Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

Sima is excited to share an encore episode she did with Menaka Gopinath, Lead of Social Intelligence and Communities at Ipsos, in which they sit down to discuss the use of social media in social intelligence to help answer business questions.

OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM

As the market has matured with social intelligence, there’s a lot of amazing things happening in the social intelligence realm for insights, but it’s not being leveraged as broadly it could be.

On the flip side, the people who are using social listening tools across the board in marketing and digital functions probably could be getting a lot more insight out of it.

The data is already available, but there’s so many ways to use it more strategically.

DEFINING SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE

This can be many things to many people, but from the perspective of Ipsos, it’s about leveraging the datasets for insights.

From a classic research sense, most clients are using a social listening tool and at the baseline they are listening to what people are saying about their brand, and may be listening to their core competitive set. From the purposes of Ipsos, this is not necessarily social intelligence, as much as it is social listening, which is still an important aspect of marketing.

How one uses the dataset to address a core set of business objectives from an insights perspective is at the heart of social intelligence.

SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE AND USE CASES

Some of the core areas where a lot of Ipsos’ work is done is in market understanding and category landscape.

Understanding what your category looks like can be a difficult question to answer these days, so what social data can provide from a very consumer-centric perspective is how people are talking about the “need” or the “occasion”. You don’t have to start from the perspective of brands. This is a different way of approaching market landscape work.

Cultural trends and forecasting and foresight against what is bubbling up and what is worth focusing on versus what might just be a flash in the pan is another area where Ipsos is using social intelligence a lot.

APPROACH IN MARKET ENGAGEMENT

In the context of market landscape there are different ways of approach, as Menaka explains in a high-level overview.

This is ultimately driven by what consumers are organically saying about these brands in the social conversation.

Imagery is a critical part of the analysis, and video is an emerging area in terms of the technology capabilities for analyzing, but in terms of what is done with it is gaining in importance.

Contextual research is always presented along with custom research to help provide clients with a bigger picture of what the data represents.

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Today, we’re excited to be airing an encore episode of an interview with Vivek Bhaskaran, who is the founder and CEO of QuestionPro. He's here today to share his experience bootstrapping QuestionPro.

About Vivek

Vivek grew up in India. After completing his primary education there, he left the country and moved to Russia, where he lived from 1995 to 1997. When he left Russia, he moved to the United States, and there, he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University in Utah.

Founding QuestionPro

After obtaining his Bachelor’s Degree, Vivek moved to Seattle, and he started QuestionPro in 2005.

He has never raised any capital for the business from outside investors, and he has managed to build his company up by himself, slowly, over time.

What QuestioPro does

QuestionPro started as a survey platform, and currently, it serves as both a survey platform and as an experience management platform.

Over the last couple of years, the company has turned upmarket, and Vivek has identified three different areas that have added confidence to the business:

Consumer insights and market research

Customer experience

Surveys targeted towards employees

QuestionPro started initially as a survey platform. It then expanded into offering a survey toolset, and they have now also identified three buyer patterns within their ecosystem.

Vivek shares his experience of bootstrapping back in the early days

Vivek feels that he has been lucky in business. When he built QuestionPro, back in 2005, the term SEO had not yet been coined. So, as a software geek/hacker, Vivek created the QuestionPro platform, and he then started looking for ways to market it. He thought that the marketing of his platform would be easy. All he would have to do would be to become “number one” on Google.

SEO is an analytical exercise

Vivek points out that SEO is not a creative exercise, and that most people don’t seem to understand that it is analytical.

Vivek does not think that SEO is the right thing for marketing purposes. He believes that SEO should fall under the category of engineering, and it should work as an analytical exercise.

Getting to #1 on Google

Vivek thought that getting to number one on Google would not be too complicated if he were to adopt a trial-and-error mindset as a scientist would. That is what he did, and it worked!

So they got traffic inbound, they started selling, and they started making money. And Vivek came to realize that his business is intrinsically extremely viral.

A viral business

Vivek realized that his company is one of the few B2B platforms with a viral index. He understood that if he could get a customer who would send out a survey to a million people, it would be a good thing for his business.

Gaining value from his product

Vivek saw that for anyone to get value from his product, they would have to send it out, either to their employees or to their customers. And that would be a benefit to his business.

Why bootstrapping QuestionPro worked

The reason that Vivek was able to bootstrap QuestionPro, in the beginning, was because he did not need a lot of money to market it. And once he got started, he was able to keep the business operation going.

Living a good life and doing new things

Vivek explains that right now, he’s living the COVID life because he is waking up each day and doing whatever he feels like doing.

