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Michael Babineau

Co-founder & CEO, Second Measure · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Michael Babineau is the co-founder and CEO of Second Measure, a company that analyzes credit card transactions to provide insights into consumer behavior. Second Measure participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch.

13statements → 9claims → 2claims resolved → 4.08/5average certainty → 1.62/5average debate potential → 2said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

9 assertions · 3 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 6 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 Michael 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

Assertion Supported
Stitch Fix did not cannibalize department store spending, Second Measure found
“And what we found is that Stitch Fix had no impact on department store spend. Right? People just started spending more on clothes. Period.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 21:24 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Everything Michael Babineau said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lapsed Amazon Prime subscribers continue spending more than they did before subscribing
“People who became an Amazon Prime subscriber, even if they lapse, right, even if they are no longer a subscriber they're still spending more on Amazon after than they did before.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 25:50 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Most hedge funds operate without any in-house coders, Michael Babineau says
“In reality most most hedge funds have a handful of analysts and just some back office support, right? They don't have any coders in house.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 2:04 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Investors generally lack the technical skills to process messy credit card data
“Credit card transaction data is, it's a messy and, like, there, it's a messy data set with unstructured data problems baked into it. And the skill sets of investors, even the more technical ones those tend to lean more towards, like, time series analysis as op…”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 9:18 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Most Bay Area venture capital firms are Second Measure customers, Babineau claims
“And now most most of the VCs here in the Bay Area, they are our customers, you know”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 12:32 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Stitch Fix did not cannibalize department store spending, Second Measure found
“And what we found is that Stitch Fix had no impact on department store spend. Right? People just started spending more on clothes. Period.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 21:24 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Peloton monthly active members have surpassed SoulCycle riders, Second Measure data shows
“I mean, the short version is that Peloton has now surpassed SoulCycle in terms of, like, the number of active Peloton members, right, and this is based on a spending based on spending behavior. Active Peloton members on a monthly basis have surpassed the numbe…”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 23:52 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Data science tools can be taught on the job, but math cannot
“It's our view that if you come in with that, that strong that strong, like, you know, mathy foundation, that learning the tools, like, the tools can be taught, right? We can, like, we're happy to help to help people get onboarded with, like, using Python. Like…”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 30:56 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Babineau: Data scientists' biggest mistake is assuming data is clean and perfect
“I'd say the, like, the number one mistake that people make is that they you know, they assume too much of the data. They assume the data's perfect, right?”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 33:57 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Second Measure sees 1B unique descriptions across 50B+ transactions
“So within our data set we have So we're looking at like, 50 plus billion transactions. We have one billion unique transaction descriptions.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 38:13 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Raw credit card data contains three million different transaction representations for Macy's
“So, like, Macy's alone has like three million different representations.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 38:33 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Disclosure
Second Measure acquired its first 150 clients with zero outbound sales
“We actually haven't done any outbound sales yet, right? We have a 150 clients. Every single one of them came to us through inbound, right?”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 47:24 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Babineau: Second Measure's First Customer Was a VC Who Later Invested
“So our very first customer was a VC who also ended up investing in us.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 11:37 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Babineau: Amazon revenue is increasingly reliant on Prime subscribers
“Increasingly, Amazon is looking more and more like a subscription business. Like they're increasingly reliant on Amazon Prime customers for their revenue.”
Michael Babineau May 29, 2019 ▶ 25:34 Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale · Y Combinator

The other half of the tape: Michael Babineau's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Lillian Chou 2

Every mention by year

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0112018episodes it came up in
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2018 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and May 29, 2019 41m
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