Oversaid – Keeping track of who said what in tech
oversaid.com
oversaid.com
Over the past few months I have been building a data pipeline that extracts quotes and assigns them to company executives, using natural language processing (spacy).
I am focusing on the tech industry right now which I know pretty well (I used to work at CB Insights). Every Wednesday I put together a newsletter featuring interesting quotes and explain why they matter.
Eventually, Oversaid will be a platform that lets you search quotes yourself and come up with your own analysis, but I wanted to launch something early while I build out the product so that I can learn from prospective customers.
I'm having a lot of fun writing these up and I hope you enjoy reading them!
Here's the last email I sent: https://mailchi.mp/ab609ce94c60/bill-gates-gives-bezos-some-...
I initially thought I would be able to manually review each quote (which was the main reason I built the admin), but it quickly became obvious that it was just too many quotes so I had to improve quote detection and attribution.
Big thanks to whomever wrote the spacy doc, I knew nothing about NLP (and I still know next to nothing tbh), but I was able to start using it pretty quickly.
The content in this one e-mail is pretty good, but before I sign up I'd like to see more. But also it's not clear to me that I'm your customer, because reading your post here it sounds like your customer isn't the consumer of these feeds but actually the producers? I'm not one of them, so why do you care about my e-mail address, other than to sell to your actual customers down the line?
The main reason I'm starting this newsletter is to start conversations with people about this data, which is why I want people's emails.
Right now I'm hoping people are enticed enough to put their email address to check it out. I might be wrong about that and I might add a link to the latest email on the home page in the future to see if signups improved.
I have no intention of selling those emails. My goal is to start a Saas platform based on this data. A very small number of subscribers will hopefully become clients. The rest can just enjoy the newsletter and help me get the word out if they feel like it.
I don't think the OP is gonna sell your email.
boomshakalaka!
If it wasn't for your comment here, I wouldn't be able to see an example.
On a more personal note about the email, I'd drop the first paragraph, or make it shorter and focus on what you promised to send.
One great daily mail that I've subscribed and really enjoy to read is from the daily stoic [0]. They are quite short and to the point everytime.
[0] - https://dailystoic.com
The intro will be shorter from now on, that last one was still intended for a small audience who was helping me iterate on the newsletter.
The sample letter refers to the press. Executives tend to be general with the press. Investors make them talk specifics. That happens during quarterly earning calls. Which would be a good source. Seeking Alpha has the transcripts.
The SEC filings are another liable source. Though not personal quotes, they include perspectives on tech trends.
1) I am using the press as a kind of filter of what's interesting (hypothesis: they pick the most interesting thing executives are saying on earning calls)
2) I am working on extracting other sources like earning transcripts and twitter, but this will be tougher for me to go through due to the sheer amount of things that are said in those sources
SEC is a good one too, the management analysis section of filings is always interesting so I could extract that.
Thanks for the feedback!
This is one of the occasions, when I love the German “every website needs a ‘Who’s responsible for this?’ page” law (a.k.a. “Impressumspflicht”). Why should I trust your specific selection of quotes and their interpretation? You even don’t trust your visitors with a “Who are we?” section. For all I know, this could be a Chinese or Russian troll factory outlet sale.
For this to work (for me, at least) you need to work _way_ more on the site’s transparency than a more or less default privacy disclaimer and an e-mail input form: Who am I, what criteria and sources are used for the quotes, how are they categorized, what do I do to prevent bias... The technology may as well be sound and state-of-the-art, but if I don’t trust the website, I won’t sign up to anything.
I think that's a good point, I will add an "about" page. I was thinking of adding a "how it works" page as well, I'll work on that.
Also, a lot of people don't read the source. Or know the context.
I guess transparency and a greater overarching perspective both work.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressumspflicht
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/23307/to-whom-does-t...
Things that I think folks (aka me) would find interesting:
1. Impressions/views on tech markets (what they're entering, their views on growth of markets, etc)
2. Views on competition esp if they talk isht
3. Quotes with data. Because some of these products by tech cos are opaque with stats, if execs drop a figure about growth, that's valuable.
4. Over time, it'd be cool if you could see what products execs talk about in their public comments as that might give an indication of what they're focused on. Suspect they might not talk a lot about specific products so perhaps wishful thinking.
IMO, personally, I think quotes on politics are boring mainly cuz that doesn't give insight into the biz and cuz politics is already everywhere.
Enjoying the emails so far and look forward to seeing where Oversaid goes
Congrats again.
Love idea #3, I'll have to dig in and see if there's enough of that. Might be info that's in the article and not in the quote itself.
I'm excited to get into #4 as I go through historical sources and extract old quotes.