Hi there,

When a company says this:

"We only build what our customers tell us they want."

Its product probably looks like this:

And with that, read on for today’s stacked lineup.

Deliverin’ on my own

Consumers are shopping online more than ever. 

And they expect delivery to be cheaper and faster.

But the final stage of delivery (“the last mile”) is incredibly expensive and time-consuming.

Luckily, smart folks are trying to solve this problem.

Both incumbent retailers and technology companies are exploring autonomous delivery systems to speed up fulfillment at an affordable rate. For example, Walmart filed a patent for a sidewalk robot-delivery drone duo that would be able to deliver goods without human intervention.

Learn how the future of last-mile delivery is unfolding in this report.

Mo' money mo' problems

I used to work at American Express.

And the one business of AmEx’s that I thought had an impenetrable moat was the corporate card.

Oh, those sweet sweet membership rewards points.

But a host of new spend management and corporate card technology-driven solutions have come into existence recently to challenge the king of corporate cards.

The team at Yardstiq interviewed customers of this new breed of spend management technologies — aka Ramp, Airbase, Brex, and Payhawk — to understand the most common evaluation criteria and questions buyers have when evaluating these technology solutions.  

We identified 8 key questions to ask if you’re considering these solutions. And we’ve compiled them in this handy Buyer’s Guide for Spend Management & Corporate Cards.

There’s no crying in crypto 

The start of 2022 looked promising for crypto. But then, the market crashed, wiping out half of the total crypto market cap. 

All things considered, institutional crypto is holding up well. The buzz is back and so is activity by financial institutions in the space.

For example, BlackRock partnered with Coinbase to give institutional clients direct access to crypto trading through Coinbase Prime. 

We identified 105 companies like Coinbase developing solutions to help institutional investors and traders overcome their unique barriers to crypto entry.

Requests for Technology 
 

Every week, hundreds of CB Insights customers source technology vendors on our platform.

Here are a few recent RFTs we’ve received:

• RFT #1 — An American healthcare system is exploring drone delivery services for the delivery of lab specimens across its network of hospitals. 

• RFT #2 — A multinational retail convenience store chain is looking for a technology that enables age verification for age-restricted items.

• RFT # 3 — A Fortune 500 bank is interested in exploring partnerships with companies that focus on serving international students. 

At your service

Have you ever applied for car insurance? 

It’s super fun. 

If you know the vehicle make, model, year, VIN, safety features, and other information, it’s easy-peasy.

Now, data pre-fill companies are looking to streamline this process for agents and prospective customers by automating application data collection.

We identify 10 of these companies in this market map. 

And to make it even better, we also cover 98 others helping insurance brokers and agents acquire and service customers.

Business Insider Africa. Victor Oluwole (@iamlazypoet) covers promising African fintech companies using CB Insights research.

Bloomberg. Fathiya Dahrul, Elffie Chew, and Olivia Poh (@oliviapohtech) report on Traveloka’s $300M funding round and cite CB Insights data.

STAT. Mario Aguilar (@mariojoze) discusses new cloud tools for hospitals and quotes CB Insights analyst Alexander Lennox-Miller.
 

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal