Takeaways

• Prime Day has become a significant event in the American shopper landscape, with around $14 billion in sales and a 76% increase in volume compared to the previous week.
• Amazon's advertising business is now more profitable than its merchandising business, making Prime Day an important advertising event.
• Other retailers, such as Walmart and Target, also benefited from Prime Day by offering their own deals and seeing increased visits from shoppers.
• The top-selling categories during Prime Day were apparel, consumer electronics, and household essentials.

Takeaways

• Understanding and managing the risks associated with AI implementation is crucial for achieving desired outcomes.
• Model drift, hallucination, and toxicity are potential risks of AI that need to be monitored and managed.
• Data cleaning and organization are essential for obtaining accurate and unbiased results from AI models.
• Companies should establish policies and procedures to ensure the ethical and responsible use of AI.
• Environmental sustainability and societal impact should be considered when implementing AI.
• Cybersecurity measures are necessary to protect AI models and data from potential breaches.
• Setting clear business objectives is key to developing an effective AI strategy.
• The future of risk mitigation in AI includes ongoing advancements in data management, cybersecurity, and ethical guidelines.

"With great power comes great responsibility."

"AI models want to get better over time. They want to give you better results over time."

"There's this tendency to get a little over reliant on AI without really testing it and making sure that it's correct."

• There is continued interest in AI and next-gen commerce in the retail industry, with startups in these areas still receiving funding.
• Startups face challenges in getting traction and convincing retailers to do trials and proof of concepts.
• Retailers are looking for data-driven insights and actionable insights that they can generate themselves.
• Returns are a significant issue in e-commerce, and reducing returns is a priority for retailers.
• Regulation is driving innovation in specific sectors and geographies.
• Startups should focus on the problem they are solving and make their messaging simple and clear.
• Instead of doing proof of concepts, startups can offer intro pricing or guarantees to make it easier for retailers to say yes.
• The relationship between startups and corporates is evolving, with corporates seeking innovation and startups needing to be flexible in their approach.
• Simplicity and storytelling are important in telling the startup's story and getting recognized in the market.
• Startups should adopt a test and learn mentality and be open to trying different sales and marketing approaches.