He is currently launching a podcast, and he is also coming up with new ideas for products.

Execution is everything

For Vivek, having the flexibility of coming up with new ideas is vital. However, it is the actual execution of the new ideas that counts for him. So much so, that he finds the final execution of an idea to be even more important than the idea itself.

Moving to Austin, Texas

Vivek started his business in Seattle, and he lived there for about ten years. He then moved the company to the San Francisco Bay Area in California. And at the beginning of 2020, he moved the company once again, this time, to Austin, Texas.

A fantastic team!

Vivek feels super blessed because he has a fantastic team, and many people will be surprised to discover that a large part of his remote sales team is based in India.

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Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn, and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don’t forget to leave a rating and review!

Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast!

Today, Sima shares the second part of the two-part series related to her recent opening session at SampleCon. The session was titled Future-Proofing Our Industry and covered a range of different topics.

For this episode, the focus is on the implications of the capital coming into the industry, user engagement, proving the process of user engagement, and some key lessons learned by the esteemed members of the panel, both personally and professionally, related to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The panel includes Patrick Comer, the CEO and Founder of Lucid, Bob Fawson, EVP of Business Strategy for Dynata, Mario Carrasco, the Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow, and Rebecca Brooks, the Founder, and CEO of Alter Agents.

The industry 

Over the last several years and even more over the last twenty months, the amount of capital coming into the market has increased. Mergers and acquisitions have also increased, and the ecosystem appears to have expanded. New digital players are enabling more insights, and there are new buying audiences within corporations.

The opportunities available for people today

Mario feels that we are sitting on some incredible data which has been overlooked by marketers for a long time. He does not think that the digital add-in industry has come to grips with how that will impact the world. He feels that the sample industry is poised to fill many of the data gaps that will occur in a post-cookie world.

Bob does not know how anyone in the future can be successful as a sales, brand, or operations manager without also being a bit of a data scientist. He feels that we have just seen the beginning of it because data is becoming harder to get, and more people are figuring out what data scientists do, and seeing the value of it.

Patrick feels that the industry is sitting on a gold mine because, as a collective group, we have first-party data and permission to ask questions every day. What got built over the years through data insights and surveys has suddenly become interesting to many other players.

Rebecca thinks that new money, new investors, and new ideas coming into the space is excellent for the industry. She is excited about having the opportunity to do something different, build differently, and think about things differently. Something else that came out of the pandemic for her was that many systems and traditional ways of doing things got exposed to be either flawed or broken.

Urgency 

Bob feels that we have moved into a space where there is more urgency. There is money coming into the research space. There is the opportunity, so we need to start treating the people who fuel our industry like human beings.

Staying nimble

Rebecca feels that companies holding onto the way things were or who try to put things back into the box will fail. Business leaders need to be nimble, open, and adaptive.

Machine learning

Bob thinks that we, as an industry, need to move towards machine learning. He feels that the new capital coming into the industry will facilitate that.

Res tech

Patrick feels that res tech plays beautifully into the direction in which things are moving. It all comes down to us holding our own in an environment where we are up against mar tech and ad tech. We need to attract talent and capital to the industry.

The value of res tech

The value of res tech is allowing people who do not understand our industry to feel like they do.

Supply

Supply is a hot topic right now because there appears to be a shortage of it. Investments scaled back when the pandemic started, and everyone resorted to purchasing on the various exchanges out there.

Helping

Rebecca’s approach to the supply problem is to come at it from the angle of looking for ways to help people.

Candid

At Alter Agents, they are candid with their clients when talking about the issues they are having. They look for ways to create checks and systems to help their providers and then share that information to help them clean things up.

Overcoming the supply problem

A lot more transparency is required in the industry to overcome the problem of supply. Today, it is hard to find consumers who do not mind the process as it used to be before, so we need to expand the aperture and improve the surveys.

A good product

As a research agency, you need to have a good product and a good user experience to get samples and meet your revenue targets.

What the panel members learned from Covid-19, professionally or personally, to create long-lasting change in their lives

Rebecca

Rebecca learned to question everything that she and her company are doing. She no longer assumes that the way things get done is the right way.

Mario

As a leader, Mario has changed how he interacts with his staff. He learned the importance of getting to know them and asking how they and their families are doing.

Bob

Bob feels as if he has had a year-and-a-half of forced meditation. It is a gift he feels lucky to have had. He learned a lot and enjoyed having the opportunity to live a richer life, reach out to his colleagues, and empathize with them.

Patrick

Patrick learned that as a leader, he cannot always hold everything together. He discovered how to be more human and vulnerable. He also learned to trust and rely on his colleagues more.

