3 ms·

Conceptually I love the idea. I have thought about this business idea for a long time, but never got over the issues with it to pursue it. The main insight I g

Conceptually I love the idea. I have thought about this business idea for a long time, but never got over the issues with it to pursue it. The main insight I got when doing customer interviews was that many people don't like the idea of others accessing their data when its raised to the foreground, but are perfectly ok with it when it's "hidden". The other issue is that the amount of cash required to make this interesting for the avg. person is relatively high. On the business side, when interviewing VPs Marketing/Sales, the #1 question asked was "What additional value does this bring beyond what we already have?". This is a valuable question to answer b/c massive amounts of data are already collected on each one of us. To be valuable, a business like Datacoup needs to convert this data into insight that can be used to help companies to sell more. With all of that said, I hope Datacoup is successful. It's a great idea and one that I personally like.

otoburb 12y ago
> On the business side, when interviewing VPs Marketing/Sales, the #1 question asked was "What additional value does this bring beyond what we already have?". It's true that massive amounts of data are being collected, but the better value proposition for customers to sign up is: "Billions of dollars are spent by companies on advertising; you deserve a slice of that." >The other issue is that the amount of cash required to make this interesting for the avg. person is relatively high. I also ran into the exact same dichotomy when sussing out this idea, namely that people don't mind monetization of their data exhaust/patterns "for free" or in nominal exchange for a foreground service, but being asked to give this in direct exchange for monetary compensation makes them demand a very high premium for the exact same data. EDIT: Personal.com is establishing a track record of securely consolidating and storing sensitive information. I can't help but think that controlled sharing of personal information (extending beyond core password/address/credit card/banking details) will be their next big push.
- johnmaguire2013 12y ago
  I think he was saying, what value does this add for marketers (i.e. those buying the data)? They already have many ways to get users' data, and at (likely) a lower cost.
  - otoburb 12y ago
    Oops missed that completely; thanks for the clarification! For purchasers, the short-term value-add would be: a) another verified channel of specific user-preferences; b) potential for high-touch permissive advertising (e.g. let me pay you $0.10 so I can spam you because you have a potentially higher conversion rate due to all the extra details you let me access). Data vaults like DataCoup are in essence trying to appeal to purchasers by initially demonstrating large reach (similar to newspaper/magazine/website exposure to raw number of eyeballs), and up-sell the ability to more quickly and more accurately zone in on attractive demographics, down to the individual level, than a competing 3rd party ad-broker harvesting browser fingerprints + cookie combinations or Amazon/Google. Form example, individuals may eventually sell a list of companies they: "have bought from; may buy in the future; commit $X to buying within 90 days." Also, individuals can be made aware that prices for their information tuple assets may devalue if they specify faulty or inaccurate information (e.g. selling information stating that they would buy $X from a company in category Y within 90 days, but failing to actually follow-through). This is rather similar to a credit score, except a "purchaser" or "consumer" score may be a more accurate description. This isn't to say that everybody would choose to participate in such a program or give up such information willingly, but at least this level of hyper-personalization and ad-bidding would become available (in theory!) to both the data purchaser and the end-customer, eventually. EDIT: Data vaults all aim to become canonical ad-broker exchanges as the next step in the evolution of agency ad & media trading desks[1]. If this sounds like trading in the financial sense, it absolutely is. No coincidence that the founder of DataCoup is an ex-bond trader[2]. [1] http://www.adexchanger.com/Agency_Trading_White_Paper.pdf http://www.adexchanger.com/Agency_Trading_White_Paper.pdf [2] https://datacoup.com/docs#about https://datacoup.com/docs#about

otoburb 12y ago

> On the business side, when interviewing VPs Marketing/Sales, the #1 question asked was "What additional value does this bring beyond what we already have?". It's true that massive amounts of data are being collected, but the better value proposition for customers to sign up is: "Billions of dollars are spent by companies on advertising; you deserve a slice of that." >The other issue is that the amount of cash required to make this interesting for the avg. person is relatively high. I also ran into the exact same dichotomy when sussing out this idea, namely that people don't mind monetization of their data exhaust/patterns "for free" or in nominal exchange for a foreground service, but being asked to give this in direct exchange for monetary compensation makes them demand a very high premium for the exact same data. EDIT: Personal.com is establishing a track record of securely consolidating and storing sensitive information. I can't help but think that controlled sharing of personal information (extending beyond core password/address/credit card/banking details) will be their next big push.

johnmaguire2013 12y ago
I think he was saying, what value does this add for marketers (i.e. those buying the data)? They already have many ways to get users' data, and at (likely) a lower cost.
- otoburb 12y ago
  Oops missed that completely; thanks for the clarification! For purchasers, the short-term value-add would be: a) another verified channel of specific user-preferences; b) potential for high-touch permissive advertising (e.g. let me pay you $0.10 so I can spam you because you have a potentially higher conversion rate due to all the extra details you let me access). Data vaults like DataCoup are in essence trying to appeal to purchasers by initially demonstrating large reach (similar to newspaper/magazine/website exposure to raw number of eyeballs), and up-sell the ability to more quickly and more accurately zone in on attractive demographics, down to the individual level, than a competing 3rd party ad-broker harvesting browser fingerprints + cookie combinations or Amazon/Google. Form example, individuals may eventually sell a list of companies they: "have bought from; may buy in the future; commit $X to buying within 90 days." Also, individuals can be made aware that prices for their information tuple assets may devalue if they specify faulty or inaccurate information (e.g. selling information stating that they would buy $X from a company in category Y within 90 days, but failing to actually follow-through). This is rather similar to a credit score, except a "purchaser" or "consumer" score may be a more accurate description. This isn't to say that everybody would choose to participate in such a program or give up such information willingly, but at least this level of hyper-personalization and ad-bidding would become available (in theory!) to both the data purchaser and the end-customer, eventually. EDIT: Data vaults all aim to become canonical ad-broker exchanges as the next step in the evolution of agency ad & media trading desks[1]. If this sounds like trading in the financial sense, it absolutely is. No coincidence that the founder of DataCoup is an ex-bond trader[2]. [1] http://www.adexchanger.com/Agency_Trading_White_Paper.pdf http://www.adexchanger.com/Agency_Trading_White_Paper.pdf [2] https://datacoup.com/docs#about https://datacoup.com/docs#about