Alternative Data Weekly #168
Thanks for being here!
This is the Alternative Data Weekly for Friday, January 12, 2024.
The Alternative Data Weekly is Powered by Vertical Knowledge:
Announcement(s):
Vertical Knowledge will have a presence at two upcoming conferences:
- Eagle Alpha’s January 18th data conference in NY
- BattleFin’s January 24-26th data conference in Miami
Let me know if you plan to be in attendance.
Theme that emerged in this week’s email is … 2023 lookbacks & 2024 predictions!
QUOTES
“I think the value of proprietary data will continue to grow in 2024 and I am excited to see companies build new revenue streams and learn what the market is willing to pay.” Matt Ober’s The Rollup
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Data Memes)
#1 – Jason Derise’s The Data Score published Assessing the ROI of Data. January 2024.
My Take: Truth! There are a lot of hidden costs associated with evaluating any data purchase. I ‘ve run into the prospect feedback … that “we just want the raw data” … I have found this to add significant time to any data sales cycle. Data vendors need to do the heavy lifting of cleaning, organizing, and making the data “insight ready” … while at the same time being prepared to offer the raw data in case the client wants to check your work. Data is a tough thing to sell!
Sidenote: Vertical Knowledge has invested hugely in creating a growing list of “refined products” that remove much of the cost described in the article.
#2 – Eagle Alpha published their Eagle Alpha’s 3rd Annual Alternative Data Report 2023. December 2023.
My Take: See below for some charts I thought worth highlighting from this 50-page document. Of most interest to me were the five (5) predictions for 2024 (with my comments).
M&A within the data vertical (agree!)
Corporate monetization will accelerate (I see lots of interest, but interest wanes as corps realize it is harder than expected and TAM likely not what is expected)
AI & LLMs will become more domain specific (Agree…initial killer apps will be very targeted)
Data expertise will become more finely balanced versus data access (data supply is abundant .. .data expertise is what makes it valuable)
Compliance processes will evolve further (…and this is a good thing)
#3 – Seclore published Evolution of Global Data Privacy Laws: What to Expect & Why You Should Care. December 2023.
My Take: My experience is most people, especially people < 40, do not care about data privacy. No one wants to be robbed or doxed, but most people understand their data is widely available for those willing to do a little digging. Again, outside the criminal element, I do not think data privacy generate a big emotional response from the electorate and gets moved to the backburner over time. Even the EU is recognizing the need for a “modernized approach to data privacy”.
BONUS: The Fintech Times published Enhancing Financial Inclusion With Alternative Data: A Path to Empowerment. December 2023. “Traditional credit scores rely on data from regular consumer bank transactions and previous payment records, leaving those without access to these facilities at a disadvantage when applying for loans. That’s where alternative data offers a solution to close this gap.”
What else I am reading:
Stratably’s How to Build an Amazon Data Pipeline. May 2023.
Seattle Data Guy’s Growing From Analyst To Data Engineer In 100 Days. January 2024.
WSJ’s The World is on The Move. December 2023.
Mike Fleckenstein, Ali Obaidi, and Nektaria Tryfona published A Review of Data Valuation Approaches and Building and Scoring a Data Valuation Model. January 2023.
The Cipher Brief published The Intelligence Community ‘Can’ Tackle Open-Source Data in a Hyper-Connected World. December 2023.
Source: Striim’s What’s New In Data podcast published a conversation with Santona Tuli, Head of Data at Upsolver. December 2023.
My Take: I like the idea of being a bit more philosophical about data. This hold truth in both the “why are we building what we are building” … as well as some more personal reflections on career, etc.
Santona discusses the challenges of large-scale workloads … are we moving away from scale? The key is building tools that are scalable (scale = “robustness”); she is seeing the the tooling improve, making it easier to work at scale. She discusses the idea of “choose your own code level” rather than “no code”.
Some conversation of batch processing and real-time processing are different. Santona goes into detail on … more of a dial than a switch. Importantly, one size does not fit all. Importance of understanding the trade-offs.
Highlights (32-minute run time):
Minute 02:00 – Santona Tuli’s background
Minute 04:00 – discussion of Santona’s recent talk at The Coalesce 2023 Conference (answering the why)
Minute 07:00 – challenges of large-scale workloads
Minute 13:30 – going from batch to real-time; how to think about combining?
Minute 21:00 – DuckDB and small portable compute (other end of the spectrum)
Minute 26:00 – Santona’s highlights from the Coalesce Conference (people she met, activation ideas)
BONUS: I’d recommend most any podcast published by World of DaaS. The most recent conversation with Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, will make you think (which is good!).
Source: Deloitte’s Alternative data at investment management firms: From discovery to integration. No date.
BONUS 1: Eagle Alpha published their Eagle Alpha’s 3rd Annual Alternative Data Report 2023. December 2023.
“Looking at the chart below of our (Eagle Alpha’s) sixteen primary categories we have continued to grow our data catalogue at a good clip.”
The Seattle Data Guy published Ten of the Funniest Data Memes. Enjoy & subscribe to his list. My favorite:
