Building a Viable API IoT Business in an Immature Market
For Internet of Things project deployments to be successful, solution providers need to be really clear about their product-market fit. The excitement of ideas that IoT can address, mixed with the lack of industry-wide interoperable standards, is creating a highly complex landscape of what-if potentials that sound good on business canvases but don’t end up translating to the real world.
The area of people movement is a good example of the spectrum of industrial IoT and smart city use cases and the difference between what might sound great and possible when thinking about the tech, and the challenges of implementing them when there are real humans involved in the equation.
Tracking people movement with IoT isn’t about creepy surveillance, but more about understanding the dynamics of urban participation so that cities can better plan service delivery, businesses can better connect with consumers, traffic services can better manage flow, and event managers can identify new locational opportunities.
Leveraging IoT for these use cases is challenging. There may be clear benefits, but is IoT the right solution? As we saw last week, VIMOC Technologies are having some successes, but it pales compared to their parking implementations. Looking at their use cases, the City of Palo Alto are using VIMOC’s tech for bicycle and pedestrian counting, and the City’s CIO Jonathan Reichental says: “While making sure to protect the privacy of people, this data has the potential to assist with city planning efforts to inform a wide range of future decisions.” But all of the other current deployments focus on parking.
Tracking people movement may not be enough of a business imperative to really drive adoption. Marco Herbst, CEO and founder of Evercam thought he had solved the pedestrian counting and mapping city dynamism issue with an IoT-driven CCTV solution. Not only could he see opportunities to help city planning better understand the links between civic engagement and urban environments, there were millions of other ideas for adding camera feeds to industry operations. Big players like SAP were asking to integrate with Evercam’s API so they could add photography to logistics software, for example.
“It didn’t work,” admits Herbst.
“One of the problems that we ran into at the very beginning was that adding pictures to logistics software or whatever, well, customers weren’t asking for it. SAP added it to their manufacturing product but nobody bought it. So it dropped down their priority list.”
That turned out to be a regular pattern for Evercam: “We just went down way too many rabbit holes and the market wasn’t mature enough. Our product is built on an API and the API acts as a very powerful camera, but the successful use cases are few and far between,” Herbst says.
For people movement, Herbst says it was also important to understand where cameras are placed in the IoT world and where they add value. “Cameras are very good for pictures as opposed to data collection,” says Herbst. “So IoT sensors should be collecting events like shop doors opening and closing, and then you have triggers like trying to understand why did everyone come into the shop last Tuesday? That’s when you want a camera. It enhances your other data. For any given project, look for ways to use passive infrared sensors, for people movement look for opportunities to collect anonymised Bluetooth or MAC addresses. Use those to capture data and then the back up is to have the cameras to understand what the data means. The golden rule is: if you can use any other sensor than a camera, do it, don’t fall into the trap of the first thing you go for is a camera. It should be a last resort.”
Because of this willingness to keep finding product-market fit, Herbst has been able to steer Evercam’s value proposition towards a clear business opportunity. Today, Evercam works predominantly with construction companies.
Herbst says one of the key differences in targeting construction clients as opposed to their earlier efforts is that with their current target market, they have direct relationships. Working through integration partners like SAP as they were doing initially meant Evercam was one step away from the customer, so couldn’t drive adoption.
Now that they have a solid market base (with regular revenue coming in), they can look again at promoting their API availability to other segments. Already, Evercam has re-entered the logistics space with a solution to photograph trucks before and after entering a weighbridge, as part of regulatory requirements. It doesn’t hurt that the market has matured somewhat as well. Recently, Evercam has initiated new integration partnership work with Procore construction software and with Intel’s IoT solutions team.
Other examples of people movement-related API providers include:
What this means for supporting a developer community around your IoT API
Evercam’s experience points to some key lessons for IoT providers looking to build developer communities using their API.
- While encouraging makers to imagine new opportunities to use your tech, it is important to test those ideas in the market. Be wary of getting excited about the thousand and one ideas that may demonstrate developer creativity but don’t actually reflect a market pain point or customer need.
- APIs are all about integrations which can mean you are one step away from your end customers. For IoT, do not rely solely on a revenue model where your developers are selling the need for your product.
- Follow the lean startup adage: Do things that don’t scale. Invest in working with early adopter customers to understand their use case and to assist them to make use of your IoT solution and API. Us this engagement as a chance to understand the market segment you can enter.
- Don’t be egoistic or take your ideas too personally. Even if you think you have an amazing product or solution, be willing to pivot towards real market need. Maybe it is an amazing idea, but perhaps the market is not mature enough yet for your solution.
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