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Forbes
17-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
7 Undercover Startup Opportunities
Most startup media focuses on AI, but other opportunities are hiding in plain sight. This article ... More highlights 7 overlooked markets where innovative startups can build real advantages. In the current startup landscape, AI dominates headlines and investor interest, often overshadowing other technological innovations. But behind the hype of AI changing the world lie less-publicized technological niches that are also ripe for entrepreneurial exploration. Many of these areas aren't overcrowded yet, making them attractive for founders looking to build early advantages. Of course, this doesn't mean they are easier to tackle - they hide technological and/or market penetration challenges of their own that could be hard to overcome. Nonetheless, if you have expertise in these fields or in the technologies that are likely to disrupt them, it's worth exploring whether you can generate value there. If you can, it's fairly likely you'll be able to scale it and build a sizeable business. This article highlights seven such fields - areas where shifts in regulation, consumer behavior, infrastructure, or technology quietly open up opportunities for innovative startups. As homes, offices, and communities adopt solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, they're starting to look like tiny utility providers. This shift creates a need for coordination, optimization, and billing between peers, whether within buildings or neighborhoods. Startups that enable microgrid management, energy-sharing platforms, or property-level energy marketplaces could emerge as critical infrastructure providers in this new system. Most conversations about decarbonization focus on transportation and electricity. But industrial heat - the high-temperature heat used in sectors like cement, steel, and chemicals - accounts for over 20% of global energy demand. It's hard to electrify and even harder to decarbonize. Startups that can offer efficient, scalable, and cost-effective solutions (e.g., heat batteries, high-temperature electric furnaces, or alternative fuels like green hydrogen) have the chance to enter markets that haven't seen much innovation in decades. One example is Heliogen, which uses solar mirrors to generate high-temperature heat for industrial use. Sectors like waste management, forestry, construction supply, and marine logistics still rely heavily on spreadsheets, phone calls, and legacy software. Founders with domain experience or industry partners can find low-competition opportunities by building vertical SaaS or workflow automation tools. Startups like Fleetzero and Loggerhead Instruments show how combining deep industry knowledge with modern tech stacks can unlock untapped markets. Most aging-related startups focus on healthcare. But the global aging population also creates demand for non-medical solutions: tools for simplifying communication, handling estate planning, or even personalized travel. For example, startups could create digital literacy platforms for seniors or secure devices optimized for their needs. AARP reports that the 50+ demographic controls over 50% of U.S. consumer spending, yet remains underserved by consumer tech. The AI boom assumes companies have vast datasets. But in reality, most businesses operate with limited or messy data. There's room for startups to build tools that make small datasets more useful through smart augmentation, fine-tuning, synthetic data generation, or hybrid human-in-the-loop systems. Companies like Snorkel AI and Kili Technology have built businesses around these ideas in the enterprise space. But the same needs exist in smaller markets with limited data maturity. While legaltech is a known sector, most products target corporate lawyers. There's a growing need for AI tools that help small law firms, regulators, or NGOs deal with complexity at scale - e.g., analyzing legislative changes, checking compliance, or reviewing case law. Projects like Harvey AI hint at what's possible, but most of the market remains under-automated, especially in developing countries or specialized regulatory domains. Digital twins, which are virtual replicas of real-world systems, are increasingly common in manufacturing and logistics. But as sensor tech improves and edge computing becomes cheaper, smaller-scale digital twins for homes, farms, retail spaces, or event venues become viable. These can help simulate scenarios, optimize usage, or monitor performance. Startups can build sector-specific offerings tailored to niche environments, like small-scale agriculture or hospitality.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The epic total solar eclipse of 2024 caused some birds to stop singing
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. During the 2024 total solar eclipse that captured the attention of space lovers across North America, something was going on with the birds. Scientists documented an unexpected shift in birds' vocal behaviors during the eclipse using data from 344 community-based monitoring devices known as Haikuboxes. Researchers from Loggerhead Instruments, Inc. and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics managed to use these boxes to glean clear evidence that birds responded audibly to the celestial event. "Anecdotal evidence has long suggested that birds fall silent or exhibit nighttime behaviors during a total solar eclipse," David Mann, lead author of the study and researcher at Loggerhead Instruments, said in a statement. "Our study shows that on average, birds do get quiet during and just after totality, but we also learned that this behavior is strongly linked to the degree of darkness experienced." The study draws on contributions from citizen scientists who host acoustic monitoring devices at sites across the United States. These devices enable researchers to study wildlife behavior over broad geographic areas with the help of artificial intelligence — and without the biases that come with direct human observation. "Our first, quick look at Haikubox data just a few hours after the eclipse showed a large dip in bird vocalizations around the time of peak totality," Mann continued. "When we dove deeper into the data and removed any sites where humans may have influenced the birds' behaviors, we found a much more complicated story." Mann says the team observed a range of bird responses depending on species and location. For instance, Black-capped Chickadees were silent until well after totality at a site in New York, but increased vocalizations during and just after totality at a site in Vermont. American Robins continued singing through totality in Kentucky, while Pine Siskins fell completely silent during the eclipse in Maine. "The variability in bird responses and site differences was fascinating," he said. "We really don't know why birds had such different responses to the total darkness during the eclipse. Despite examining factors like temperature, cloud cover, and wind speed, we found no significant relationship with changes in vocalization rates. This strongly suggests that the sudden total darkness and associated changes in wind and temperature were the primary drivers of the observed behavioral shifts." Related Stories: — What's left of the 2024 solar eclipse lives in our hearts — The 2024 solar eclipse was a teachable moment in more ways than one — I proposed to my fiancée under the diamond ring of the 2024 total solar eclipse This work highlights the important role that community science plays, and the potential to study animals with minimal disruption to their natural behavior. By using technology like Haikuboxes, scientists can gather large amounts of data, gathering insights that would be difficult or impossible to obtain through traditional methods. "Our findings can inform future research on the impacts of light pollution and sudden changes in light levels on bird behavior," stated Mann. "Furthermore, it proves that when we combine the power of community science with clever technology, we can learn amazing things about wildlife without disturbing them, which may inform future continental-scale studies."
