequested advert.

Beauty and the Beast

The controversial incident occurred when ‘Google Home’ users were played some unprompted, unrequested audio about the opening date of the new film Beauty and the Beast. The announcement about the film, which was broadcast just after the time and weather listings and the travel update, was reportedly regarded by many listeners to have resembled a short advert.

The 41 second video of the audio piece was posted on Twitter, and prompted accusations from other Twitter users that this could be an example of an attempt to ‘monetize’ the system, and that Google Home users could end up paying someone to advertise to them in the privacy of their own homes.

The video can be found here: https://mobile.twitter.com/brysonmeunier/status/842358950536318976

Google Says It Is ‘Content’

According to Google, the piece that Google Home users heard was not an advert, but was an example of “seasonal timely content”. The audio piece was part of “My Day” feature, the idea of which is to let the digital assistant provide users with an update, which can include calendar events and news bulletins.

Could Do Better

Google has stated that it has been experimenting with new ways “to surface unique content”, and that the Beauty and the Beast feature “wasn’t intended to be an ad”. A Google spokesperson has been publicly quoted as saying that the tech giant “could have done better in this case” in terms of ‘surfacing’ the ‘content’.

Intrusive

Technical commentators have pointed out that unlike TV, where we expect to see and tend to naturally ‘filter out’ adverts, with an audio digital voice assistant, adverts tend to stand out much more and can  be seen as intrusive.

Not Unless Requested

One of the benefits of the Google Home system that is valued by users is that they are able to choose and request what they listen to on a system that is offering something quite different to a pre-prepared, commercial radio programme.

Google Home and Amazon Echo

The Google Home digital assistant, which is not yet available outside the US, is similar to the Amazon Echo but it appears to be based on a different business model. Whereas the Amazon Echo digital assistant is funded by the Amazon sales that it helps to drive, Google products tend to be based on a model that relies partly upon funding from advertising.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This is an example of how businesses need to be very clear about (and stick to) the offering that they make to customers about a product or service. Any change that has not been communicated to customers adequately and which appears to ‘move the goalposts’ can result in negative publicity, lost customers, and damage to sales revenue. This also illustrates how many customers dislike interruptive and intrusive advertising. It also shows what a fine-line companies have to tread and how careful they have to be when choosing to promote 3rd party products / services within their own services and channels. It is the view and perception of the customer that is ultimately the most important and most powerful one.

If you spend a lot of time at your work computer, one way to feel better while you work is to at least have a theme that makes YOU feel good. You don’t have to accept just the selection of themes that Windows 10 gives you, you can create your own! Here’s how:

Put your own favourite wallpapers into a folder (right click in file explorer > New > New folder, then name your folder).

Create a new theme i.e. re-save an existing one or edit the “Unsaved theme” (if there is one), then select the theme that you’ve just made, or the ‘Unsaved Theme’ you already had.

Click on the ‘Desktop Background’ option in the bottom of the window.

In the new window, select your preferred theme settings.

Click the ‘Browse’ button and select the folder filled with your wallpapers.

Go back to the “Personalization” window, save your theme

A UK student has developed a chatbot computer program that can be used to provide refugees with legal advice and help, via the Facebook Messenger app.

DoNotPay

The program was originally launched in March 2016 by a 20-year-old British man, Joshua Browder, who is currently studying at Stanford University. The program was named “DoNotPay” because it was originally designed to help users to get out of parking or speeding tickets. Mr Bowder was inspired to develop the program after his own experiences of receiving tickets as a young driver.

A version of the chatbot was also altered from helping drivers, to helping those in need of emergency housing in August 2016.

Inspired to Adapt the Program by Family History

Mr Browder said that the inspiration for changing his original chatbot into something that could provide help to refugees came from the fact that his grandmother was a refugee from Austria during the Holocaust.

How Does It Work?

The chatbot is primarily designed to help refugees to the UK and the US complete their immigration applications and it has been developed using the help of lawyers in both countries.

Users of the chatbot are asked a series of questions which are designed to discover whether they are eligible for asylum protection under international law. As well as capturing the personal details needed to automatically fill in the application form for the user, the program uses AI to provide feedback, and makes suggestions as to how an asylum seeker can best answer questions to maximise their chances of having their application accepted.

In addition to enabling users to complete an application, the chatbot also provides other location specific instructions, documentation and resources.

Availability

The chatbot is available through the Facebook Messenger app, and can be used on both Android and Apple devices. There are plans to make the chatbot available in other languages in future, including Whatsapp.

Criticism

Although the intention of helping vulnerable people has been widely praised, some critics have pointed out that refugees are often among the least internet-connected groups in society, and only 39% of them have mobile internet access (UN figures).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The use of AI chatbots is becoming much more widespread in many different business sectors (e.g. banking) because they can play a useful, cost-saving and quality-maintaining role in some aspects of customer service. This story also shows how they are being applied to 3rd sector projects and organisations and AI chatbots represent an opportunity that has not yet been fully explored for organisations of all kinds.