On March 25, McDonald's announced the acquisition of Dynamic Yield, One startup located in Tel Aviv for $300 million (USD). Your biggest acquisition since 1999!
This startup, created in 2011 and meanwhile with more than 83 million USD of investment, provides technology and algorithm-guided decision logic.
the paradigm of mass marketing for mass personalization, based on algorithms and automation, and which, in the case of McDonald's, results from learning from the consumption habits of 68 million people every day, combines data as diverse as weather, time of day, local traffic, events and, of course , data related to the historical sales, not only of an establishment, but of the whole world, to give, for example, to its customers, personalized purchase suggestions based on the time of day, the type of order or the service times of that one. time.
McDonald's CEO sums it up: "The problem was never a lack of data, but rather getting the knowledge and intelligence from it."
A day later, March 26, we received the news that João Vasconcelos, aged 43, had died of a heart attack. This news especially shocked the national ecosystem linked to innovation, industry and startups.
The founder of Codacy (unique startup Portuguese winner of WebSummit) wrote: “He was kind and wholehearted. He gave us an office with Startup Lisbon. Then he gave us a voice, because no one cared about Startups before. Then he gave us a stage with the web summit. Then he made people care about Startups when he was in the government. He gave until he couldn't give no more".
How do McDonald's, Dynamic Yield, Tel Aviv, João Vasconcelos and Codacy connect?
Dynamic Yield is the analogy, taken to the extreme, of the idea behind Yourdata – a company that I founded in a niche of information technologies. the existence of a data office specialist and support companies in the development of data analysis. Taken to the extreme, because McDonald's literally acquired the concept!
It is also a recent example of two important trends. Filling in the gap that it exists between what is technologically possible and what is done in practice; and the concentration, in a few players, services and core competencies of the same market. I will only stop at the first one.
As startups they assume themselves as vehicles of combined skills, which, by innovating and differentiating themselves, can later be acquired or, by finding their small monopolies, become the giants of these new markets... or, more likely, nothing happens and represent “only” a space for personal and professional learning.
Already installed giants such as Google or Amazon, with their greater competitive “at will”, are also important in innovation. Technical and technological advances follow, but it is also important to move from invention to practice.
Code review assistants like Codacy or even in low-code, the Portuguese unicorn Outsystems or simpler examples such as the Appsheet, contribute to the paradigm of programming democratization.
Today it is possible to build a website or applications without the need for a programmer. Also artificial intelligence and skills in machine ou deep learning, natural language processing, voice/audio recognition, image recognition are and will become even more accessible, even to a small company in the Algarve.
Develop, combine and link the technology that already exists today to small or large companies for the optimization of processes and problem solving through intelligent computer-based applications (feeling analysis, forecasting of stocks, clustering of customers, association of products, etc.) is an example of the practice and the value that come from the innovation that companies like Yourdata, even in the national or European “periphery”, add.
“Industry 4.0 is the first Revolution in which Portugal, if you want, can have weight. With digital it doesn't matter where we are”, said João Vasconcelos.
It was also this digital that made the emergence of ecosystems such as Tel Aviv, in a country with 60% desert area, viable. the cradle of startups like Waze, Viber and Wix, it is one of the main technological poles in the world.
It will be the same digital that will make the Algarve Tech Hub possible, with better beaches, a milder temperature and razor clam rice!
However, in this entrepreneurial context, there are two perceptions to pass.
The first, market. O hyping around startups you should not underestimate the work of small businesses that solve problems on demand. If accelerators and big brands compete in search of a product that is scalable, the problems and the respective solutions are, in practice, in general, and respectively, increasingly more comprehensive and customized. This mismatch, I believe, is unresolved.
The second, politics. If the national context is characterized by scarce venture capital, companies hesitant to adopt technology and a lack of flexibility between universities and companies, a space for adoption, integration and an example of digital transformation is needed.
Tel Aviv's success derives, for example, from investment in defense technology. The same happens with successive North American administrations, in an economically liberal country, in the field of Defense and beyond.
This direct investment, state-innovation, creates, in addition to other benefits, a space for growth and validation of innovation that does not exist in Portugal (due to the almost absence of agile government or municipal programs for the integration of national/regional innovation).
João Vasconcelos was one of the figures who personalized this greater role and connection that Portuguese innovation deserves. Let us continue this work.
Who is David Peter?
David João Antunes Pedro loves Lisbon, where he was born, and its neighbourhoods. He grew up with two brothers in Graça, overlooking the Tagus, but since 1997 he has lived the quality of life in the Algarve every day.
She lived in Azinhal and has lived for ten years in Faro, where he graduated in Business Management. After graduating in 2007, he started working at Caixa Geral de Depósitos. That same year, he completed the curricular part of the Master's in Corporate Finance.
Until 2015, there were always eight years in the corporate area, which included a postgraduate degree in Banking Business at the Instituto Superior de Gestão Bancária and six months at the Luxembourg Branch.
Youth association leader since the age of 16 and for seven years. Since then, he has been interested in management and companies. He values friends and unique people with whom he has crossed paths or with whom he has had the opportunity to learn.
After deciding to leave CGD in 2015, he founded Ympec with his best friend, where they help finance projects. One of which is Yourdata, of which he is co-founder, which, with a large team (!), has a growing technological path, by adding artificial intelligence to data analysis. Company selected for the WebSummit in 2018 and which is the first company in the Algarve to be chosen for the phase of Pitch.
He has a taste for humor, traveling and getting to know different cultures. He leaves his identity to be “Gonçalo's father” from 2014 and also “Inês' father” from 2018. And, of course, he still has time to change his shirt on weekends, when Sporting play!
Note: article published under the protocol between the Sul Informação and the Algarve Delegation of the Order of Economists
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