Dec 5, 2013 · 1h 24m · mad
Panel: Big data and VCs (Accel, IA Ventures, Data Collective) // Data Driven NYC #8// Oct 2012
Matt Ocko · 38m spoken Roger Ehrenberg · 13m spoken Ping Li · 13m spoken Matt Turck · 7m spoken Carter Schoenwald · 54s spoken Charlie Oliver · 33s spoken Jeroen Janssens · 32s spoken John Lair · 17s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
At a Data Driven NYC panel hosted by Matt Turck, venture capitalists Roger Ehrenberg, Ping Li, and Matt Ocko share deep insights into big data secular trends, enterprise adoption dynamics, tech stack layers, and startup investment criteria. The investors analyze defensible moat strategies, cloud vs. on-premises deployment models, and the growing opportunities in domain-specific vertical applications.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Matt holds 9.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Matt as informed peer 2.4 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 0.9 Matt pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is Matt, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:18:50 Matt Ocko's fiery critique of EU startup regulation
Matt Ocko forcefully attacks European Union bureaucracy, calling out 'stifling blanket of regulation' and complaining about redundant bank certifications and paperwork.
Hardest push from Matt ▶ 25:48 Matt Turck challenging the panel on SMB small data valueMatt Turck explicitly brings up SMB-focused analytics companies like RJ Metrics and Castora to question if value exists across all instrumented data regardless of scale.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 26:24 Matt Ocko explaining why small data is a slippery slopeMatt Ocko reframes the host's premise on small data, explaining that without proprietary aggregated data across millions of entities, small data analytics is just another standard software package like Peachtree.
Matt holds his own ▶ 51:19 Matt Turck identifying the analytics vs application market gapMatt Turck demonstrates market awareness by asserting that the analytics tool layer is becoming overcrowded while vertical application layers remain wide open.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Matt as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Matt pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome and Panel Discussion Overview | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | The host opens with light jokes and asks where the industry sits in the hype cycle. The guests reframe the hype, explaining that big data is a 20-year secular trend rather than a short-term fad. | |
| Enterprise Adoption Dynamics and Industry Verticals | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Matt Turck asks about enterprise adoption speed and ROI metrics across verticals. Ping Li and Matt Ocko explain that enterprises understand data value well but operate under severe regulatory and reliability constraints. | |
| Evaluating Technology, Services, Content, and Small Data | 3 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Matt Turck cites specific companies (Think Big, RJ Metrics, Castora) to query small data and services. Matt Ocko forcefully rejects small data as a 'slippery slope' unless proprietary data sets are generated. | |
| Building Competitive Moats and Capitalizing on Metadata | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | The host prompts the panel on structural moats and network effects in big data. Ping Li and Matt Ocko clarify that true moats come from generating emergent metadata rather than raw data accumulation. | |
| Big Data Infrastructure, Hadoop, and Database Challenges | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Matt Turck asks if Hadoop has won and challenges the panel on database gaps. Matt Ocko details five major unresolved database engineering challenges including scale, brittleness, and federation. | |
| Analytics Tools, Vertical Applications, and Product Design | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Matt Turck notes that analytics tools appear crowded while the application layer remains wide open. Roger Ehrenberg agrees and emphasizes that user experience and design are critical missing pieces in enterprise apps. | |
| Cloud Deployment Models and Venture Funding Criteria | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The host asks standard panel closing questions regarding cloud versus on-premise deployments and venture investment criteria. The guests highlight security boundaries and founder data DNA. | |
| Audience Q&A: Tooling, Privacy, Regional Ecosystems, and Insurance | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | Matt Turck purely moderates audience Q&A questions. Matt Ocko passionately criticizes EU regulatory hurdles and bureaucracy stifling European startups. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Matt Ocko: Data Collective had six failures out of ~60 companies
“In a portfolio of roughly 60 companies We've had six fail.”
Matt Ocko: Data Collective got 2x-3x cash returns on failed investments
“In three years, in very, very high risk investing, our worst case outcome was 95% return on capital. And in the failed companies, we got two X, three X cash on cash returns.”
Ehrenberg: Enterprise sales got easier as companies created test sandboxes
“Even three years ago it was much, much harder to sell to the enterprise because it had to be right. It had to be full production ready. It really couldn't be In beta, because the stakes were so high. Now, I think a lot of companies have environments that are j…”
Ocko: Verticals where people die are aggressive buyers of big data tech
“The verticals where people die, or vast amounts of money are lost, if the right answer is not arrived at in increasingly smaller windows of time, are, in fact, the most aggressive customers for some of these technologies.”
Ping Li: Incumbent enterprise tech vendors haven't innovated in a decade
“It's such a great time to be a startup right now because the incumbents are so far behind. They have not innovated, ah, in the last decade. And any of the big data dimensions are the applications, storage, the data layers.”
Matt Ocko: Data Collective backed ZenPayroll to gut legacy incumbent ADP
“We're investors in a company called Zen Payroll, ah, and we're investors there because they demonstrated in, on a very small amount Really, of their own money, that they could gut ADP. That customers deserted ADP in droves to have essentially single click, ove…”
Ocko: Moleculo retains rights to all blinded genetic data processed
“Moleculo, they retain the rights to the blinded genetic data of every human or animal or plant that they are solving a problem for.”
Ping Li: Hadoop will be a definitive platform for big data workloads
“Hadoop I think will be a definitive platform for a lot of big data workloads.”
Matt Ocko predicts billion-dollar startups will solve core Hadoop infrastructure limits
“In each one of these, kind of, criteria, or vectors, or themes, there's a handful of billion dollar startups Ah yet to be, ah, yet to be built.”
Ping Li: The tech market does not need 10 more Hadoop infrastructure startups
“The world doesn't need You know, another 10 companies trying to solve the problems of Hadoop.”
Matt Ocko: New York City is the Saudi Arabia of design talent
“New York is, ah, is like the Saudi Arabia of design talent. Meaning, as Saudi Arabia is to oil, New York is to design talent.”
Ocko: Great design with okay tech beats great tech with poor design
“Pretty good tech with unbelievably good design actually will probably beat great tech with so-so design, and will definitely beat great tech with crappy design.”
Ehrenberg: Regulated enterprises will not buy pure cloud software
“There are a lot of places that unless you can give them an appliance, or you can load it on their servers inside their firewall, they're not going to buy it. They are not going to put their data in the cloud.”
Ping Li: Enterprise data applications are moving irreversibly to the cloud
“I do think that the trend line is towards the cloud. You know, if you look at where applications are getting launched these days and where the data resides, they're not going to pull that back into the, Four walls to do their data munging, right? They're gonna…”
Matt Ocko: Data privacy is a business opportunity, not a threat
“So I actually think privacy is not a threat. It's a business opportunity.”
Matt Ocko: Europe will rival US tech if it fixes its regulations
“Handle those three things, and Europe will easily be a rival of the U.S. In the next 20 years. In startups and tech. Don't handle them, and it stays a backwater.”
Ehrenberg: IA Ventures considers vehicle hardware startups for their data
“Even though we're really not a hardware oriented fund, we look pretty seriously at some of these companies because of the data that these devices are capturing”
Ehrenberg: Social graph data and alternative scoring can transform insurance pricing
“Using things like social graph and other, other kind of non-conventional behaviors to score somebody and to more accurately price insurance. So whether, you know, you look at things like LendUp, or Wonga, or Betfair, you know, similar, or Prosper, similar prin…”