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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1332052
BCBUSINESS.CA T R A N S P O R T A T I O N K ing of the Ro ad As Internet-connected cars go mainstream, Mojio plans to be in the driver's seat. Thanks to alliances with customers like Telus Corp., Deutsche Telekom and its U.S. subsidiary T-Mobile–all three are investors, too–the Vancouver company now has more than 1.2 million vehicles on its platform. That's a huge leap from a couple of thousand in 2015, when CEO Kenny Hawk took charge of Mojio, founded three years earlier by Jay Giraud. Hawk, who's based in Silicon Valley, led the shift from a direct-to-consumer model to helping B L O C K C H A I N Hello, Kitties The esoteric world of block- chain and cryptocurrency got a much-needed dose of fun in late 2017, when Vancou- ver "venture studio" Axiom Zen launched CryptoKitties. Consumers quickly took to the first game on the Ethereum network, which lets players use digital currency to buy, sell and breed cats in billions of variations. By the following spring, a CryptoKitty had sold for US$140,000, the New York Times reported. Axiom Zen soon spun off CryptoKitties into Dapper Labs, whose mission is to make blockchain products for real people. To that end, the company developed Flow, a blockchain built for the next generation of apps and games, along with the digital assets that fuel them. Unlike Ethereum and other networks, Dapper says, Flow lets developers create large- scale apps without sacrificing decentralization and compos- ability, the power to speed up innovation by easily building on each other's work. It's also consumer-friendly. Dapper has partnered with brands such as Warner Music Group and the National Bas- ketball Association. Last fall, it opened NBA Top Shot, a peer-to- peer marketplace where fans can collect and trade highlights from their favourite teams and players. "We see blockchain- based games as key to creating JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 BCBUSINESS 35 digital ecosystems that give users ownership of their digital lives," says co-founder and CEO Roham Gharegozlou, whose 80-plus-employee company has raised some US$51 million. Its investors include Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andrees- sen Horowitz, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Samsung. Dapper expects blockchain gaming to unfold in five phases. With crypto collectibles and art already thriving on Ethereum, the second wave will see many more collectible games like CryptoKitties join Flow, it predicts. Next: full games with collection loops, such as NBA Top Shot. The fourth phase is smart contract–driven games, "where the game itself is an open contract that anyone can co-create," says Axiom Zen founding partner Gharegozlou. Unlike in traditional games, purchased items won't vanish with the app: "You buy an asset that you can form an emotional connection with because devel- opers will build use cases for it, making user acquisition easier and broadening customers' range of choices." And No. 5? "A fully open, fully on-chain metaverse is the last category and something we haven't seen yet," Gharegozlou says. "We think of it as the entire state of the blockchain available for any developer to build on, any individual to access, and where the assets can interact with each other and smart contracts can be built on top of each other. Because this is all software, we don't think it'll take 10 or even five years to get there, but I've always been optimistic." –N.R. mobile operators launch an Internet of Things business in people's cars. The connected car has come a long way since its mid-1990s debut with General Motors Co.'s OnStar program–whose former director, Alan Messer, is now Mojio's CTO. That's partly because automakers have educated consumers, explains Hawk, citing the 2016 Super Bowl ad showing comedian Kevin Hart tracking his daughter on a date. The cost of purchasing a top-tier on-board diagnostic ( OBD-II) device is falling as well, from $200 to the $50 range over the next 18 months, he says. Mojio analyzes the data it gathers from cars to tell drivers things like what that check-engine light actually means or where they can buy the cheap- est and most convenient gas. The company, half of whose 80 staff work in Vancouver, just patented a method to gauge when tires need replacing. "This is taking a lot of the guesswork out of maintaining and running your car," Hawk says. Returning to its B2B origins, Mojio recently launched a fleet management product for small businesses. It took seventh place in the 2020 edition of Deloitte's national Technology Fast 50 ranking, with 3,612-percent revenue growth over the past four years. As for its handful of venture-backed rivals, "they're all gone or about to be gone or struggling," Hawk says. "Now we're bumping up against the big beasts"– like Samsung-owned Harman, which Mojio beat for Deutsche Telekom and other big accounts, he adds. Hawk thinks the connected car will fuel the rise of autonomous vehicles by providing much-needed real-world data for their algorithms and predictive maintenance to catch problems before they happen. And speaking of big beasts, he's glad that Mojio backer Amazon.com's Ring divi- sion has entered the space with car alarm and dashcam products. "It says that we're heading more toward the mainstream adoption of this and that we're still early in the game." –N.R. LAP TIME Form bills itself as the first maker of AR swimming goggles