My guest on this episode is Nevin Raj, Co-Founder and COO of Grata. Grata is a fascinating data software business that takes in all available public information about private companies, such as their website, LinkedIn, funding data, PPP data, and so much more. It then uses that data to create the most accurate profile of that company in their industry, headcount, business model, revenue range, and more.

Nevin and I talk about the categories of data businesses and where he sees data businesses evolving into, how to accurately estimate the revenue of private companies and how the best investors do it today, and how to build a data software business.

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Links:

Nevin Raj on LinkedIn

Grata

Politico Pro

Quorum

Verisk

Second Measure Transaction Data

Economics of Data Businesses by Abraham Thomas

Topics:

(3:12) - What are your thoughts on data vs. workflow as business models?

(7:30) - Do you see data businesses developing into more of a ‘wisdom’ category of companies?

(13:42) - Can you walk us through the different types of data businesses?

(22:53) - How would you describe a workflow company?

(24:37) - Within your business, can you walk through the different ways you can get data from private companies?

(27:52) - What are some of the data sets that correlate most with revenue size?

(30:04) - How do the leading investors you’ve studied or worked with historically estimate the size of a company?

(32:14) - How much do you balance measurable data and intuition?

(34:51) - How do you integrate the data you have with your client’s software and workflows?

(38:11) - What were the early days of Grata like and what did growth look like?

(41:27) - What second-level data sets do you want to add to Grata over time to build a moat?

(44:13) - Do you think eventually most data businesses will become workflow businesses?

(46:49) - What’s a strongly held belief you’ve changed your mind on?

(49:18) - What’s the best business you’ve ever seen?

(50:56) - Are there any insights you’ve gleaned from ZoomInfo you want to apply to Grata?