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The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

mattturck.com

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Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#21

Post by existencebox »

dig1 wrote: post #17
dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #10

> The financial services world has its own strong identity, handles massive amounts of money, and will not necessarily be in awe of your cool startup. When I was at Bloomberg, I used to cringe when startup founders would show up in hoodies, essentially destroying their credibility before the meeting even started. Who wants wall street awe? Who cares about credibility? Run a goddamn business, not a fan club. If you ca…

> Run a goddamn business,.... If you cared about image, you wouldn't talk about what people wear. Let's change perspective - what do you think, how much success will have business with web pages that looks like from 90-ties or products that looks like they are made in basement in spare time? (sure, there are exceptions, but well, they are exceptions :P). Everything is about image; if I'm going to invest in you, you b…

I'll challenge this statement. I stopped shaving, ironing, and wearing more than many duplicates of one outfit explicitly so I could get serious about my work. Time is my most valuable commodity, and I intend to use every moment I have attacking problems I care about. I like to think that I don't look like a slob, but by the qualities you cited, you would disqualify me off the bat, and given the rocks I've moved in my industry tenure, that would have been an absolutely misaligned signal and you would have lost out.

Everything is about image _in some professions_ and _in some eras_. I will certainly stand on the side of trying to change that through my own actions, and given that the peers and mentors I most respect have similarly chosen to discard traditional models of image, I find myself in company I'm quite comfortable with.

(And as sister posts have cited, the sheer existence of successful sites like CL, Enom, and HackerNews (which for all its minimalism and polish is by no means a "modern image"; I say this with nothing but pride to be very clear) indicates to me that even in site design image may be a cost function but is no substitute for quality. I have had clients JUMP at products that as you say, look like they're from the 90s, because they solved _real issues_ that they needed solved.)

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#22

Post by AznHisoka »

"You cannot sell data you don’t own. Hedge funds care immensely about the legality of the data."

Thats a shame as this makes this business model almost impossible for the average reader here.

There are loads of outside data that if crawled and gathered could be useful to hedge funds. things like:

- growth in number of Amazon reviews for a type of product month to month(against amazon tos to scrape them)

- number of job ads that mention a technology or product (against indeed.com tos to scrape them)

- google rankings of websites (against google tos to scrape them)

- growth in total yelp reviews for a restaurant like Mcdonalds month to month (against yelps tos)

which means this business is only for already profitable companies with large user bases.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#23

Post by AznHisoka »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

Great article!! And i think it can probably be summed up with the sentence, unless your product has: - a long history of data - data that has low correlation to other available data sets - a very small group of people who have access to this data( ie exclusive deals with a few funds) Then its unlikely that you will be able to sell your data for any meaningful amount of money. A few things the author wrote that I thin…

Also just plain dumb luck. stocks dont trade based on logic like revenue growth so if Trump tweets something negative about Starbucks and the stock goes down, but your data suggested Starbucks sales went up 300% last month, you are in tough luck.

this is also probably why your data is worth much much less than you think. there are very few things that correlate very strongly to stock performance. predicting human emotion is probably more important than predicting revenue growth or number of people who went inside a Starbucks last month.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#24

Post by caleblloyd »

bogomipz wrote: post #19
choward wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dressed up in suits lose accountability to me. It's like they are over-compensating for something.

Does that include lawyers and financial advisors too? Would you be OK with someone in jeans and a hoodie representing you in court? Would you be OK handing your life savings over to a money manager who was wearing a t-shirt and flip flops?

Only if it was Michael Burry

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#25

Post by arbitraryquant »

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm a quant at a quant hedge fund. I can confirm I want your data. The longer the history, the more I want it. Don't fuck with it much, give me clean but raw info. I don't want PII, but I'll take aggregate and anonymized. Just whatever you do, start collecting it NOW so in 3 years you have 3 years of history to sell me.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#26

Post by arbitraryquant »

AznHisoka wrote: post #22

"You cannot sell data you don’t own. Hedge funds care immensely about the legality of the data." Thats a shame as this makes this business model almost impossible for the average reader here. There are loads of outside data that if crawled and gathered could be useful to hedge funds. things like: - growth in number of Amazon reviews for a type of product month to month(against amazon tos to scrape them) - number of j…

The point is if you're Amazon or Indeed or Yelp (or trying to compete) you can sell the data.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#27

Post by arbitraryquant »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #6

> When I was at Bloomberg, I used to cringe when startup founders would show up in hoodies, essentially destroying their credibility before the meeting even started. I understand you can't roll in looking like a slob but I have to think times have changed and the casually dressed founder wouldn't have a problem, even with Wall Street types. The cultural differences b/t the two industries are pretty interesting though…

I give no shits what you're wearing in that meeting. I just want to learn about your data and get a copy to examine.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#28

Post by AznHisoka »

arbitraryquant wrote: post #26
AznHisoka wrote: post #22

"You cannot sell data you don’t own. Hedge funds care immensely about the legality of the data." Thats a shame as this makes this business model almost impossible for the average reader here. There are loads of outside data that if crawled and gathered could be useful to hedge funds. things like: - growth in number of Amazon reviews for a type of product month to month(against amazon tos to scrape them) - number of j…

The point is if you're Amazon or Indeed or Yelp (or trying to compete) you can sell the data.

thats true.

and the rich get richer..

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#29

Post by [deleted] »

dig1 wrote: post #17
dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #10

> The financial services world has its own strong identity, handles massive amounts of money, and will not necessarily be in awe of your cool startup. When I was at Bloomberg, I used to cringe when startup founders would show up in hoodies, essentially destroying their credibility before the meeting even started. Who wants wall street awe? Who cares about credibility? Run a goddamn business, not a fan club. If you ca…

> Run a goddamn business,.... If you cared about image, you wouldn't talk about what people wear. Let's change perspective - what do you think, how much success will have business with web pages that looks like from 90-ties or products that looks like they are made in basement in spare time? (sure, there are exceptions, but well, they are exceptions :P). Everything is about image; if I'm going to invest in you, you b…

[deleted]

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#30

Post by groby_b »

existencebox wrote: post #21
dig1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Run a goddamn business,.... If you cared about image, you wouldn't talk about what people wear. Let's change perspective - what do you think, how much success will have business with web pages that looks like from 90-ties or products that looks like they are made in basement in spare time? (sure, there are exceptions, but well, they are exceptions :P). Everything is about image; if I'm going to invest in you, you b…

I'll challenge this statement. I stopped shaving, ironing, and wearing more than many duplicates of one outfit explicitly so I could get serious about my work. Time is my most valuable commodity, and I intend to use every moment I have attacking problems I care about. I like to think that I don't look like a slob, but by the qualities you cited, you would disqualify me off the bat, and given the rocks I've moved in m…

Image still matters. It's just that it's not the same image that matters everywhere. Wall Street? Bring a suit. Silicon Valley? Go for the hoodie, or the same outfit (copy) every day.

Both signal that you're part of a specific tribe. There's a reason major tech conferences are a sea of "jeans & T" people, and it's not just the comfort.

You're completely right that image is not a substitute for quality, but when you're selling something, you ideally want a bond with the customer. So, if you sell to Wall St., look like Wall St. If you sell to engineers, look like an engineer. If you don't sell, wear whatever you like ;)

That's why HN can get away with minimalist design - it's not selling anything.

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