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Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast!

Today, Sima shares the first part of a two-part series she created from the session she moderated at SampleCon, which took place in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. The session was titled Future-Proofing Our Industry and covered topics that included talent topics related to how people will return to work, supply topics, and market dynamics.

The panel includes Patrick Comer, the CEO and Founder of Lucid, Bob Fawson, EVP of Business Strategy for Dynata, Mario Carrasco, the Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow, and Rebecca Brooks, the Founder, and CEO of Alter Agents.

What work looks like for the next six to twelve months

Rebecca:

Alter Agents had an easy transition to working full-time remotely during the pandemic. Their staff also doubled during that time. They decided to allow their lease to lapse at the end of June 2021 and keep on working remotely. It has been challenging not to have the usual opportunities to interact and chat with colleagues. So Rebecca has scheduled time to meet with everybody one-on-one, once a month, to keep connected and talk about business or personal matters.

Overall, her staff is happy and working better than ever. Working from home has released them from some of the stress they were experiencing from being at work. They now communicate with one another fluidly via Slack.

Rebecca’s primary concern is upholding the company values and maintaining its culture.

Bob:

Bob feels a little concerned about onboarding and helping new team members find mentors and learn how to work in a professional environment. They have been pursuing a hybrid model, which was a shift for their company. Bob is not sure that anyone knows what their preference will be six months from now, but he is looking forward to that evolution.

Bob has enjoyed seeing how resilient people are. He hopes to end up with a little more balance between work and non-work life.

Mario:

When ThinkNow was founded back in 2010, working from home was a core tenet. They wanted to be a cloud-first company.

Their leadership works from their headquarters in Los Angeles, and they have sales staff around the country, project management teams in India, and development teams in Latin America. The hardest part of the pandemic was finding themselves unable to see their overseas employees at their annual or bi-annual gatherings. Although technology has helped, they still miss getting together in person and interacting.

They have taken the approach of opening their office and letting people come in when they want to. So far, that has been working well. About 70% of the employees go in two to three times a week, and the rest go every day.

They are looking at people from a holistic perspective, rather than only looking at them only from a work lens, to address some of the mental wear and tear after the pandemic.

Patrick:

Lucid is a global company, so they are constantly aware that the pandemic affects different parts of the world differently, and it is not over yet.

They have done their best to live up to their core value of compassion. The team went out of its way to offer help to Indian people and their families and assist them in staying connected and doing business. Patrick remembers having to remind their team in India that they could have extra days off if they or their families were sick.

Sharing an experience, and knowing that we are all innately very human at this time, has made Patrick a more empathetic person, and hopefully a more compassionate person too.

Connecting people

Bob

It was supportive of Bob’s company culture to see the offices in Europe or the Philippines take on the work that others could not. That connected people across cultures and across the legacy companies that make up Dynata. It has been a catalyst for a lot of expression of good within the company.

Moving forward 

Moving forward needs to be an organic process.

The labor market

The labor market is more competitive than ever right now. One of Dynata’s key moves was deciding to move out of a geographic focus on labor and using a nationwide tier. In the middle of Covid, they leveled up many people’s salaries to have a competitive salary rate for the country because geography no longer matters.

Diversity and inclusion

Mario’s company does not do diversity and inclusion. ThinkNow is a mission-based company, however. Their mission is to ensure that historically overlooked voices get represented in research from either a sample or a full-service perspective. Having that clear mission has helped them attract and retain diverse talent.

A turning point

Rebecca’s company experienced an internal turning point after the murder of George Floyd. It prompted them to reconsider their role. So they gave everyone in the company $1,000 to put towards any charity. That spawned a JEDI (Justice Equality Diversity and Inclusion) Team in the company. The members decided to find the best way to ask questions about ethnicity and gender and ensure they reach diverse audiences. Beyond that, the company also took the initiative to play a more proactive role in diversifying its staff. Part of the JEDI mission is to keep on looking for things that the company can do better. As a company, they are doing their best to look inwards and fix themselves.

A catalyst

The murder of George Floyd was a catalyst for Dynata to have internal dialogues across cultures and countries, become more intentional about what they wanted to do inside the company, and have the focus and determination to execute their plans. They even brought in experts to moderate their dialogues.

Sampling

Most sampling gets done in a one-size-fits-all way. The whole industry can aim to be more of a force for good by becoming more proactive and empathetic, rethinking how to do sampling, and providing better representational data.

Several opportunities

The sample industry can change how their customers think about everything from gender to ethnicity to education by changing and reframing their profiling questions.

