Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale

Kevin Hale is a Partner at YC. Before working at YC he cofounded Wufoo.

The YC Podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

***

Topics

00:00 - What idea did Mike apply to YC with?

00:45 - Where did the idea come from?

4:00 - From project to company

9:45 - What info did investors want to know that Second Measure could provide?

11:30 - Their first customers

14:00 - The primary use case of Second Measure for VCs

16:45 - What questions are they trying to answer?

19:00 - Data examples from their blog

27:00 - Second Measure's product development process

29:00 - Finding good data scientists who work from first principles

36:30 - Why is credit card data so messy?

41:30 - Cleaning data

43:45 - Using their product for competitive analysis

47:00 - Their sales process

48:30 - Raising money from Goldman Sachs and Citi

51:30 - Focusing on a specific problem

53:30 - Keeping the product compelling when it's table stakes

[ycombinator]

Topics
00:00 - What idea did Mike apply to YC with?
00:45 - Where did the idea come from?
4:00 - From project to company
9:45 - What info did investors want to know that Second Measure could provide?
11:30 - Their first customers
14:00 - The primary use case of Second Measure for VCs
16:45 - What questions are they trying to answer?
19:00 - Data examples from their blog
27:00 - Second Measure's product development process
29:00 - Finding good data scientists who work from first principles
36:30 - Why is credit card data so messy?
41:30 - Cleaning data
43:45 - Using their product for competitive analysis
47:00 - Their sales process
48:30 - Raising money from Goldman Sachs and Citi
51:30 - Focusing on a specific problem
53:30 - Keeping the product compelling when it's table stakes

[sebastianalvarado]

How do they get the credit card data? Who gives the data to them?

[Mren]

Great podcast, can’t wait to see if they go public some day

[BiancaAguglia]

This was an interesting interview that left me with many answers, some new questions, and some new ideas. 😊
BTW: It would be great to have access to some of the datasets Second Measure job applicants are tested on. That way any data scientist (expert, beginner, or citizen data scientist) can work with those sets and do their best to come up with something valuable.

[saad-ulmr]

How do they analyze billions of transactions ? How that works ?

[yonathanevan]

The speaker is interesting but honesly it would be better you silence for a while and not interupting
Its only make the message isnt clear

[tonyabracadabra]

Let’s just admit that, Kevin isn’t super excited with the idea and how they scale their business by piling statisticians