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Okay, here we go again with writing in the middle of the afternoon although I really didn’t want to do it this time. Across from me sits an english man who hasn’t gotten the memo how rude and dumb it is to take phone calls at the table while others are working. Well, for today I’m writing with a spoon of honey sitting next to me and a fresh cup of tea steaming. Todays productivity has had its ups and downs but overall the direction and goals we want to reach as a team are clearer. The past 3 weeks I would say have been useful to take a step back and really think about what we’re doing here. In particular, this means that we’ll position ourselves as a data startup more than a pure software startup. The challenge of a data startup lies in collecting a lot of the right kind of data at a good level of quality. In best case, the data is somewhat general-purpose but has many uses that make it indispensable once used. Basically, the data that we’re collecting and that we’re going to collect moving forward needs to have a match with the right type of market and the markets needs. I’ve been raving about a company that has been doing this right: CompStak. They are serving two general customer segments with two distinct value propositions:

Customer Segment 1: Broker, Appraiser, Researcher –

Brokers get to access the CompStak database by sharing their own Commercial Lease Comps and getting “points” for doing so. After sharing their own data and having it verified by an internal team at CompStak a broker gets points he can spend by first searching down to other data points and spend points to get access to the actual figure of the found comps. It’s pretty genius I have to say because having the point system ensures a few things that a data sourcing company like them (and ourselves) need:

1. Get more data – The only way it seems to get access to more data is to share more data. This will be especially challenging for us where we ask users to enter new data every 3 months. If the resource (the rest comps) are scarce and access is measured by points spent from the get-go, sitting down and entering

2. Get better data – Requiring recurring data is one thing but the problem now is how to ensure that participants not just plop in random data. CompStak has solved this issue with two measures. First off, every data point gets reviewed and can be flagged by an internal team. Secondly, other users can flag a data point as questionable. If a data point gets too many second-guesses, the user account gets blocked.

Customer Segment 2: Landlords, Investors, Lenders

I’m not 100% sure how this segment is served but it looks like they basically pay for general access without having to provide their own data. They probably don’t even create comp records themselves but need the information upstream towards their deals. From one anecdote we learned that having access to the data is crucial for raising money and making the right decision.

What I find fascinating is how the actual customer segments are diverse in their day-to-day dealings (Broker, Appraiser, Researcher, Landlords, Investors, Lenders) but all rely on the same set of data with the same type of grouping and filtering. It’s curious how a good amount of quality data can be so sought after.

What I also find noteworthy is how they focussed on getting really, really strong coverage in New York first before moving into other markets. This is a discussion we’ve had internally and seeing them following the path of focus confirms the assumption we’ve had: Get strong in one city first and be able to provide a lot of value to that geographic segment (However, we won’t say no if someone from another place wants to get on board and put in their data!)

Anyways, that’s what’s been turning me on in the past 30 hours or so. Our growth using the onboarding flow we built last month is still slow. There can be many factors that affect how and when startups join VA but we saw an immensely larger group of data flowing in when we were just using spreadsheets. While, yes, it’s possible to automate or improve a visitor flow using web forms, it seems like people like sending around spreadsheets. And if that’s what they want, we won’t say no. Instead we’ll probably just automate the import of the files on our end and it won’t take much more time on our side but we hope to get more data than in the past few weeks.

Focus & user understanding.

And finally, I’m curious what companies or products have inspired you in recent days. Post your links in the comments below!