Defining the profiling

We have the opportunity right now to define the profiling used by this country and others to look at who all the people are and how to engage with them.

Insights In Color

Insights In Color has released standards and demographic questions for screeners to download.

Now is the time

The pandemic has changed how we live our lives and consume products. If we are to make more inclusive updates, we have to do it now. Because as we move out of the pandemic, we have the unique opportunity to be more inclusive as an industry and update how we ask questions.

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SampleCon

Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Sima is excited to have Mike Stevens, the Founder of Insight Platforms, as her guest for today’s show.  Mike is joining Sima today to talk about his company, Insight Platforms, and discuss the changes happening in the data and insights space.

About Insight Platforms

Insight Platforms was originated as a directory of platforms for insights, software, and data tools, across the spectrum of market research, UX research, CX research, and analytics.

The Genesis of Insight Platforms

Mike has always worked in the intersection between insight, marketing strategy, and technology. The genesis of Insight Platforms was Mike’s consulting business, where he did lots of advisory work around digital transformation. A surprising number of new startups were happening in that space, so he built a directory.

Mike’s background

In the late 1990s, Mike started his career working in a niche boutique marketing strategy consulting business, helping people create strategies for getting into new markets. He worked for several other consultancies after that. He then spent a few years working with a Canadian software business formerly known as Vision Critical and later rebranded to Alida. After leaving that company a few years ago, he set up on his own as an independent consultant.

Pressure

Enterprise insight market research teams have been under various kinds of pressures. They have been pressured to work faster, be more agile, and have more influence, and there has also been a gradual erosion of who owns the knowledge about the customers.

A data science component

Much of Mike’s initial client base were teams looking to upskill, harness technology, change the skills mix in their teams, and bring a data science component into their primary research skill base. They also wanted to adapt their operating models to be continuous providers of data and insights.

Three sides to the market

There are three sides to the market: They are enterprise buyers, service providers and agencies, and technology providers with whom agencies and enterprise clients will have relationships.

The changing landscape

Technology companies need help with their go-to-market strategies and expansion. Agencies also need help with figuring out what their likely proposition will be within the changing landscape. That creates fertile ground for strategy consulting, which is both interesting and rewarding.

Embracing change

Mike enjoys working with teams who are keen to embrace change and want genuine help to get there.

The new insight model

Although there is a lot of fear and discomfort in any rapidly-changing market, things are starting to shape up right now in the area of new insight models. There are a lot of opportunities available for those who want them.

Abundance

We are generating an abundance of data currently across many mechanisms, consumer groups, and locations. As a result, some of the challenges in this exponential age will be about processing abundance rather than scarcity.

New data sources

There are currently many new and different types of data sources. The various starting points will result in different takes on the data and insights business.

An interesting trend

A trend is that more people are getting more hands-on with research and insights data. A lot of decision-making is currently due to customer-driven data.

A layered approach

The craft of understanding methodology and putting data into the correct perspective has now become one layer within a multi-layered approach to analyzing data.

An evolutionary process

The data industry is undergoing an evolutionary process. The different layers should become more clarified over the next ten to fifteen years.

Different categories

Mike distilled the complexity that he saw initially into about thirty different categories of software and data tools. It became apparent to him, however, that that was insufficient for the breadth and complexity of the data, and people also needed a more granular system. So Insight Platforms now has 350 different categories.

Insight Platforms

Insight Platforms is currently doing a lot of work in language processing. They are also busy with customer experience analytics tools, which cover digital behavior and an analysis of what people are saying in their feedback to call centers and reviews. They are building tools to monitor the main themes, topics, and sentiments over time.

UX research

There has recently been an explosion of research management and research repository tools for UX research.

Automated testing solutions 

The adoption of automated testing solutions is still relatively in its infancy. Some big companies, like Pepsi, have automated much of their testing. But many companies are still edging their way towards more efficient and automated ways of doing things and have a long way to go.

Three pillars

There are three pillars to how Mike’s business operates. They are the directory business, events, and learning.

The learning pillar

Their ambition with the learning pillar is to build it out to have a good selection of highly specialized courses available for the digital insights business, on LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, or Coursera.

Trackers

Mike has always been amazed at how much money and how much budget share gets spent on trackers. He has been horrified at the lack of meaningful movement from quarter to quarter in some ways that trackers got set up. However, he does see a future in continuous data and insight into brand performance.

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Welcome to Part Two of an exciting two-part series on the future of work. Today, Sima continues her conversation with Kelly Monahan, the Thought Leadership Research Principal Director at Accenture Research. In this episode, Kelly and Sima discuss the different models that companies are considering, to bring people back into the office, create hybrid models, or go completely remote.

