HS 414 - Big Data & the Blockchain with Adam Mittelberg

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It's my pleasure to welcome Adam Middleburg. He is the chief marketing officer of Datablockchain IO. Adam, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing great. How are you today?

Good. Good to have you on the show. So a lot of talk out there about big data, about data privacy. You know, there was actually just a Supreme Court ruling on that that I heard on the news this morning about cell phone location tracking and such. Everybody is rightfully paranoid about this stuff. And then there are businesses that really need data, especially smaller businesses that don't necessarily have the same kind of access that the corporatocracy does to data to find their potential customers. Tell us what Data Blockchain does and what it's all about.

Absolutely, absolutely. So Data Blockchain, we have a platform that's really going to revolutionize the data space. We have a tremendous amount of data, but in addition to what we have, we're going to be working with data providers and data owners across the world to enable any business, regardless of their size, to be able to access all the critical data they need for their business. You know, historically it's been very challenging and continues to be very challenging for small businesses to really compete, like you said, against those larger companies. And the big thing is, how can you compete in a space when you don't have the resources in order to access the information you need? So if you're trying to do marketing campaigns or manage your CRM or perform any form of analytics or understanding of the customer behaviors that happen with your current customers so you can provide additional services or provide additional marketing to extend their lifetime value or to find lookalike consumers out there that you could prospect to, it's very, very challenging for these small businesses to compete. And this is not a new thing. It's always been challenging, but fortunately with blockchain technology. And with what we're doing at Data blockchain, we feel that we have a very compelling, very interesting and exciting platform that's going to really change the game on the data side and level the playing field.

So give us the use case, though. I mean, what does it mean? So is your customer base or your potential customer base, small businesses who need data, Is that the customer?

It's a customer.

It's a customer. Okay.

It's anybody who is anybody who is doing any form of marketing that's going to be your primary source. So if you look at digital marketing, right, it's hundreds of millions of dollars or hundreds of billions of dollars being spent in the digital space when you look at it. And in order to compete, right, for the eyeballs, for the impressions, for the exposure. If you're a business, how do you get to the information that you need in order to make the best practical decisions for your business? Whether you're a small business or a large business, you're still trying to find out who are my customers, who are my consumers, where are my new opportunities? And the only way in order to have really effective marketing is you're going to want to do a couple of things. One, you're going to want to have data. Two, you're going to want to be able to test. Three, you're going to want to be able to then do additional measurements so you could scale. And then you want to continue to improve and improve your marketing efforts. Data is a key component to any organization. So it doesn't matter if you're a small business or a large business. Data is critical. The challenge, Small businesses don't have the ability to get to the data. Maybe they can get to a single source. In many cases, they're using brokers, intermediaries, using middlemen. Their costs are higher. We eliminate those intermediaries and those middle layers and we also have the advantage, or make it advantageous for them rather by giving them a single destination to go to to access a variety of sources, Right? So it's a single source for them to find multiple sources of data.

Okay, so say, for example, you know, I'm in the marketing business, I want an, I want an email list. Why would I need to get it through data blockchain? And where is the blockchain component come into play? Yeah, like you mentioned, there's lots of list brokers out there. There are lots of legalities to consider about this. St what's the difference?

One of the big things that's always been a challenge in this space, when you're dealing with data owners is the data is their business. And for a data owner to be able to offer their asset up, they want to have measurable information to be able to track the performance of their data and how it's being monetized. Historically, that is something that is unavailable because they may hand their file over if they do, or they may get reports back from people who have monetized their data and there's no way to trace and validate how much of their data was truly sold and at what value. Having blockchain and leveraging blockchain technology, it allows for the data owners to have the clarity and the transparency for every transaction that happens to their data. So there's a huge amount of distrust that currently exists between data owners and, you know, globally. By having data blockchain and using blockchain technology, it allows for the trust of data owners to exist because they're now able to provide their data into data blockchain and any transaction that happens, that uses their data, they have full transparency into those transactions. They know exactly how much money due to them through that transaction. And through data blockchain, they get compensated right away. So they don't have to wait on those 30, 60, 90 day terms in order to get paid. They get an immediate transaction. So it's really beneficial to the data owners.

Okay, so I want you to distinguish data owner. Like does that take the place of today's broker? For example, there's a list broker who has a bunch of lists, a bunch of data, I guess they're a data owner. Or does it come down to the individual, like, do I own my own own data, my own email address, my own phone number?

List broker doesn't necessarily own the data. They just may have access to be able to provide data.

Right. So, so in, in the way you talk, every person or business owns their own data, right? Or not? Not.

