With its list of Apple Design Awards winners, Apple is celebrating indie apps and startups over bigger tech firms — including those offering AI chatbots.
There’s no ChatGPT to be found on Apple’s list of Design Awards finalists, for example.
Instead, Apple’s list of finalists for its Design Awards favored small to midsize app makers like Copilot Money, SmartGym, recipe app Crouton, creative app Procreate Dreams, Gentler Streak, and others, as well as those from venture-backed startups like the creativity app Rooms and the reimagined web browser Arc Search.
We're overjoyed– and, frankly, in disbelief– that Rooms is a finalist for Apple's 2024 Design Awards.
An “Inclusivity” section also boosts Apple’s global app community, including members in the EU where regulation is underway via the Digital Markets Act.
Five months ago, Rooms, a 3D design platform made by ex-Google employees, launched its beta version on the App Store.
Rooms is an interior decorating app that falls under the cozy game category.
Players can build and code intricate 3D rooms and mini-games using a library of over 7,500 digital items.
The majority of the updates are on the iOS app, but Rooms is adding the new categories and speed improvements to its web version.
However, in the future, Rooms may offer a premium subscription offering but the company is waiting until the app gets more traction.
A startup called Virtual Staging AI is making it possible for Realtors to virtually stage a house with the help of generative AI.
Virtual Staging AI, which is part of Harvard Innovation Labs, currently has 4,500 monthly paid subscribers and is looking to transform the real estate and staging industry.
Instead of having to share images of empty rooms in a listing, the tool gives Realtors realistic images of furnished rooms.
While Realtors could hire someone to digitally stage a room using tools like Photoshop, Virtual Staging AI promises a cheaper and faster way to do so.
Real estate has continued to evolve over the years, going from offering only in-person showings to facilitating virtual tours.
Leveraging resources such as virtual data rooms and shared labs makes it easier for biotech startups to grow.
“For this to work, the world would need to scale up the number of MRI scans it does by at least 100x.
Co-working for biotechShared lab spaces have been a game changer for biotech startups, Nature reported.
This reminded me of Startup Battlefield alum Parallel Health — its chief scientist officer Nathan Brown had mentioned shared labs in passing when we chatted at Disrupt.
“If you’re thinking about starting a company, try to visit a few just to see which one is the best.”Virtual data roomsVirtual data rooms are another important resource for biotech startups.
I founded Mindtickle, a sales readiness platform, in 2011 to address this issue and help companies prepare their sales teams to tackle any challenge.
Digital sales rooms offer a new way to achieve just that.
Winning sales organizations have now started using digital sales rooms (DSRs) to introduce buyer enablement to the sales enablement ecosystem to create a more interactive and engaging experience for buyers.
Combining DSRs with sales enablement toolsBuyers are scrutinizing purchases more and sellers are under pressure to provide value in every buyer interaction.
Digital sales rooms are online microsites where sellers can customize and share contracts, mutual action plans, sales content, and more with buyers.
“Samooha customers will benefit from the many built-in platform capabilities of Snowflake, as well as the powerful network of Snowflake data cloud.
Snowflake customers, meanwhile, will be able to more quickly and easily build, connect and use data clean rooms where their data already lives, directly in Snowflake.”Los Altos-based Samooha, which Sivaramakrishnan and Bhowmick co-founded in 2022, competes in an increasingly crowded data clean room field.
AWS has a data clean room product, as do startups like Herb.
A native app on Snowflake, Samooha provides a no-code UI customers can use to access and build clean room apps.
According to Gartner, 80% of advertisers spending more than $1 billion a year on media will have used data clean rooms for applications such as analytics, measuring campaign results and easing data integration by the end of the year.