Going back to the traditional model

Some employers think they might encourage their employees to go back to the traditional model by compensating them with higher pay. Others are considering paying their employees less if they do not return to the office.

A rational economic move

Incentivizing people to work in less than preferred conditions was a rational economic move that was popular in the late 1970s. Henry Ford was a master of that tactic.

In the short term

In the short term, there will be a segment prepared to work in terms of an incentive to maintain an old paradigm.

In the long run

In the long run, however, it will not work. Incentivizing people to work in less than preferred conditions is a dangerous strategy because once the financial incentive reaches a certain amount, people’s motivation for work drops dramatically. They will start seeking out situations where they feel dignified and can have meaningful engagements with their coworkers.

The leadership experience

It is all about the leadership experience. Under poor leadership, people will leave eventually, regardless of how much they earn, because it compromises their ability to be human.

Industrial and organizational psychology

Kelly has been studying the future of work for the last seven years. It frustrates her to see how little industrial and organizational psychology and behavioral science gets brought into leadership decision-making and boardrooms.

Understanding more 

Kelly feels that if we understood more about how people behave, what incentivizes them, and what matters to them, we would have very different organizations today.

An old model

Our philosophical assumptions in the business realm have not become updated. The focus in MBA business administration and how people get taught to lead in organizations is based on four principles: planning, organizing, directing, and leading resources. That is an old model that no longer works today.

In the past

Even in the past, those four principles did not create an ideal model. The labor strikes back in the 1920s and 1930s prove that. The government outlawed Frederick Taylor’s way of doing business because it was considered a dehumanized method. Yet, today, our MBA programs are still anchored in that method.

New leaders

Some new leaders are doing things very differently from what they have inherited and learned. They have decided to work more humanly, even though it becomes more difficult as a business scales.

For a business to scale

The further you get from your employee population, the harder it is to have human kindness, compassion, and dignity because those qualities become transactional for a business to scale.

The question we need to ask

In the future of work, we need to ask ourselves what our success metric will be.

A new leadership playbook

In the future of the digital economy, hypergrowth, innovation, creativity, and creating environments where people can do things differently will scale. That will require a new leadership playbook.

The digital economy

A digital economy requires a complete change in the skill sets that people have. So we need to create long runways in our organizations to do that without leaving anyone behind.

Creating value

In today’s digital economy, people and organizations need to be as intelligent as possible to create value. To get to intelligence, organizations will have to invest in research and development, innovation, and upskilling programs.

Reframing education systems

Children should learn how to be curious. They also need to learn to be okay with failing and how to bounce back with new ideas.

Balance

The transparency and visibility of digital platforms create more balance in terms of corporate and employee engagement.

What leaders should think about

When it comes to the future of work, leaders should think about choice and flexibility and what they look like and mean. Leaders should also think about creating the right environment, having the right resources for people to learn and upskill to digital skill-sets, and how to use technology to bring more dignity to people’s jobs. To do that, leaders will need to develop more kindness and compassion in the way they lead.

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Welcome to the first part of an exciting two-part series on the future of work. Sima is happy to have Kelly Monahan, the Global Lead Talent Researcher/ Principle Director at Accenture, joining her as the guest for the series.

Research on the future of work

Accenture took an in-depth look at the future of work. They wanted to understand what people need and feel today. So they went out and looked at more than 9300 global workers across ten different industries and ten different countries to represent a global workforce.

Similar sentiments

They had within their data set 70% workers and 30% leadership. So they could make some comparisons. They found that most people, workers and leaders alike, had similar sentiments.

Predicting

They wanted to predict what was causing people to feel a certain way or make them want to go back on site.

How people are feeling about work

Some people were optimistic and energized, but the majority were somewhere in the middle and or negative.

Disgruntled people

A third of the people felt disgruntled. When thinking about the future of work, they were pessimistic, tired, and burned out. They experienced micro-aggressions and felt fatigued.

Going through the motions

About 30% of people said that they were simply going through the motions of life. They were feeling neither negative nor positive. They were unsure and waiting to see how the leadership would make their key decisions about people returning to work before making a true sentiment on how they feel.

Optimistic 

About 42% are thriving, optimistic, and energized.

Researchers

Researchers want to know what is going on underneath to cause those differences in sentiment.

Life enhancement

When looking at mental health scores, Accenture looks at a concept called Life Enhancement which is about whether your work is adding to your life or taking away from it.

