Big Data, Keeping a Nimble and Open Mind

We live in a world of ever expanding data. Data is being generated at an exponential rate from our connected homes, connected cars and wearable technology. Every day, the global data set grows.

We live in a world of ever expanding data. Data is being generated at an exponential rate from our connected homes, connected cars and wearable technology. Every day, the global data set grows.

When Dave, Mark and I founded Vestigo Ventures, I was struck by the data quality, rate of growth and line of sight we were able to gain with analytics from Cogo Labs. The data pool has just about doubled in two years, growing larger all the time.

It is now five petabytes in size. That’s roughly equivalent to data from 200 libraries of Congress or data circulating through EBay and Spotify. This is an enormous advantage.

Some tools I’ve used to access data include Apollo, Minerva and Quake. 

It is exciting to work with accurate, real time information that can be presented in usable form within seconds. The challenge is keeping a nimble mind and considering the right questions as you develop queries to find the signals that matter most. 

Big Data without analytics can lead you down many rabbit holes if you are not careful. I find it truly fascinating to explore and engage in discussions around common data with the Vestigo team and entrepreneurs from the companies we’ve invested in. It’s clear from these discussions that data matters: It allows us to frame conversations around facts.

As data and our investment portfolio grows, our queries expand to match. All of this helps us get smarter about changes in the market. 

We seek new insights on areas of interest for future investment and look to protect our investments by keeping an eye on the queries we create. Part of our growth comes from new searches on new opportunities.

Keeping an open mind is essential. One surprise worth noting: After running studies of the retirement space for a large financial services incumbent,  we found that startups are much better at grabbing traffic than established players — particularly from millennials. As someone who spent most of my career in the retirement business, this insight forced me to rethink how the market drives decisions.

Ian Sheridan
Co-founder
Managing Director