The View from Horizontal

Having the same conversation with hedge funds, agtech and government scientists

Data markets are defined by verticals, but I like to assume away boundaries.

Everyone’s in a vertical until they’re not

A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York, talking data with financial analysts and companies there to sell them data. Last week, I spent a few hours at the Southern Farm Show. In part, this was letting my inner five year old look at the big machines, but I was also scanning for signs of the data economy in agriculture. It’s all coming from my hypothesis that the data flows between organizations in different vertical markets share important similarities.

Let’s go back to where this all started. From 2006, I was following the market for social media tools, and by 2011 I wanted to go deep on how the data got from the original sources to the software developers I was focused on. A year later, I drew something like this for a government entity to explain where social media data came from, and it was the one time I really had their attention in the meeting.

Fast forward to 2022, and one of my business partners was talking with the CEO of a company in the aviation information business. As he told me about it, I noticed familiar patterns. Switching to a vertical orientation, you see data moving through an organization that collects it before another organization builds a software application that turns the data into something useful for customers. (I use organization here because it’s not always a company.)

If the first diagram was a whiteboard sketch, this one is really freestyling. Some of the companies here are real, but the connections are entirely notional. I’m sketching out the concept, not mapping anything in detail (yet). Anyway, what I do know is under NDA, so let’s stay hypothetical.

Between the original data and the end user with a business need, there’s a supply network that might look like a straight line if you didn’t think about it. The key observation is that the customers of Company A probably buy other information products, based on different source data, from different suppliers. And now we’re talking business strategy.

How different—and separate—are vertical markets, anyway?

It was a short jump from seeing similarities in social media and aviation to hypothesizing that some patterns are universal. Here’s the last sketch of the day, representing the initial hypothesis of the market structure for data in an idealized market. It starts with source data at the bottom, and from collection to sharing/selling to software development, it turns into a useful information product for customers. At least, that’s the hypothesis.

Here’s where the Data Market Study starts: with an idea of how markets might be structured, and a plan to talk with a lot of people who are already active in these markets. I already know about some pieces that aren’t accurately represented here, so the project is working so far. And that’s how planes, trains and tractors are the same when you focus on the data.

Inspiration

Skip the awkward getting-started topic with narrative aircover, and start the conversations you want.

Discovery

Five Books will keep you oversupplied on reading ideas, but it’s more than that. Their expert-curated recommendations (e.g., machine learning, science fiction, Yemen) provide a helpful springboard for exploring a new topic, combining (1) a short list of books (obv), (2) the name of at least one knowledgable person, and (3) a glance at the subtopics that person views as important.

TBR

These two seem like they belong together.

Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control

Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power

Squirrel!

• 9.5 petabytes of free-to-use web data, but don’t call it a copy of the Internet.

• Zoom in on every rabbit hole in the United States with the National Map.