Net Better Off

Net Better Off is a concept that determines whether or not your job is leaving you better off than most other humans in terms of dignity and money in your pocket.

Generational differences

From a generational perspective, they saw a statistically significant difference with the young people. Gen-Z is struggling the most with mental health, and they tend to be more pessimistic about their future than the other generations. Gen-Xers are also struggling with their mental health, and like Gen-Zers, are unsure about the concepts of Life Enhancement and Net Better Off.

Baby Boomers

Baby Boomers, however, tend to be pretty optimistic and have adapted well to the new world of work.

Millennials

Millennials are still fairly optimistic about work and their ability to create change and adapt to the hybrid world.

Key moments

The key moments in people’s lives tend to impact their expectations and the way they view work.

Gen-Z

Gen-Zers tend to be hungry for social connections. They feel a need to leave their parental home, grow up, learn to understand things and be mentored. They need in-person interaction to do that.

The physical world of work

Both millennials and Gen-Z are looking to experience the physical world of work.

Work as an experience Gen-Zers tend to view work as an experience, not just a transactional operation to support life. They want their work to contribute to their life. They tend to view their work and personal identities as one thing, rather than having separate professional and personal identities. So they want to see the companies they work for representing their personal values and ethics.

C-Suite companies

There has been a profound shift with C-suite leaders. CEOs now tend to feel a need to comment on societal issues.

Important issues for those who work for C-suite companies have become what a company believes in, how it helps society, and its morality, ethics, and values.

Corporations cannot hide

Corporations cannot hide any longer because they are now interacting on platforms where all their comments are visible. The separation between people’s personal and professional lives has also become less clear as a result.

Complexity

Never before has there been so much complexity for researchers around how people view and treat each other in the workplace.

Eighteen months ago

According to the data, eighteen months ago, 90% of people were still regularly working 9 to 5, on-site, with someone working remotely on the odd occasion.

Hybrid

Accenture defines hybrid as working remotely for at least 25% of the time. They found from their data sets that people ideally wanted it to be about 50%. Hybrid workers typically choose to work outside of the office for 25-75% of their working time.

The big debate around hybrid

The current big debate is around the employees’ personal choice when telling their employers how much time they want to spend working on-site versus the employers telling them when to be there. Being fair and inclusive in those situations is a challenge for those in HR because there is no playbook for them to follow.

The populations where hybrid appeals most

Millennials, baby boomers, and women in minorities appear to have embraced the hybrid model the most. Women tend to play multiple roles. So they prefer having a model where they are less likely to be penalized for doing that.

The challenge

The challenge is to create cultures, experiences, and visibility, regardless of how people are interacting.

Exciting new trends

Although some exciting new trends are emerging in technology that will make that possible, our brains are still wired for in-person interaction.

Child-care

Solving for child care is still a problem for working moms going back to work. Although CHOs are trying to get creative in figuring out ways to incentivize working moms, women are still opting out far more than men right now in the narrative around returning to work.

Planning

When planning their workforce models, researchers are currently seeing a divergence of strategies. There is no right or wrong, so Kelly advises people to vote with their feet and with what they want.

The people who feel the best

Data shows that the people who feel the best are those who work in a very balanced environment where they have the choice to be hybrid, and their on-site space is calibrated around cutting-edge technology focused on in-person interaction collaboration. Kelly feels that the companies that best support that will win.

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Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Josh Chasin, the Chief Measurability Officer of Videoamp, as her guest for the show.

Josh’s career journey

Josh is an audience measurement professional in the world of market research. He has specialized in both media research and audience measurement and has always viewed his career as living at the place where research and marketing overlap. His first job was as a number-cruncher at Arbitron while he was still in college. He then moved on to a full-time job in Arbitron’s Statistical Services department. He was also studying marketing and doing an MBA, which enabled him to get a job as Arbitron’s Manager of Market Development.

Learning from the best

Josh spent his first seven years at Arbitron gaining a solid grounding and learning sample design from some of the best people in the business. Then he spent another seven years working for their advertiser agency group in marketing, positioning their services to the buy-side users. For his last three years at Arbitron, Josh was their VP of Marketing for new ventures. That was at the time when the internet was emerging.

After leaving Arbitron

After leaving Arbitron, Josh spent a few years as an entrepreneur and then became President at Simmons for a short time.

A consulting practice

In the early 2000s, Josh owned a consulting practice for about seven years.

Comscore

Comscore was one of Josh’s consulting clients. He later became their Chief Research Officer and spent the next thirteen years doing that.

