•
In a recent post, I outlined a kind of layman’s test for the Semantic Web . I wrote that the tipping point for the Semantic Web may be when anyone can query a set of data about a historical figure and get a long list of structured results in return. I called this ‘The Modigliani Test,’ after my favorite artist Amedeo Modigliani. To pass this test, you must deliver – using Linked Data – a comprehensive list of locations of original Modigliani art works around the world. A developer named Atanas Kiryakov gave the test a good crack. In doing so, he illustrated the core issues facing the Semantic Web currently. Sponsor The challenge of this test is that there isn’t currently enough linked data on the Web about Modigliani. Also the key data in this test is the locations of art works, which probably isn’t one of the main data fields for art data when it’s uploaded to the Web (artist name and art work title would be the two key data fields). Kiryakov wasn’t the only person who attempted to pass the test; and in fact his results mirror what can be found already on the popular open database Freebase . However Kiryakov, who is the Executive Director of Bulgarian Semantic Technology company Ontotext AD , did a great job of explaining his methodology and noting the issues he faced. The Current State of Linked Data Queries The result of Kiryakov’s attempt is a relatively short list of locations of Modigliani paintings around the world. He admits that the list isn’t long enough, but says that it’s the closest he could get – not just because of the limited amount of data in the Linked Data Web, but because it’s “hard to query and use today.” Essentially Kiryakov created code to query a few known Linked Data sets, with custom manipulations to output location data. This is what he came up with: PREFIX fb: PREFIX dbpedia: PREFIX dbp-prop: PREFIX dbp-ont: PREFIX umbel-sc: PREFIX rdf: PREFIX ot: SELECT DISTINCT ?painting_l ?owner_l ?city_fb_con ?city_db_loc ?city_db_cit WHERE { ?p fb:visual_art.artwork.artist dbpedia:Amedeo_Modigliani ; fb:visual_art.artwork.owners [ fb:visual_art.artwork_owner_relationship.owner ?ow ] ; ot:preferredLabel ?painting_l. ?ow ot:preferredLabel ?owner_l . OPTIONAL { ?ow fb:location.location.containedby [ ot:preferredLabel ?city_fb_con ] } . OPTIONAL { ?ow dbp-prop:location ?loc. ?loc rdf:type umbel-sc:City ; ot:preferredLabel ?city_db_loc } OPTIONAL { ?ow dbp-ont:city [ ot:preferredLabel ?city_db_cit ] } } That query was executed in a tool called LDSR , a “Linked Data Semantic Repository” created by Kiryakov’s company Ontotext. He calls LDSR a “search engine for part of the linked data web.” Ontotext’s LDSR includes data from existing Linked Data repositories such as DBPedia, Freebase, Geonames, UMBEL and Wordnet. Here is a screenshot of Atanas Kiryakov’s attempt to pass the Modigliani Test. He spent over an hour formulating the code used to generate this result. As you can see, the resulting list was just 8 items long and most of the locations are in major U.S. cities. This falls well short of a comprehensive list of Modigliani art work locations. For example, there’s no data about Modigliani paintings in Europe – where Modigliani lived all his life. Other Sources of Modiglidata Kiryakov wrote that most of the data returned in the Modigliani example came from Freebase . Indeed, as RWW commenter Brian Karlak pointed out in our original post, you can get much the same result within Freebase itself . Another commenter, Michael, pointed to a non-technical results page . Kiryakov’s result has a little more data, but not much more. However the point of Kiryakov’s attempt and blog post was to point out the difficulty of passing the Modigliani Test right now. He noted that “getting useful information from LOD [Linked Open Data] quite often requires a lot of efforts to analyze and post-process them in order to get reasonable answers to structured queries.” In other words, it’s much more than just inputting a natural language query (note that the Freebase example was provided by a user there named masouras , so it’s not something an average user could do). I should also mention that in the comments to the previous post, Bruce Wayne pointed to his company Factoetum’s effort to pass the test – which had 7 results, including some different ones to Ontotext/Freebase. Like Kiryakov, Wayne noted that it’s “nearly impossible” for non technical people to use the current solutions. Finally, to address an issue that some commenters raised in the previous post: yes it would be possible to pass the Modigliani Test with some manual human effort to track down location data. But that’s cheating – we want to see this done using Linked Data. And not just for Modigliani works, but for any other artist. Much Work to Be Done Atanas Kiryakov concluded that “there is still a lot of work to be done, because we cannot expect wide usage and interest in the Semantic Web if writing such a query takes more than an hour and a lot of technical knowledge.” While that’s true, I thank Atanas for giving the Modigliani Test a crack. At least now I know to visit the Museum of Modern Art when I next go to New York! Let us know your thoughts on the Modigliani Test in the comments. Or perhaps you’re a developer willing to take on this challenge? Discuss
Read more here:
The Modigliani Test for Linked Data: Results
Tags:
artist,
freebase,
life,
Linked,
modern,
modigliani,
museum,
search-engine,
technology,
thoughts,
words
•
