The Exchanges

Q don't know what that is, but I'm going to make that a hundred. I don't know what I need to do, but that's going to go up. Uh, it says founded headquarters, key, key stats, estimated revenue, uh, and then top competitors, which you guys nailed short stack, Agorapost, easy promos strata. Uh, this is, this is fascinating actually. Um, really interesting. Where are you pulling the revenue data from?

A So, um, the way that we get data is in your daily snapshot every day. We're going to ask you one simple question. Um, we, and it would be something as simple as, Hey, rate the CEO, or you're following the company. So, you know, it, um, rate the CEO, Hey, is there revenue, um, above or below this number? Or we might ask you, um, which of these two is closer to the, to, to being correct. Um, And so it's a bunch of user input. This is just a classic crowdsourced model where we're using the wisdom of crowds to, to create better data. In fact, one of our main goals this year, which we've actually already achieved is what we call the Owler challenge. And we're saying, Hey, pick five private companies that, you know, go, um, pull the data off of Hoover's, which has done a Bradstreet data and pull the data off of our. And see who wins. We're kicking their butts. Um, our crowd is, is just far more powerful than the few employees they can, you know, hire to try to call every couple of years and try to verify this.

AI assessment note: “This is just a classic crowdsourced model where we're using the wisdom of crowds”

Q I had our first conversation that was at nathanlacka.com forward slash the top 73 or episode 73. You talked about the sale to Salesforce for one hundred and seventy five million bucks. You talked about you were just launching Owler, but I mean, barely starting. So give us an update over the last 12 months. Where is Owler now? And why don't you start by telling everyone what it does?

A Sure. Owler is a, is a competitive intelligence platform. Like you explained, we've got almost 700,000 active business professionals using the platform, uh, as you mentioned that, you know, help outsmart their competition. You know, sales folks, for example, will use it to track their existing customers, their prospects, their partners, and of course their competitors. Uh, we call this that your, you know, competitive, uh, you know, um, graph, if you will. Um, and, uh, um, you also use it to get kind of weekly what we call showdowns, which show you versus your competition. Something that gets people really, uh, really excited. Um, and then last week we have another product called instant insights, which will give you kind of an in-depth look at events like fundings, acquisitions, leadership changes. But the main thing that our users use is a daily snapshot, which is, uh, uh, a bunch of news blog posts, And insights around exactly what's happening in your competitive graph.

AI assessment note: “Owler is a, is a competitive intelligence platform. Like you explained, we've got almost 700,000”

Q Got it. And what is the, so it's free right now. So you don't, you're not making any money yet, right?

A Um, well, no, actually, that's not true. We make all of our money selling the data off of the back end. Um, you know, this is a crowdsource model, just like Jigsaw. We're just going after a different set of data. And, um, so for us, we make our money selling this data to, you know, companies that need it in bulk, exactly like Jigsaw did. We sell our data off of our API. I kind of call this the Tom Sawyer effect. We get a bunch of people to come to our website and, and paint the picket fence for us. You know, of course they get a free service. That's very valuable for them. And of course we get data from them that we can sell and that's how we make, make money.

AI assessment note: “no, actually, that's not true. We make all of our money selling the data”

Q And how are you, are you automatic? Like I go to your website at first things it says is who do you want to track, right? What competitor do you want to track? Are you then just using kind of website data or things that you can scrape online to figure out who my competitors are, or I need to build that list manually?

A Well, when you, when the user signs up, the first thing we ask is, what's your company? And we actually show you what our community believes are your most competitive companies. You get to move that around, and that's actually one of the most important inputs we get. It's what helps us really hone in on, ah, on a competitive set. Um, and then of course we'll also, you know, prompt you to say, well, you know, who are your partners? Who are your customers? If you're a purchaser, you know, who are your vendors? You know, C level, um, you know, VP level. And of course, you know, everyone, you know, is interested in tracking who are my competitors, what's going on with them. It's something that most of us are a little too lazy to do on a regular basis. We do this, we just make it very, very easy, but most of the data is input by users. Uh, we do do some crawling and scraping, but mostly it's around the user input.

AI assessment note: “We do do some crawling and scraping, but mostly it's around the user input.”

Q Last, last question before getting my, uh, the, the famous five here, Jim, uh, Ryan Holmes sends you a cease and desist and says, Jim, we're trying to raise capital. You have our funding number on here or our revenue number totally wrong, and it's screwing us up. We're going to sue you if you don't take our data down. How do you respond?