Videoamp

After leaving Comscore, Josh joined Videoamp. Videoamp lives in the ad tech ecosystem. Founded in 2014, it has become known primarily as a DSP (Demand Side Platform) that helps buy-side agencies plan, buy, execute, optimize, and measure the performance of their buys. Videoamp has recently expanded into the measurement space.

Measurement

Measurement is at the core of everything happening in advertising.

The next generation of cross-platform measurement

One of the things that led Josh to Videoamp was that he liked their vision for doing the next generation of cross-platform measurement and wanted to help.

Cross-platform measurement

The dream of advertisers is to know on an impression-by-impression basis where an impression was delivered and how it contributed to the performance of their campaign.

The goal of advertising

The goal of advertising is to shift from a mass-broadcast game to a granular one-to-one game where advertisers will know precisely where impressions are going and how they are working.

A challenge

One of the difficulties that Videoamp faces in media advertising is that heavy viewers tend to consume a disproportionate share of impressions. Their challenge is to distribute impressions to those who do not have their eyes on their screens as often.

Reaching consumers on different screens

Viewers have different tolerance levels for ad loads in streaming content versus ad loads in traditional linear content. So advertisers need to figure out how to get impressions in front of people in different places. One of the things that cross-platform enables is ways to reach consumers on different screens.

The ad spend for Facebook and Google

Currently, Facebook and Google account for between 65 and 70% of the total digital ad spend in the US. So they know everything there is to know about how the advertising is working on their platforms. However, advertisers want to understand their advertising campaigns across the platform and holistically. So it is not enough to know only about everything is that is happening inside Facebook or Google. Advertisers want to shift advertising amongst Facebook, Google, NBC, ABC, CBS, and other media channels.

Privacy

Although Facebook and Google know that people need to understand their advertising campaigns holistically, they have covenants with their users. So they have to respect the privacy of their users. The data generated on those platforms is not necessarily Facebook and Google’s to share.

Enabling advertising across platforms

Facebook and Google recognize that the whole ecosystem rises with the rising tide, so they have both been active in the WFA initiative to design systems to enable people to look at advertising across the various media platforms.

Consumer privacy

Privacy is of paramount importance to everyone in the ecosystem. So now applications have to ask if they can track you. There is an almost buried setting that defaults to off where advertisers ask if they may track you. That will impact the availability of data related to consumers, so companies in the measurement space will need to figure out how to build systems that can project up to the census level based on a sample. It will also make panels more important.

The younger generation

Research has shown that the younger generation is less concerned about issues of privacy.

Why Videoamp is different

Videoamp has all the right pieces in place at the right time. They have done a great job of meeting the needs of the buy-side. They have solid leadership and many smart people who are dedicated to a vision and are building solutions. They are also highly customer-focused and have clarity of vision around what they are building.

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Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today’s episode is a little different. Sima will be focusing on people, or founders, who are considering selling their company. In today’s episode, Sima hosts John Sipala, one of her colleagues at Oberon Securities. John is a Managing Director at Oberon Securities and has more than 25 years of experience in investment banking.

The market right now

Private equity firms want to be in the market and are looking for companies, so there is a lot of dry powder in the market right now. Many tech companies are performing very well coming out of Covid.

Selling is not simple

When the market is very active, people start thinking about selling. When talking to the founders of companies, John initially asks them why they want to sell and why they want to sell now. That tells him whether they have thought things through, whether they truly want to sell, and if they need to raise capital. Often, the founders don’t understand that selling will require them to go through several in-between steps.

Common themes for people wanting to sell

Some people want to sell their company when they feel they have brought it as far as possible. Other owners need to bring in more capital, and some are simply tired and feel ready to move onto something else.

Dialogue

Business partners should engage in a dialogue before they decide to sell, which will help them understand what others want to do and ensure they are all in lockstep when they eventually do the transaction.

A personal involvement

When John does a deal, he gets personally invested and it’s not just a transaction for him. He makes sure that he is aligned with the seller’s expectations and there is a high level of success associated with the transaction.

The role and value of an investment banker

Selling a company involves complex transactions that are often very different from any the founders have experienced before. The transactions are multifaceted, and there are many things, even beyond evaluations, that could affect them. The role of the investment banker is to ensure that all the transactions get done in the right way, from beginning to end.

Culture

Before selling, consider the culture of the buyer, what their intentions are for the business, and what your role will be after the sale.

The market

The market is important, but it is not the only driving factor. The timing of the market should not be your primary reason for selling. You have to understand the external part of the market before bringing a deal forward.

Strategy

Having a strategy for what you want to do and how you intend to go about doing it will add a lot of value to your company when it goes to market.

