Huge Update. Part 2 — Data Marketplace

Mike Audi

Mar 30, 2022

We always state that the opportunity in user data is reaching the small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), not large enterprises. Before we jump into our exciting progress and vision for our data marketplace, I want to explain why.

Every business in the world needs data. Not some. All of them. Facebook claims 200 million SMBs use their product. Yet, you would struggle to identify 10,000 businesses truly using data — 0.005% of the market.

A reasonable reaction is... "okay, but why not start with the 10k?" These are enterprise customers and large, long-tail contracts. I know it's alluring.

It's a trap, so many startups fall into; I've been there.

You have no leverage. The deals take forever to close. They are always seemingly "prove it" deals where you have to build a bunch of custom stuff, with all the real revenue backloaded. Specifically, regarding user data, they push for more sensitive information at lower margins, severely limiting the user pool. Because, in their minds, why pay for something they can take? You never get to the promised land.

If the opportunity is SMBs, build the product SMBs need, get the SMBs.

You'll pick up enterprise customers anyways if your product is that much better, without living and dying with each contract.

Enough background; what are we building?!

Spotify for data. I don't know if there's an easier way to say it.

The difficulty in targeting SMBs (and why no one is doing it) is that they know they need data, but that's about as deep as it goes.

Yes, there is a struggle to turn data into action, and yes, they don't have the engineering teams, budgets, or scale needed for the typical data pipeline. But the crux of the problem is much simpler. They don't know what to do with data or what's even feasible.

It's not all too different from the same challenge Spotify or Netflix faces. When you have near infinite music instantly at your fingertips, what song do you play, then what comes next?

Discovery is the key. Instead of prescribing an answer, they help you find what you're looking for, even if you don't know where to start or what to ask.

We're compiling the world's largest catalog of actionable insights. You can think of an insight simply as a graph. We remove the complexity of data, distilling it down to an answer to a question. Because at the end of the day, that's all anyone wants.

Don't be mistaken. It's not all just charts and graphs. An answer can come in many forms. For example, a company could connect its own ML model to our API.

When we say the world's largest catalog, we're targeting upward of ten million insights upon public launch.

By sourcing data straight from users, data is no longer siloed to only your business. You can see how your customers interact with other companies and brands. Pinpoint where you're losing customers or identify new market opportunities. See why your competition's emails are outperforming yours. Or, benchmark your ad campaign against the best in the world. The world's data instantly at your fingertips.

Unlimited access. $10 a month.

Enterprise data companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on this type of data. We're making it available to and usable by every business on the planet.

And, just like Spotify, under the covers, each time a business uses an insight, the users get paid.

And yes, even at $10 per month, it's highly profitable. Our unique decentralized architecture enables massive margins (target 80%+) rarely seen in marketplaces.

Keep in the back of your mind that this is just the beginning. Becoming THE user data ownership platform opens up so many follow-on opportunities for monetization that it will make your head spin. We need to stay focused and acquire market share. Fast.

So where are we at?!

Last week we opened up a pilot program capped at 100 companies to iterate on this exact product.

Learning from our past, we're not going loud…yet. We need a manageably-sized (not 100,000 😉) beta group to test against and learn from. The pilot program will span roughly 90 days, with the first 30 days focused on learning from the cohort, the second 30 on interacting with the product, and the third on refinement.

If you're a business owner/leader interested in using our insights product, please sign up. Hell, if you're a data-driven investor, I could see how you might want clean, independent data on your portfolio, markets, and deal flow. Feel free to jump on in; it's already filling up fast.

The best way to help is to tell someone you know who would benefit from our insights to sign up :).

Mike Audi
Founder & CEO
mike@mytiki.com