E2: Building and Understanding Data Businesses | Auren Hoffman

In today’s episode, Erik Torenberg sits down with Auren Hoffman, CEO of SafeGraph, to discuss all things data business like building around products, selling horizontal data, second party data sharing, and much more.

Media Empires is part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: www.turpentine.co

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LINKS:

SafeGraph: https://www.safegraph.com/

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(00:00) Episode Preview

(01:09) What ties Auren's businesses together

(03:00) The importance of market share and declining CACs

(03:39) Challenges & types of data businesses

(05:00) Selling horizontal data

(05:40) People, places, organizations, and products

(10:12) Methods for sourcing and verifying data

(14:48) Potential of building data businesses around products

(16:21) The nuances in recommendations for people and products

(26:46) LinkedIn’s success and disappointments

(33:09) Windfall data and net worth

(34:27) Reputation and bias

(37:32) Challenges & potential for social recommendations

(42:10) Improving the user experience of LinkedIn

(47:12) Crossbeam & second party data sharing

(49:14) DSL Co-op & aggregating general ledger data

(50:41) Building a reputation database

(51:50) NDA network

(53:01) Software businesses masquerading as services businesses

(55:24) Incubators & structuring ownership

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X / Twitter:

Auren Hoffman: @auren

Erik's Twitter: @eriktorenberg

Media Empires: @mediaempirespod

Turpentine: @turpentinemedia