Buyers

Avoid making changes to your business when it goes to market. Buyers want things to be going as they are supposed to go.

Some high-level things founders should think about when selling:

1. The transition period will be at least six months or even a year.

2. Most buyers like the founders to stay on for longer than the transaction period. It could take as long as two years, so make sure that the role you have during the transaction is  the role you want.

3. If you opt for an earn-out, try to keep it short and make sure that you run the business during that time.

Roll-over of equity

Buying a business with a roll-over of equity is the best way to align the interests of the management with the buyer because if the business performs, everyone benefits. The sellers also benefit because they can get another turn to profit as the business grows.

A typical transaction

From start to finish, a typical transaction takes between eight months and a year. It could take longer, however, if you need to re-market.

The Oberon model

The Oberon model adds expertise to the upfront piece of the transaction, which involves talking to the client and obtaining information.

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Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to have Tim Wilson as her guest for the show. Tim is the CEO and Co-Founder of Qutee.

Tim’s journey

After attaining a legal degree in the UK, Tim went to music school in Hollywood. He later returned to the UK, received some funding for a record label, and ended up touring with bands like Def Leppard and Alice Cooper and releasing some records.

In 2009, after gambling with a few commercial projects in the UK, Tim moved to New York. Then, in 2012, he and his business partner acquired some NLP technology and embarked on a slow process of looking for areas where they could use the technology in unique ways.

A comments platform

They built a comments platform over the following two years. It was a simple yet ground-breaking plug-in to filter user’s comments. It could be used to listen, help engagement, and have smarter conversations with more insights.

A survey tool

They also built a survey tool that was used with some major health engagements, like the National Health Service in the UK.

Creating a social UX

They then came up with the idea of creating something bigger. Having already built a cutting-edge comments system that provided them with analytics, they decided to create a social UX. They wanted to provide consumers with smart conversations and a smart conversation experience while also engaging with them in a social environment and collecting qualitative and resilient insights. They hoped it would stimulate more participation in surveys and allow brands to create panels and focus groups overnight. That was the gestation of Qutee.

Investors

When Tim and his partner showed their investors what they wanted to do, the investors agreed to help them build it.

Starting small

They started as a small team, doing fundraisers from time to time, and eventually got Qutee up and running.

Influencers

They started working with three or four gaming tech influencers very early on when they were still in the alpha stage of their development. For the next two-and-a-half years, the influencers pushed their audiences towards Tim and his partner while they drove insights, created reports, and perfected their technology, analytics methodology, and reporting.

Pre-Covid

Just before Covid, they were about to go to market. Not able to do that as a result of Covid, they accepted that things would move slowly and decided to keep working on their API and technology. Now, things have started to accelerate.

Qutee

They call Qutee social asking. It is a place where you can have an open-ended conversation. You can share it with your audiences via social media and CRM and use influencer audiences to drive conversations. People comment and answer via polls, and it gets analyzed in real-time. They also have an analytics dashboard, and with the click of a button, they will give you a comprehensive call-on-call report.

Their focus

Qutee focuses on allowing brands to engage their passionate audiences, social, and CRM at scale within hours.

Insights methodologyQutee’s insights methodology is superior to sentiment analysis because they ask users to type their comments or sentiment and then analyze them using augmented/collaborative AI.

Report

They then create a comprehensive and relevant report showing all the participation numbers and NPS they pull out using the AI representative comments. They also give the polls, the conversational breakdown, topics, and the representative comments across verticals of tagging and NLP.

Consumer-focused

Qutee is consumer-focused. They have created an environment where consumers feel happy to collaborate with the brands and feel their voices are heard. They can also work on an industrial scale.

Games

For games, it is vital to get the player’s perspective. Getting information and insights on the issues they are experiencing and how they think they should get fixed is very important. That is where Qutee comes in because it allows users to see things from the consumer’s perspective.

Passionate consumers

Passionate consumers are those who are wedded to your product and organically spread faith about it. They are the people to who you have to listen.

Comments

So far, Qutee has collected 160 000 comments. Their average comment length is five times that of YouTube.

Qutee users can also see some of the insights, and you can share things with them to drive further qualitative discussions.

The best of all worlds

With Qutee, you have the commenting element, the NLP element, and you also have the polls intersecting.

Qutee feels social

Qutee feels social and friendly, just like a regular experience on social media. That is why it has been successful. The only thing you are required to pay for on Qutee is the reports.

Passionate audiences

Qutee is all about having passionate audiences and people who care. They are all about truth, passion, and quality.

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Tim Wilson on LinkedIn

Qutee website