Thanks for being here!
Announcement(s):
90 West now offering a new daily data product that features end-of-day balances across various types of banks accounts (savings, checking, CDs, personal, business, etc). Data is from anonymous small regional & community banks. No PII. Very granular.
Theme that emerged in this week’s email is … data products are the way to go…does ChatGPT help here?
QUOTES
“The ChatGPT moment has created an unexpected consequence. Data teams are quickly becoming product and delivery focused.”
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Unbound)
#1 – Maiden Century’s Alternative Benefits of Alternative Data. May 2023.
My Take: We are just scratching the surface of alternative data use cases. The tools are improving. Better tools allow us to ask better questions and higher quality data helps us trust the answers. This short e-book shares a few real world use case & shows how even non-data-savvy investors can benefit from alternative data.
#2 – Vin Vashishta published The Business Won’t Get Much Value From Its Data Until It Can Answer This Question. May 2023.
My Take: The question: what is the business purpose of data and models? For me this is article reinforces the importance of domain expertise. You have to understand the business problem of your customer (the data user). The author described five (5) phases.
the goal is to increase transparency
the goal is to bring new information into the business
the goal is to facilitate experimentation
the goal is to engineer data-generating systems
advanced models become intelligent twins for complex business, customer, and marketplace systems
#3 – Veeral Desai, Tim Fountaine, & Kayvaun Rowshankish published A Better Way to Put Your Data to Work July 2022.
My Take: I came across this article published last summer and thought it was worth highlighting. The key to broader acceptance of data is creating data products. For me, this again hammers home the importance of domain expertise. As a data professional, you need to understand the business use case and how end users will engage with the data. Deliver a minimally viable product (MVP), get feedback, iterate, improve. Start with the end in mind. This is a very good overview and shares some real world examples.
BONUS: Ali Hamriti published The Rise of Alternative Data Makes for a Fairer Gig Economy. May 2023. “Financial worthiness which is based on credit scoring alone simply does not fit in today’s world of work and financial institutions need to find a solution to continue doing business with this growing market without impacting their acceptance rate negatively.”
BONUS 2: Becca Trate’s 5 Q’s for Julius Černiauskas, Chief Executive Officer of Oxylabs. May 2023. “The main driver behind the alternative data ‘revolution’ is the digitalization of business and advancements in web scraping technologies. Big data has been a hot topic for years, but it is web scraping that unlocked its power by utilizing alternative data for competitive business insights, investigative research, science, and other purposes.”
BONUS 3: Michael Stonebreaker & Joseph Hellerstein published What Goes Around Comes Around. “This paper provides a summary of 35 years of data model proposals, grouped into 9 different eras.”
What else I am reading:
Colin Megill’s Introduction to Data Visualization for the Web. May 2023.
William Careri’s Hachette v. Internet Archive and the Future of Data Access. May 2023.
Kyle Kirwan’s The complete guide to understanding data reliability. April 2023.
Julius Cerniauskas How Leading Ecommerce Firms Use Alternative Data to Grow Revenue. May 2023.
Becca Trate’s The FTC Should Improve Data Collection To Mitigate Gift Card Scams. March 2023.
Revelate published What is a Data Asset - Lauren Cascio - Interview. May 2023.
My Take: Data is an asset and should be recognized under GAAP rules to recognize this intangible asset on the balance sheet. Lauren’s company Gulp is lending against this asset. Most interesting to me is the valuation of the data asset. Valuing data is a new idea idea, and is not at all straightforward.
Three categories of data:
Not immediately usable (don’t throw away)
Normalized data
Research ready data, highly consumable & valuable
Related CDO Magazine article: Bridging the GAAP: Leveraging Data-As-Collateral with Lauren Cascio, Founder of Gulp Data
Highlights (18-minute run time):
Minute 00:30 – data is always an asset and liability
Minute 01:30 – why are we not hearing more about this?
Minute 02:45 – Q: how to value the data? A: its not straightforward or easy
Minute 06:45 – Q: why not throw away data? A: you never know
Minute 07:50 – benefit of companies going on this data journey; internal benefits of know what data you have & external data monetization
Minute 10:45 – enhancing / improving your data asset
Minute 13:20 – discussion of regulatory environment
Minute 17:00 – look to the future
Source: Splunk’s The Economic Impact of Data Innovation 2023: Global research: 8 key strategies for disrupting competitors, building resilience and gaining a 9.5% profit edge.
Related Jaime Hampton (Datanami) article here: Data-savvy Organizations Are 9.5% More Profitable: Splunk. October 2022.
The Eight (8) strategies that drive data innovation:
Prioritize data innovation
Invest for success
Bring innovation to executive level
Establish center of excellence
Prioritize tech-centric data streams today
Pivot to know-your-customer data next
Commit to either speed or success when it comes to product innovation
Cultivate a broader sense of paranoia
Source 2: Michael Watson of Hedgineer.io
From presentation he gave at Neudata Conference in NY.
Source: I had the pleasure of attending Eagle Alpha’s Unbound Conference this week in NY. Many of Jason DeRise’s questions got answered! Keep an eye out for Eagle Alpha’s Alternative Data Conference in London October 12, 2023.
The alternative data industry is fortunate to have a strong series of events that allow everyone to get together and learn. Having been to many of these events over the years, it is interesting to see how much better the data products are getting & how much better the vendors are at pitching their wares.
Importantly, we are seeing a lot of maturity from this industry. I hesitate to pull these types of lists together as I always forget someone… but these are generally folks I know and/or had a chance to connect with this week at Eagle Alpha’s Unbound.
Better methods to organize & discover data.
Databrick’s Marketplace
Snowflake’s Data Marketplace (& CyberSyn)
SS&C’s EZE Marketplace
Data conference hosts Eagle Alpha, BattleFin, Neudata
Here is a list of 58 data marketplaces…
Better tools to engage with data.
ArticDB (MAN Group)
Sven Balnojan’s Data orchestration article is which he share opinions about data tools.
Too many others to mention them all…
Better compliance & regulatory resources/tools.
Eagle Alpha’s Surveyor
FISD’s Alternative Data Council
And a host of excellent service providers to help data owners find & deliver the right product-market fit.
Many more…