Personal Data Start-Ups

Delivered April 25th, 2018. Contributors: Megan V., Annie S., Michelle R., Joseph N. and

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Personal Data Start-Ups - UK

The 3 top UK companies that are offering consumers more value from their personal data are the Pillar Project, Digi.me and People.io. Please see the attached spreadsheet for value comparisons, and the list below for more information on these top 3 companies.  

methodologyWe began our deep dive by defining the term "personal data". We found that "personal data" is defined as "any information that relates to an identified or identifiable living individual. Different pieces of information, which collected together can lead to the identification of a particular person, also constitute personal data." From there, we researched a number of different UK companies that offer consumers value for their personal data. We focused on startups, which are defined as anything pre-IPO. We were then able to rank the top 3 companies based on the amount of their total investment. Please see the attached spreadsheet for these investment amounts. Because these are private companies, public financial data is protected and unavailable beyond the investment amount. The spreadsheet columns regarding revenue and number of customers read "N/A" for that reason. 

Below you will find the top 3 companies, as well as a brief overview of the products/services they offer.

1. Pillar Project The Pillar Project "provides an innovative method of giving consumers the power to control their data, and for companies to be GDPR compliant." They explain that they "want people around the world to take back control of their personal data."

Services Offered: The Pillar Project offers consumers the Pillar Wallet- "a next-generation, open-source wallet that will become the dashboard to your digital life." The Pillar Wallet provides a self-storage platform for users to store all of their tokens in one place and store their personal data in off-chain encrypted storage. With this wallet, users are able to own their data without any intermediaries. They pride themselves in not being like other apps which they claim trap your personal data.

Total investment: £15.01 million ($21M x .71 = £15.01M). Please see the spreadsheet for investment figure comparisons. 
2. Digi.Me Digi.me allows users to "take control of the data powering [their] digital lives."

Services Offered: Digi.me offers a free app for mobile devices and computers that allows users to "import and use the data about [them] scattered around [their] apps and websites." The app then organizes the data and allows users to search every aspect to draw patterns about their lives. They pride themselves in having "bank and military grade security," meaning they do not have access to any user data, and only the user themselves has the key. 

Total investment: £7.58 Million ($10.6M x .71 = £7.58M) Please see the spreadsheet for investment figure comparisons. 
3. People.io People.io provides a user interface that allows consumers to own their data and decide directly from there how they would like to use it. 

Services offered: People.io provides a free mobile app that allows users to upload their data and decide if they want to "exchange [their] data and time for products and services." The company prides itself on providing consumers with rewards for sharing their data by "answering questions or engaging with brands". Rewards include Starbucks coffee, iTunes gift cards, Amazon gift cards, and more. However, they do also advertise absolute privacy and transparency of use for consumer data.

Total investment: £50K. Please see the spreadsheet for investment figure comparisons. 

summaryRanked based on investment value, the top 3 UK companies for Personal Data Exchange, as measured by total investment/funding, are the Pillar Project, Digi.me and People.io.

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Personal Data Start-Ups - US

Segment, Gooddata, and Pipl are the top 3 US companies offering consumers more value from their personal data. Segment is ranked as the first private startup company because of their funding level of £76.43 million in the consumer personal data space. They are followed by Gooddata with an investment of £69.34 million and third on the list is Pipl with an investment of £13.62 million.
OverviewIn search of Personal Data Start-Ups in the US, we first looked for startups in the US based on ranking, combined with keywords such as consumer data and personal data. This led us to find the top 3 startups categorized under Personal Data based on ranking. The companies were listed based on funding provided in USD$ which we converted to GBP£. The conversion was done using this converter. 

We were able to identify all the required data except for the customer base of Gooddata and Pipl, as these were not publicly listed or mentioned in any of the media coverage. We compiled all of our findings in row 1-6 in the US tab in the attached spreadsheet. 
CONCLUSIONSegement is a customer data platform used by developers and analysts mainly because it features elegant APIs and extensive partner ecosystem. Gooddata is a start up that offers BI for data magnetization to companies who are looking to quickly create and distribute important information to big networks. Pipl is an online data search tool that is used by companies and individuals to identify email addresses, social usernames and phone numbers of businesses and their most important individuals. We compiled all of our findings in row 1-6 in the US tab in the attached spreadsheet. 

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Personal Data Start-Ups - UK Competitive Landscape

As requested, rows 7-12 on the UK tab of the spreadsheet have been completed. Information about Pillar Project, Digi.me, and People.io have been compiled and provided. The spreadsheet is available here.
PILLAR PROJECTInformation about the Pillar Project was compiled from their main website, their Linkedin profile, from Owler.com, and Crunchbase.com. From these sources we have determined that the company's value proposition is to replace user accounts with atomic ownership, therefore giving control of their personal data back to customers. In addition, the Pillar Project seeks to solve the following three problems: the lack of control users have over their data, the threat to diversity, pluralism, and a right to choose, as well as data being concentrated on a few propriety platforms. 

The Pillar Project has raised £15,051,855 from a fundraising run by Twenty Thirty, and the company has an estimated yearly revenue of less than £716,755. Pillar Project's funding and revenue amounts were presented in a dollar amount, therefore conversion using the most up-to-date conversion rates was necessary. 

