Alternative Data Weekly #227
February 28, 2025
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The theme that emerged in this week’s email is … growing demand for data; real world AI use cases starting to amaze.
QUOTES
“Data is currency, some people pay with it and some people pay for it.” – Stefanie Babka
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Using AI)
#1 – Neudata published How big is the alternative data market for investment managers? February 2025.
My Take: with 21% annual growth since 2020 and 33% growth in 2024, the market is strong. I’ve worked with the two top data types by market share, transactional & web scraping. Both are competitive. There are a few providers that dominate. While there is an acknowledged large margin of error, the trend is a good one.
#2 – Dan Entrup & Bill Ronkoski published Enhancing Expert-Based Research and Survey Outreach Through Data Utilization. February 2025.
My Take: These guys are experts on the expert network industry. The idea of refining your outreach to focus on the highest impact people within your network is powerful. Why talk to 10 people, when you can talk to three and get higher quality information? How do you identify those 3?
#3 – Timothy B. Lee of UnderstandingAI published These experts were stunned by OpenAI Deep Research. February 2025.
My Take: I am one of the experts cited! I am fascinated by Deep Research. It was not a perfect response to my inquiry, but it was good, and the time it took was a fraction of the time it would take to compile a similar report … and the risk of just being amazed and not proof-reading is quite high. See this one: AI 'hallucinations' in court papers spell trouble for lawyers. BTW … on a related note Jason Derise wrote a great piece on AI’s impact on stock research. I’ll write about this more next week.
BONUS: BigData.com published 8 essential datasets every investor needs in 2025. February 2025.
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SEC filings: uncover the hidden signals
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What else I am reading:
The Economist & Databricks published Unlocking enterprise AI: A global study of 1,100 technologists — plus interviews with 28 CIOs. February 2025. (see below “Charts” section)
World of DaaS published Diving into the World of DaaS with Similarweb. February 2025.
Seattle Data Guy published Biggest Productivity Killers for Data Teams: Battling Context Switching and Distraction. February 2025.
Jon Jacobson published How Grocery Data Can Transform Growth And Retention For Banks And Insurers. February 2025.
Benn Stancil published The return of the modern data stack. February 2025.
Arpit Choudhary published Burnout and the next iteration of databeats. February 2025.
Tara Stokes of P72 Ventures published Looking back on 2024: The AI playbook takes shape. January 2025.
Fascinating resource: Artificial Analysis published Independent analysis of AI models and API providers
Personal interest of mine:
Anand Sanwal published Skin in the game: Fixing higher education’s student debt problem. November 2024.
Source: Stefanie Babka spoke at TEDxFrankfurt. Data is a currency - spend it wisely!. February 2025.
My Take: Stefanie delivers a wonderful address about data and data privacy. I have long said no one cares about data privacy. To be clear, people don’t want to be robbed or doxed, but we are more than happy to let our apps track us and take our daily movements into their algorithms so they can better deliver to us the most relevant content (ads & otherwise). She makes a great point about the overall good that comes from data sharing in an example like Google Maps. Traffic spots are identified by people willingly giving their data to Google. We are all better off for it. #dataforgood
“Data is currency, some people pay with it and some people pay for it.”
Highlights (17-minute run time)
Minute 01:00 – Stefanie talks with AI bot
Minute 03:00 – Talk starts; does anyone care about what’s happening with their data?
Minute 05:45 – What is data culture?
Minute 07:30 – “Winning the head” … with the data culture
Minute 12:00 – Having a data mindset
Minute 12:45 – Google maps example (everyone benefits)
Minute 15:00 – The importance of “The Herd” mentality with data and AI
Source: The Economist & Databricks published Unlocking enterprise AI: A global study of 1,100 technologists — plus interviews with 28 CIOs. February 2025.
BONUS: Yes, this is random, but I thought this was an interesting chart.
Massive change over 30 years.
I predict a similar path for driverless vs driver-operated cars…probably starting around 2030. Check back with me in 2050 … I’ll (might) still be writing this ADW!
I use AI every day. How?
ChatGPT (or peer) has replaced Google searches for me.
I find myself cutting & pasting long emails/notes into ChatGPT for writing tips & suggestions.
When meeting a new prospect, I create a prompt to get background on the company.
Jokes.
These are “use cases” I use almost daily.
The experiment mentioned above with Timothy B. Lee of UnderstandingAI was fascinating:
These experts were stunned by OpenAI Deep Research. February 2025.
I spent a lot of years on the sell-side. If I were still there, I’d be thinking really hard about how I am adding value (the same goes for any “knowledge worker”).