Amassed Insights

Amassed Insights #1: Cyber Sins

Insights amassed recently in the data & investing industries

Jordan Hauer

Jordan Hauer

— 9 min read
The rise and fall of a tech startup, tying into the story of Cybersyn's rapid growth and sudden shutdown
AI: "It captures the rise and fall of a tech startup, tying into the story of Cybersyn's rapid growth and sudden shutdown"

Regularly Amassing Insights

I have been scouring the world for insights about the alternative data industry for more than a decade now. Early on, sourcing new data while tracking impactful data/investing industry news & updates became untenably tedious, complex & unwieldy. At the time, due to humanity's increasing ability & propensity to track behaviors digitally, a cambrian explosion occurred in the avenues for sourcing, utilizing & monetizing valuable data. For that reason, I decided to embark on the neverending journey to map out, systematize, track, research, and engage with as many relevant industry stakeholders and content channels as possible. Now that I've painstakingly refined this process for so long, I'm publishing a subset of the most impactful, timely data/investing (a.k.a. "Alternative Data") industry announcements, news, events & updates. This is the first in a monthly (for now) series, featuring:

  • Questions, Observations, Trends & (hopefully, eventually) Conclusions
  • Featured Content, such as events to meet me at or data product announcements
  • New or Updated Data Providers & their Data Products
  • New Data Requests or Preferences & Data Buyer Profiles
  • Relevant Content, such as impactful, recent news articles or upcoming events

I'd love for these insights to spur interactions between industry participants. For a direct introduction to an entity you find here, email me or contact us here.

Almost all of the following information (and a whole lot more) appears in our comprehensive web platform, Insights. You'll see the full details if you're signed up and logged in. But because I don't believe in forcing everyone to utilize yet another online platform, I highlight the major developments here, and offer subscribers multiple options to consume this content:

  • direct through the source material, such as attachments, websites or articles
  • through the custom-built, curated & enriched Insights Platform
  • through embedded Airtable bases, enabling seamless filtering & sorting
    • through CSV exports of these bases
    • thankfully, these bases are dynamic and constantly updated, always displaying the most recent information
    • unfortunately, this can lead to mismatches between the statistics in this static post and the information shown in the dynamic base

Cybersyn's Cyber Sins

Cybersyn, a startup founded in 2022 by the former head of data science at Coatue that blasted on the scene in 2023, raising a $63M seed round, has flamed out quickly. Considering the size of the seed round and how much control their biggest backer, Snowflake, seemed to wield, I can't say I'm surprised or even upset by the go-big or go-home mindset. The CEO, Alex Izydorcyk, made it clear this was not just his decision, saying the "business situation has changed beyond the control of our management team, and our board has made the decision to wind down." He explains that he anticipates Cybersyn's Public Domain datasets to be purchased by Snowflake and that they will "ensure a smooth handover with no disruption to the data feeds you rely on."
I firmly believe the main idea (as I understand it from hearing Alex on Mark Fleming-William's excellent The Alternative Data Podcast) of this failed venture is still as valid & promising as ever: a private-equity-type vehicle to invest in unique data assets and to jumpstart the monetization of those data assets to generate returns from them. However, it's still quite early in the inevitable revolution in accurately valuing data assets & effectively monetizing them. In an effort to jumpstart our collective progress towards these goals, I'll soon be publishing a deep dive into strategies for pricing & valuing datasets, as well as guides on effectively monetizing data in the asset management industry.

Upcoming Events I'll Be At

Come and chat data with me!

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Will Ferrell saying "So, drinks after this"

Data Providers & Products

If any of the following data providers piques your interest for any reason, respond and I'll share additional materials & directly introduce you, if necessary.

Moojing: Chinese E-commerce & Social Activity (Data Profile)

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  • Summary: The largest dataset of Chinese eCommerce transactions, capturing 97% of the total GMV + includes the amount of volume purchased down to individual brand / SKU-level. Data is gathered directly from 9B+ pages per month and anomalies/biases are carefully adjusted/cleaned.
  • Coverage: Crawls every single page in the major eCommerce sites in China, including PDD, BABA, JD, TMALL, Taobao, Kaola, Suning. Covers 1M+ consumer brands & tracks 10B+ daily GMV
  • Main Data Category: Transactional - Email Receipts & eCommerce/Online
  • Historical Date Range: 8+ Years
  • Point-in-time Data: Yes
  • Frequency: Daily
  • Ticker Mapping: Yes, across 25 global stock exchanges including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, NASDAQ, etc.
Get Introduced to Moojing

12 New Data Providers & 160 Updated Data Providers

Additional details about these Providers

New or Updated Data Products

M&A + Funding

Data Requests by Data Buyers

If any request reasonably matches with a data product you're aware of, respond and I'll directly introduce you, if appropriate.

Global Alternative Data Sources for Sophisticated Macro Investors

  • Requirements:
    • Look at the big picture of the world and the world's economies
      • Focusing on the major economies, such as the G10
    • Need real-time/high-frequency & forward-looking estimates of the public economic data that is collected and published by governments and NGOs
      • Inflation/growth estimates by forecasting GDP, PMI, CPI & consumer spending statistics
      • The select alternative datasets that government agencies have started utilizing within their own analysis
    • Fund flows are a key ingredient
    • 10+ years of history preferred
    • Point-in-time accuracy required
  • Data Categories In Scope:

For some help in sourcing data for your unique requirements:

Submit Your Data Requests & Preferences

Industry News

96 New Articles or Blog Posts

34 articles related to Alternative Data and featuring 19 of them, including:

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary annual benchmark review of employment data suggests that there were 818,000 fewer jobs in March of this year than were initially reported.
Every year, the BLS conducts a revision to the data from its monthly survey of businesses’ payrolls, then benchmarks the March employment level to those measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program.
The preliminary data marks the largest downward revision since 2009 and shows that the labor market wasn’t quite as red hot as initially thought. However, job growth was still historically strong."

How much can we really trust government statistics when they're released, and how do anticipated future revisions affect the economy & the markets in the short/long term?

"Beijing on Tuesday unveiled a plan to set up a new national-level government office to oversee the security of all state-owned data and ensure that information is shared between government agencies.
The data guardian would keep an eye on China’s big internet companies, the digital economy and personal data"

Can the US federal government learn something from more centralized/socialized governments like China on the best ways to govern people's data rights? Or will we continue diving deeper into a complicated patchwork of state-governed data regulations?

Additional details from these Articles

Relevant Events

Additional details about these Events

51 New Events and 150 Updated Events

11 Featured New Events, including:

Basic information about these Events

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