Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

I know 3 startups trying to solve aggregation of metrics for analytics.

I worked for a management consulting company and produced such a system based on aggregating data from across a global corporate network and producing dashboards in SharePoint.

Yahoo could have an enormous impact on KPIs, dashboards and metrics for consumers and business were they to want to. And with it, one hell of a revenue stream.

IFTTT could solve data/metric aggregation for consumers, marketeers and other less technical users.

And if an export from IFTTT could produce a Yahoo Pipe, then a developer (or slightly more skilled user - a good Excel user perhaps) could then make it do even more.

It could be used to read from Excel. From CSV. From SharePoint. From databases. From web pages on the internet and intranet. Everything.

Aggregate news headlines concerning your company. Create cohort charts with data from different and unconnected systems. Combine data from servers to mailing list campaigns to observe impact much quicker and to identify fully which campaigns work best. Or just grab the numbers from many systems to find out which system is showing the wrong value.

So much is possible that companies struggle with today because their data is siloed in disconnected systems... or some of it is external and they have no interface to it.

Glue between Twitter and App.net? That's just trivial. A real prize will be to aggregate anything and everything and allow it to be processed before reporting on it.

It's not glamorous... but I can say from experience that the company I worked for successfully sold the product I made for £50k licenses to large companies. The demand is there.

"I know 3 startups trying to solve aggregation of metrics for analytics."

Get. Off. My. Lawn.

Not at all, I'm really excited by all of them. Particularly as they may make this capability available to really small companies and consumers. I dislike that this stuff is currently just a large enterprise capability.

I like this comment better than the OP because it contains some real specifics of how the integration could make life better for real customers and, by extension, Yahoo. It would be interesting to see how Yahoo would see something like that.

I worked for a management consulting company and produced such a system based on aggregating data from across a global corporate network and producing dashboards in SharePoint.

Telerik?

No. But a few of our clients did use their web parts for dashboard.

What I build was an assortment of plugins to products (Project Server, Excel for SharePoint, SharePoint) as well as some simple scrapers (HTML, XML and CSV from web sites and windows shares). These were either event triggered or attached to timers.

Data was extracted from all of the backend systems and then deposited in a local database, and the local databases (usually office or department specific) were then rolled up nightly to produce the HQ view of all of this data.

Finally, that data was dumped into OLAP cubes and surfaced through reporting web parts into SharePoint so that people could slice and dice however they wanted.

And now think of what IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes can do.

Right, so they're just missing a reporting layer to act on the output of all of that, potentially a database if they want to add trending.

Found an old product page for the thing I built: http://www.pcubed.com/services/tools.deliveryhub.aspx

When I say "I built" I mean that I designed it, coded it, delivered it. We were only a small 2 person team, though we had support assistance from a couple of developers in other timezones to support multi-national clients.

DeliveryHub wasn't solely a technical solution; sure it could trend any data on your intranet and inside your project management software. The real selling point was that we shipped a suite of charts and reports designed by project and programme managers.

Every business wanted to produce those reports, but none had systems that gave them a record of their data that allowed them to generate such reports.

Sales were easy, and the only factor that limited sales potential was that Pcubed as a services company never sold software without headcount. I understand why they did that, but never agreed with it.

Can you name these startups?

Yes.

And if you're an investor then I know one of them is currently looking for funding. That one is based in London and has started with web accessible data that can be scraped and then storing that data to specifically create trend charts. If you want to know more or are interested in trying their software get in touch as I can introduce you via email even if they don't want to be outed on here.

I'll ask all three whether they would mind being outed, all are currently flying under the radar and are below 6 months old.

I'd be interested too, given that I'm not sure of you're including mine in those three!

Actually yours is one, like I'd miss that out Stavros. I pay attention enough. And when are you coming by London again? That said I'm tempted to come blag some floor space from you next spring. You're right that Athens wasn't great, so now I need to see Thessalonika.

And as you've outed yourself it seems I don't have to ask you: http://www.instahero.com/

Another one is http://unmagnify.com/ who aren't yet ready to open but have an MVP being used by a few people with data gather, store (inc' trending) and visualise solution with good potential.

The other unnamed one I haven't spoken to yet. If they want to unstealth themselves I'll share.

Ah, good :) My house is always open, just let me know when you want to come over, I just moved into a nice studio. I'm not sure when I'll be coming to London, but it probably won't be that long, I'm due for a visit!

I'll check the other two companies out, thanks! How's yours coming along? I haven't heard any updates...

Mine has been, well the last 6 months have been... interesting.

No technical challenges, but wow on the kind of distractions that can occur when you have user generated content. I've gone through a dark patch and came out stronger for it, doubling down now... rented an office, got a co-founder, honed the vision.

The users of the cycling forum have witnessed most of this and have been badgering to support me, so because of user demand I'm just about to crowd-fund a 1 year runway on the basis of patronage (donations with no returns).

Haven't felt as positive and as focused in a long time. But in hindsight wish I could've avoided some of the distractions this year.

Looking to just turn into a bit of a hermit now. Want to get the v1 out there and used. I've gone and built up demand so now I need to deliver before I lose the interest of those forum admins.

Yeah, that can happen, especially when you're a single founder. I'm glad you're getting things in order, and the patronage model sounds increasingly more tempting. It's bootstrapping and market validation rolled up in one, so if you can get it, it's great.

Do try to get feedback from the target market as early as possible, it'll save a lot of hassle in the long run. A closed alpha works very well, I've found.

I'm looking forward to see what you're making, let me know when you're ready to show it! Also, if you need help with analytics, just email me.

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