We're referring to, if I am a company that has developed over the years a niche database where I have a million.

Got it. Okay. Okay.

Consumers that, you know, they have these specialty lists or you're dealing with large data compilers and they have a vast amount of data in which large corporations go to them for data services, they partner with different brokers who then go out and try and sell different components of their data. Right. So if you're a small business, yes, you may have a relationship with a data broker and that data broker may have a relationship with 1, 2, 3 different data owners that are out there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that small business is getting it at a fair price. That's equal to what the big players and large corporations are paying for that same data. And it also doesn't mean that that small business is getting access to all the available data out there or more available data out there. So what we're able to do is have a large amount of data providers pointing their data into data blockchain. And then with our intelligence, our smart indexing engine, we have the ability to then go in and look at the data. And through a variety of algorithms that the company has developed out and some other proprietary technology, we're able to develop out confidence scores. So if a small business comes in and says, hey, I want to pull a list of 100,000 individuals that have these particular consumer behaviors, whatever it may be, our intelligence is then going to reach out and look at all the different data providers to find the best, most practical data for that specific search and for that specific user, and then pull down that data, which may come from one source, it may come from several sources.

The reason I asked you is because I think people would be less upset about being spammed and so forth or just the use of their data in general if they were compensated with micropayments. So my personal email address. Right. I don't like it when people spam me. Obviously nobody does, but if I got compensated for that, I'd feel better about it, even if it's a little micro payment. This is not what you're talking about. Right?

That is not what we're talking about today.

Okay, got it. Okay, go ahead, tell us more.

So with a small business, we want to create a level playing field, and we want to give small businesses the opportunity to access data that they need to be able to compete. And it's been something that just hasn't existed. We've been in the digital marketing space going back to the 90s, and there's always been a constant challenge for small businesses to compete against these larger organizations. And it's also challenging for larger organizations because, you know, they're investing a lot of time, money, and effort by gathering a lot of additional data that they don't need and using a lot of time to try and model out and sort out and dedupe. Right. So there's a lot of data waste that goes along with it. So we think that we could serve both those channels very, very well.

Got it, Got it. Good, good. The blockchain component of it, the future of it. You know, maybe any question I haven't asked you. I. We kind of dove right into this sort of one area and I just want to give you the chance to tell us more. Not based on my question. So take it wherever you want as we are limited on time, but I just want to make sure you get your message out.

Well, we're just really excited about the things that we're doing. The team at Data Blockchain is working very, very hard. We have an mvp. So if any of your listeners would like to test out our mvp, they can visit and try the MVP at DBC IO and learn more information about the company and everything that we're doing and working on@datablockchainio.

Good stuff. Where do you see the future of this? You know, I had asked you about one component and you said, well, not yet, but it sounds like that's something you're also thinking about. Where does this go? Like, what does it look like in five years, ten years from now?

That's interesting because it's something that's so exciting, like blockchain. We haven't seen this level of excitement in technology since the 90s, when the Internet was really taking shape and making its way in. And you are seeing all these exciting projects that are coming out and there are a lot of interesting ones and there are some that are going to end up being the long term plays and that'll be determined as we go, you know, five years down the path and we'll see who that is. But where it takes us is a very exciting path, I believe. And we feel that we're developing a platform and a technology that's going to allow us to be nimble and to adjust and to work with a lot of these players that are out there that are also taking advantage of blockchain technology. Because at the end of the day, the majority of those out there that are using blockchain technology and building out new products, the majority of them are going to need data in order to fuel their business, because data truly is the fuel that really drives this entire space. So we feel very confident in what it is we're doing and we feel that our path is looking very good and where those opportunities exist will show and if it makes sense, we will definitely explore those. So it's exciting.

Good stuff. Good stuff. How did you come up with the idea? Where did this come from? What was the genesis?

It really came from a lot of years in the space. You know, myself and Scott, our CEO, we worked together, like I said, going back into the 90s when we were building out digital databases in permission based email, and we built some of the first high tech household files in the United States. We took traditional hard cards for things like printers and other consumer electronic devices that back in the 90s used to fill out like a hard card or a postcard and mail those in. We actually worked with a lot of those manufacturers and we brought that process online and built out one of the largest high tech household files out there. And we built a nice company called Navient. We eventually sold that company to Equifax in 2002 and we've done some other projects since then. And as we were moving forward, we always thought about new and innovative technologies and one of our team members talked about how we could leverage blockchain into some of the things we were doing over this past year and it just evolved. Yeah, really, really excited about it.

Good, good stuff. Give out the website one more time.

It's datablockchain IO.

Excellent. Adam, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

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