Small startups capitalising upon Big Data
The amount of data created in our world is vast and growing at a staggering rate.
Taking Facebook as an example, and focusing simply on one feature of their site – events. Facebook’s users have created billions of events (capturing who went to those events, what connections they have, dates, times, declines, etc) – literally billions of interactions and trillions of bytes that are being stored (and this was only one company as an example).
It’s a trend and phenomenon that is only growing larger as the needs of social, locational and mobile (SoLoMo) grow – but what does it all mean? Simply that we live in a more digital age? That the world is ever more intrusive?
In my eyes it isn’t just evidence of an increasingly digital age but one in which the opportunities to undertake and present analysis are very exciting.
I believe there are a plethora of opportunities out there for entrepreneurs who create companies focused upon gathering, sorting, and displaying big data in a meaningful and informative way. As trends such as NFC come on board it’s not only going to be businesses that are exposed to volumes of data but consumers that will also have the chance to slice and dice personal data, allowing them to analyse aspects of their life such as spending habits effortlessly with a level of control that has never before been available.
How does the data created by these entrepreneurs add value? McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) suggest five areas:
- Creating transparency
- Enabling experimentation to discover needs, expose variability, and improve performance
- Segmenting populations to customise actions
- Replacing/supporting human decision making with automated algorithms
- Innovating new business models, products and services
It is these five areas that startups need to focus on if they want to create a viable product; already in the Bay area we are seeing startups like TellApart, Metamarkets, Coudera, Northscale, Datameer and IFTTT.
TellApart is a customer data platform for large online retailers which focuses on transactional retargeting - a pretty nifty idea and just one example of using data to improve the bottom line. Looking at MGI’s aforementioned five areas, TellApart touches on at least two: #3 (Segmentation to customise actions) and #2 (enabling experimentation to improve performance).
So as new social networks, products, trends, etc. come along think of how you could tame this Big Data enabling you to create a startup that drives efficiency, it certainly will be an interesting space to watch over the next few years.
Further reading:
- WSJ – Health Care Is Next Frontier for Big Data
- McKinsey Global Institute – Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity
- ITNews – Tennis Australia exposes match analytics (Big data in action…)
- Quora’s ‘Big Data’ Topic
