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Mark Johnson

Founder and CEO, Descartes Labs · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderinvestorexecutiveastracapitalmgmt.com ↗

Mark Johnson is the Founder and CEO of Descartes Labs. He spoke at Data Driven NYC in February 2018 regarding data and machine intelligence.

11statements → 7claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.73/5average certainty → 1.82/5average debate potential →

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 3 assertions · 2 opinions · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mark argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Johnson: $1 billion will flow into satellite infrastructure over coming years
“It turns out there is a billion dollars of investment going into satellites over the next few years.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 8:46 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)

How they sound: speaking style how? →

257 words/min while actually speaking · 75.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Mark Johnson: only 1 usable question→answer exchange on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,874 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Mark Johnson said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Johnson: Every business will need a data refinery
“Every business is going to need a data refinery.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 0:53 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Opinion
Johnson: Twitter holds an incredibly valuable but underutilized dataset
“I think Twitter is a great example where it's not that they're not doing nothing, they're not doing, they're doing some things with the data, it's just they could do a lot more. I think it's one of the most valuable data sets on the planet, but one would think…”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 6:55 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Johnson: Corporate data hoarding will diminish over the next decade
“So I think for right now most companies are going to keep their data incredibly proprietary. But I expect that to change maybe, maybe not in the next year, but certainly in the next five to 10 years.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 14:43 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Descartes Labs expects daily data ingestion to exceed 100 terabytes
“Now, recently we're putting a lot of proprietary data sets on the system also that's why we'll go from 15 terabytes a day this year to a lot more. Probably over, well over a hundred.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 15:59 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Disclosure
Cargill is an investor and client of Descartes Labs
“And, you know, Cargill now is an investor and a client.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 11:36 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Opinion
Johnson: Field-level yield is the most valuable dataset in agriculture
“When I think about the most valuable data sets you could possibly have for agriculture it's field level yield. That is, how many bushels per acre are coming out of this field?”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 18:01 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Disclosure
Space 2.0 startups are betting on commercial clients over government revenue
“If you look at the new crop of space two dot O companies, Descartes Labs, Planet, Spire companies like this, we're all betting on commercial.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 21:21 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Prediction Held up
Johnson: $1 billion will flow into satellite infrastructure over coming years
“It turns out there is a billion dollars of investment going into satellites over the next few years.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 8:46 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Descartes Labs maintains a 10-petabyte data archive
“And we have over 10 petabytes of data in the archive.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 10:34 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Supported
Johnson: DigitalGlobe still derives most of its revenue from governments
“A company like Digital Globe, most of their revenue still comes from governments.”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 21:14 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Supported
USDA corn production estimates achieve under 1% error by season end
“By the end of the season, they're less than one percent error of the total production in the United States”
Mark Johnson Mar 2, 2018 ▶ 23:38 Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Driven)

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Every Business Will Need a Data Refinery // Mark Johnson, Descartes Labs (FirstMark's Data Mar 2, 2018 17m
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