A Um, it's really simple. We're using publicly available data and we're representing what we can find. So we just say, here, you can go right in and fix it. Um, if the data is not correct, fix it. Um, so what we're dealing with is every single thing on here is either publicly available data or, um, it's an estimate by our crowd. Um, we've had a couple of companies, not, you know, Ryan knows much better, but smaller companies, like we don't want to be on here. And if you're a registered business, we have every legal right to do it. There is one field that we will take off if someone requests and that's their logo. Um, and then we just put in a, you know, a generic one that says this company, you know, will not authorize use of its logo, but that's happened. Like I think three companies have not allowed us to use their logo. That is something that is trademarked. And, you know, every other thing though, there is anyone who understands anything about data knows that this is all absolutely legal data.

AI assessment note: “So we just say, here, you can go right in and fix it.”

Q on a crowd to update these numbers on private data like we just saw with Hootsuite at 5.4 billion. Is there like a SLA attached to every sale of the data like a service thing that says, you know, these are accurate within this many percentage points that you guarantee it? And if not, why are people willing to pay that price without knowing if it is accurate or not?

A Um, so first of all, for US companies, um, that, that are private, they do not have to, um, disclose their revenue. Um, Europe is different. Several European countries require private companies to disclose their revenue, which is interesting. Um, so everything that's out there is an estimate. So let's take down a Bradstreet, which is, you know, your listeners would, you know, right now they certainly have the biggest market share. Um, the good news is all we have to do is just be demonstrably better than down on Bradstreet. So no, there's no such thing as an SLA. We're very, very clear to our buyers that this data is an estimate. Um, there is no way to, unless you're, you're getting illegal, um, insider information, then it can only be an estimate. Our goal is we just want to have the best estimates in existence by, you know, um, you know, A clear measure over the competition. And right now that would be done on Broad Street.

AI assessment note: “So no, there's no such thing as an SLA. We're very, very clear”

Q Why is it, Jim, why does it have to be illegal to have that information? Like if you talk to a CEO at a private company and you get them to share the revenue number, that's not illegal, is it?

A Yeah, I think it's a strong term, but what would happen is companies that do not want to disclose, um, which is you, the norm, you know, sometimes private company CEOs will talk about their revenue, but it's more likely that they didn't. And oftentimes they require their, um, employees to sign, uh, non-disclosure agreements or confidentiality agreements. And, you know, we certainly do not want to get in the business of, you know, encouraging anyone to break those. That's why it's a vote. And, you know, when we get enough When we get enough people voting on this data, it's all, you know, it goes into a big vote, so no one can come in and just say, this is the revenue. Now, we can set it when we do find places. We do use algorithms to look at news and listen to see if CEOs are talking about revenue.

AI assessment note: “they require their, um, employees to sign, uh, non-disclosure agreements”

Q I was going to say, so you raised that nineteen million bucks, uh, you're investing it, investing, investing it. Give us a sense that you've turned the revenue on. Can you, can you maybe tell us about what's the average, you know, when someone says, Hey, Jim, I want your data. What are they paying you? What was maybe like the last deal? If you want to use an example.

A Uh, we're, We, we just, um, uh, signed a deal for, you know, a 100,000 dollar plus. I mean, we're like, we go out there and do big licensing deals with partners. That, that deal's not public yet, so I can't talk about it, but that's the size of deal that we start, you know, start doing. We, we go take our entire data set. What'll be really interesting to your, to your listeners, Nathan, is that Competitive data has never existed, and this competitive graph is really fascinating. Like, here's a couple of examples of how, um, people use it. You can go in and take a list of all of your existing companies that are customers of yours and put it into our system, and we will spit out, based on competitive proximity, who are the companies that are most likely to buy from you in the future based on competitive proximity. This, this data has never existed before. Getting your listeners know that if they ever wanted to really, you know, figure out who does a company compete with, it was a do-it-yourself exercise. This is the The way we're really changing the rules on it, um, you know, again, using the crowd.

AI assessment note: “We just signed a deal for, you know, a 100,000 dollar plus.”

Q Oh, all the analysts. Yeah, totally. No, it makes great sense, Jim. Uh, what, what is the, so you just turned on kind of the revenue kind of spigot. It sounds like a few months ago. What's your guys' goal in 2016 in terms of revenue number to hit?

A Um, you know, it's a little early to say, um, what's much more important to us is our next order of math. We went, we, the last time we talked, we had, um, you know, oh gosh, maybe a cut, 10,000 active users. Um, we ended 2015 with a little over a 100,000 active users. We're going to 10 x again that this year to a million. We'll end the year at over a million active users. Our next stop is ten million. That's one 10th the size of LinkedIn. And when, you know, having, you know, proving our contribution model, so we get all of our, you know, data, you know, so that's the best possible data out there, or at least it's the, you know, best in existence. Then we can really focus on, on rev, but, you know, I'm imagining we're going to do, you know, you know, anywhere between three and five million in revenue and in 26, in 2017.

AI assessment note: “it's a little early to say, um, what's much more important to us”