 $1 = 0.72GBP 
 $21,000,000 = the amount of money Pillar Project has raised in dollars
Pillar Project's yearly revenue is estimated to be less than $1,000,000.

$21,000,000 x 0.72 = £15,051,855
$1,000,000 x 0.72 = £716,755

The company was founded by David Siegel and Tomer Sofinzon. David Siegel is the CEO and Tomer Sofinzon is the CRO. The company is a non-profit private company.
DIGI.ME Digi.me seeks to help customers compile and manage their data, which offers customers greater control over their personal data. Digi.me allows customers to store their data in a private cloud before they decide who can have access to it. 

Digi.me is hoping to address the lack of control users have over the own data. By giving control back to customers, they also hope to be able to provide higher quality data to businesses that was shared willingly by users. Digi.me has plans to expand its platform to capture and analyze health data and financial information.

Digi.me has received eight rounds of funding, which has amounted to £7,597,603. Notable investors include Swiss RE, Microsoft Accelerator, and the Omidyar Network. The company has an estimated yearly revenue of £3,583,775. Digi.me's funding and revenue amounts were presented in a dollar amount, therefore conversion using the most up-to-date conversion rates was necessary.

 $1 = 0.72GBP 
 $10,600,000 = Digi.me's total funding in dollars
 $5,000,000 = Digi.me's yearly revenue in dollars
$10,600,000 x 0.72 = £7,597,603
$5,000,000 x 0.72 = £3,583,775

Digi.me is a Privately Held company. Julian Ranger is the founder and Chairman, Rory Donnely is the CEO, Pascal Wheeler is the Creative Director, Roger Goscomb is the CFO/COO, and Jim Pasquale is the EVP for North America.
PEOPE.IOPeople.io wants to give consumers the ability to license their personal data to local advertisers. They're also seeking to rebuild the trust in the digital marketing space. 

The problems People.io is seeking to address is the fact that consumer data is misused, and the fact that most customers don't care about their data. Nicholas Oliver, the founder of People.io believes that if users care more about their personal data then that will lead to better privacy, better products, and better user experiences.

People.io has received a total funding of £50,000 through its subsidiary C8 Management. The company has received two rounds of funding, and investors include Thomas Heogh, Art Alliance, Founders Factory, Nick Robertson, Wayra, Dmitry Shurygin, and Juliam Pittam. 

People.io has an estimated yearly revenue of less than £716,755. The yearly revenue number was provided in dollars, therefore conversion using the most up-to-date conversion rates was necessary.

 $1 = 0.72GBP 
People.io's yearly revenue is estimated to be less than $1,000,000.

$1,000,000 x 0.72 = £716,755

Digi.me is Privately Held Company. The founder is Nicholas Oliver. Damian Brooks is the current CTO, and Suzanne Piddock is the Head of Operations. 

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Personal Data Start-Ups - US Competitive Landscape

 Segment, GoodData and Pipl are all privately-held organizations. 

With regard to funding status, Segment and GoodData are Late Stage Ventures, while Pipl’s status is Private Equity. GoodData leads the trio with 10 rounds of funding since being founded in 2007, summing up to a total funding amount of $101.2 million. Segment follows up closely with 6 rounds of funding since being founded in 2011, summing up to a total funding amount of $108.7 million. Pipl comes third with 1 round of funding since being founded in 2005, summing up to a total funding amount of $19 million. 

In terms of investors, GoodData has a total of 17 investors, including 5 Lead Investors, namely: Intel Capital, Totvs Ventures, Tenaya Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst. Segment has a total of 11 investors, including 4 Lead Investors, namely: Y Combinator, GV, Thrive Capital and Accel Partners. PIPL has 1 main investor who is also the Lead Investor. This Lead Investor is Israel Growth Partners Israel Growth Partners. 

Notably, Segment's main aim is to resolve the issues of inconsistent, incomplete data, time wastage and dependencies across teammates. GoodData seeks to resolve the issue of time wastage in data management and dependencies across teammates. Meanwhile, PIPL's data and tools are used to solve everything from contact enrichment and marketing to compliance and identity verification. 

Kindly find a deep dive of these findings (and other answers to your questions) in the attached spreadsheet.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGSIn researching personal data to answer your questions, we majorly focused on the authoritative information collected on Crunchbase as well as details about the companies (like objectives, nature of their businesses and problems the client is trying to solve) found in their respective LinkedIn pages.

From the findings, we were able to complete all sections of rows 7-12 on the US tab of the attached spreadsheet, as was requested by you.

CONCLUSIONSegment is a privately held company that helps customers track data across multiple devices and channels, and sends it to third-party tools through a single API. Segment eliminates the need to write code to integrate new tools, which removes dependencies across teammates and saves time. GoodData is a privately held company that helps customers unleash the value of existing corporate data assets and investments. GoodData manages to do this by distributing high-impact targeted analytics to each member of the business network, such as partners, remote locations and customers. PIPL is a privately held company. At PIPL's core is its proprietary identity resolution engine which combines over 40 billion records from millions of online and offline sources, creating a dynamic and searchable index of people's profiles where information can be found using data-points like email addresses, social handles and mobile phone numbers. Kindly find the complete findings and details filled in rows 7-12 on the US tab of the attached spreadsheet,