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| Experfy co-founders and co- CEOs Harpreet Singh and Sarabjot Kaur -- Experfy |
Jun 4, 2015: Adding a new flavor to the business of transforming heaps of data into actionable insights, a Harvard-based startup is offering custom algorithms on demand.
Founded last year, Experfy Inc. has built a marketplace for data scientists who, like designers using 99Designs Inc. or business consultants using HourlyNerd Inc., respond to requests from individuals and businesses for help with specific projects.
Peter Diamandis, chief executive and chairman of nonprofit XPrize used the service to generate a list of 10 people each of the 250 attendees at his recent A360 conference should meet. He was betting an algorithm that used data from the conference registration form, LinkedIn and other sources, could suggest connections that trumped the chance encounters and introductions from shared connections that typically dominate such events.
The experiment, which he said cost “a few thousand bucks,” had high value and prompted him to lead a $1.5 million seed round to help the 10-person company at Harvard Innovation Lab continue growing.
“If Experfy didn’t exist, I would have been looking for entrepreneurs to start something like this,” Mr. Diamandis said. “Today, the companies that are crushing it are the ones that are data driven.”
Experfy co-founders and co-CEOs Sarabjot Kaur and Harpreet Singh said they are initially targeting small and midsize businesses that have yet to harness value from data they have stored but not analyzed. Ms. Kaur said she has seen a number of companies in manufacturing, agriculture and other sectors that are doing between $50 million and $100 million in revenue, but have no dashboard and are still manually inputting many items.
“They think big data is not for them. They think it’s brain surgery,” she said. “It’s not.”
Read the full article about the types of projects Experfy has enabled and how it will evolve from an R&D experiment to a business at Dow Jones VentureWire.