Interview - CB Insights

Big Data, Innovation and Market Opportunity: An Interview with CB Insights

By Sharon L. Hadden Anand Sanwal, CEO, co-founder, CB Insights loves to win, and this passion of winning has easily translated into the success of the company. Sanwal shares, “CB Insights has been winning in the marketplace for a bit, and it is a great feeling to see the team’s work result in a great product and happy customers.”

CB Insights builds software to help clients predict, discuss and communicate emerging technology trends. Its customers are primarily Fortune 1000 corporations, but that doesn't stop Sanwal from keeping a close eye on growing economies and the start-up ecosystem.

“Everyday, I get to dig into new technologies, new startups and new trends that will reshape how we do things, business models and more,” says Sanwal.

Today’s business ecosystem is riddled with possibility, misfortune, opportunity and misconception. In an effort to beat the odds, investors and entrepreneurs turn to corporations like CB Insights to continually evolve during ever changing times.

Q1: What are your thoughts on the startup ecosystem? Are their top cities or countries that nurture the growth and success of startups better than others?

A1: It’s a great time to be a startup. There is a ton of information now available to help startup entrepreneurs and more than that, the cost of launching a startup has become cheaper than ever with tools like AWS, Stripe, etc. With plenty of private market capital available, we’re also in the midst of a great startup boom that doesn’t look like it will slow down any time soon.

Within the United States, there are several great ecosystems—Silicon Valley, NY, LA, Boston, Boulder, Seattle. In Canada, Toronto and Montreal are emerging. In Europe, there are interesting companies coming out of London, Berlin, France and the Netherlands. And in Asia, we see lots of activity throughout the continent in areas like Singapore, Japan, Korea and India.

China is the biggest market in Asia from a startup perspective. Africa and the Middle East have also seen some large ‘unicorn’ companies come to be. And Brazil, despite its challenging macro environment, has some interesting companies coming into existence.

Of course, none rival Silicon Valley, although folks like to publish inane headlines suggesting they will be the next Silicon Valley. China is probably the only market that could one day lay claim to being the next Silicon Valley. There is a lot of activity globally, and I’ve not even named all the interesting markets.

Q2: How can startups and investors alike use data to their advantage? Also, why data, why probability?

A2: I can’t really speak to how startups should use data as they’re not our customer. In terms of how investors can use data, there are a few ways. If we think about the job of an investor, it comes down to four things: 1. Seeing the deal 2. Picking the deal

3. Winning the deal 4. Nurturing the deal Q3: Can you share how machine learning, artificial intelligence and deep learning will affect the way companies do business?

A3: There is an immense amount of hype around these buzzwords, so I tend not to think that any of these on their own will change anything. If smart entrepreneurs can point these technologies in the direction of interesting problems and build products that actually solve them, these will have major impacts, and we’re seeing that today. AI is being used in everything from the Amazon Echo to driverless vehicles. These will change how we move around, how we buy, how we access information, etc. These are big changes that will impact businesses and consumers.

There is a ton of data that can be used in each part of the cycle, and some investors are waking up to this and augmenting their networks and processes by using data in really smart ways. Of course, there are investors who still believe they are artisans who can rely on their proprietary dealflow. There are probably 10 funds at most that can really do that. The rest of them will wake up to the fact that they are missing out on a ton of deals they never saw and change their ways, or they’ll deliver garbage returns to their LPs and fade away after a couple of funds.

Q4: How can corporations innovate to keep up with the explosive growth of startups?

A4: The reality is that corporations are generally terrible at innovation. They are a place where good ideas often go to die, and that is for two reasons. First, corporations don’t deal with failure well and two, they tend to spend too much time doing PowerPoint and not enough time doing.

These are both tied to each other.

So the biggest part of them innovating is actually doing things, whether that is investing, acquiring, piloting with startups or building on their own (although building on their own tends to go poorly). They, of course, need to understand trends and the right startups first, so this is not advice to approach the experimentation in some haphazard way. But ultimately, if they want to keep up, they have to do, which means putting resources behind something and not just doing PowerPoint.

Q5: Being an expert on tomorrow’s biggest markets, what three industries should we watch for growth in 2017?

A5: We expect a lot of technology advancement will come in financial services, retail and consumer packaged goods. FinTech is a broad area but within it, there will be lots of activity in regulation tech and continued interest in insurance tech.

[BYLINE FOR WRITER] Sharon L. Hadden, MS IMC, is a writer first, by passion and profession. As founder of Social Savvy Consulting Group, LLC, she helps businesses find the sweet spot between content and marketing.

[DESIGN PAGE WITH FUN FACTS] Interesting Facts About Anand Sanwal

What Sanwal Enjoys Most at CB Insights: - I love seeing the growth in people on our team. We’ve grown from 15 people to 105 in 24 months and in that time, I’ve had the privilege of seeing many of my members take on more responsibility and be challenged in ways they’d not anticipated. And it’s been fantastic to see so many of them rise to those challenges. I count myself as very lucky to see this and work with people who do this.

Sanwal’s Biggest Challenge at CB Insights: - In terms of challenges, there are also many. I think the biggest challenge has been trying to figure out how to get culture to scale. There is something special about the culture of CB Insights in terms of the team’s humility, hunger, helpfulness and happiness. As we get bigger, how do we maintain that? We are trying, but it is definitely something we have to work on.

Sanwal’s Two Truths and a Lie: - Fact: The best type of funding is revenue - Fact: It is cheaper than ever to build a startup today.

- Myth: To build a large tech company ($100M in revenues), you need to raise venture capital. This is mythology. We are seeing large tech companies being built with revenue today.