Today I spoke with a diverse group of new entrepreneurs as part of my ongoing Online Strategy Roundtables . Together, this group illustrates how a business depends on how sharply the target market is defined. One entrepreneur is well on her way and another needs to focus more on his strongest market segment. Like many entrepreneurs, the other two are clearly accomplished people, but don’t come from a business background. For such entrepreneurs it is often worth looking for a cofounder who can fill in with expertise in areas where gaps exist. Sponsor Guest author Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. Julie Goldman did a nice presentation of her company The Original Runners . In 2003, she was the first to offer non-slip, high-quality fabric aisle runners for weddings and special events. Through her website she offers gorgeous hand-painted runners wholesale, and business has been growing to a revenue of $700,000 last year. I really like how tightly focused this business is. Niched wholesale businesses are great! Her main concern is that two dozen lower-quality copy-cat competitors have popped up over the years. To stay ahead of her competition, whom she describes as mom & pop at-home operations, I suggested she work with bloggers who are influencers with wedding planners (her main customers) to help specifically articulate why her product is superior. She has already relocated the business from New York City to New Jersey to reduce costs. To further counter the pricing pressure she is feeling from her competitors I suggested she look at relocating somewhere where it will be even less expensive for her to operate, like Vermont perhaps. She plans to launch a new brand as an accessory line and we discussed how it is only when she markets this new brand to her list of existing runner customers will mentioning “from The Original Runners company” hold any weight. New customers will not recognize the name and its association with quality products. We also spoke about SEO and search engine marketing, on tightly focusing pay-per-click campaigns on higher-end markets rather than going broad with a worldwide campaign. So far Julie’s is a great case study of a growing niche business. Next up was Sonali Roychoudhury presenting for Pursue Natural . Sonali is a scientist who is working with a team that is conducting research to find and bring natural medicinal plants to market that are not in the mainstream. Like many entrepreneurs who do not have a business background, Sonali is risk averse, unwilling to make assumptions, and uncertain as to what the next steps should be. We discussed the natural breath freshener that they have produced. It seems like the cost of entry into this small niche market is too high for this to make sense. She then explained how a small but loyal customer base has grown for this product through their process of testing the marketplace. By just setting up a direct Web sales business targeting their existing fans and the extremely high end natural product boutiques, I believe she could build a very nice small business selling small quantities month-to-month. As long as it is profitable, a small business is more than worth building. Lorenz Lannens and his company Online Design Bureau started as a consulting business that grew into to a Web solution for small and medium sized companies that helps them to develop their Web marketing strategies. His product and service enables clients to set up their Web marketing system, and he has metrics from early customers showing the system works. As we discussed his current customers, it became clear that his service is not really for startups, but more for businesses that are not Web savvy. I believe if he goes after companies that are not doing Web marketing as his segment and targets the verticals that his current clients fall in (like architecture firms), his list of customers will grow. I liked this presentation and clearly there is a need for this service. Many entrepreneurs who have pitched at these roundtables could probably use Lorenz’s help. In fact I suggested that both Sonali and Felice tap into his expertise. Lastly, Felice Gerwitz presented Scholar Square , a beta site targeting the homeschool community. She is an educator and author who specializes in homeschooling and hopes to sell a wide range of presentations and seminar classes through this site. As Felice explained her ideas, it became apparent that she is trying to do too many things for too many people, the classic “spray and pray.” I may have been a bit hard on Felice when she told me she did not go through the Clarify Your Story questionnaire as she was asked to on the roundtable registration page, but I think it needed to be said. There are no shortcuts when you are an entrepreneur. You need to do your homework. Felice needs to focus on the segment of the home school market that she tackles the best and is passionate about, and let the other ideas go. This should help her site find its center of gravity and its customers. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. If you are an entrepreneur working on an idea or an early stage business, I am also very interested in hearing what you are looking for from 1M/1M. Please weigh in here . We are crowdsourcing the design of 1M/1M, and requests that have come up include Receivables Financing as a way to bridge to a validated business without giving up precious equity, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . Photo by Nick Cowie . Discuss
See the original post:
Startup Strategy Roundtable: Well-Defined Niches Work Best
Tags:
Business,
current,
design,
Entrepreneur,
ideas,
Massachusetts,
product,
roundtable,
segment,
seo,
small-business,
Startups,
thoughts,
Web Marketing
•
“My background is in Artificial Intelligence and my last business was building predictive data. Most of our customers were oil companies, and you can hold that against me if you like. But my pitch back then was ‘just give me enough data, I’ll figure out something.’ And often enough I did figure out something.” That’s how Houston-based 80Legs CEO Shion Deysarkar describes his background. Tonight his web-crawling-as-a-service company will put up for sale tens of millions of data points extracted from public social networks and other websites. He says it’s only a matter of time until everyone’s doing it and he wants to be one of the good guys. “You can figure something out from just about anything,” he says. That’s the kind of geek Shion Deysarkar is. Sponsor Starting at $350 per month, 80Legs customers can now purchase 10 to 20 million monthly user profiles from LinkedIn, MySpace and some other social networks. Facebook and Twitter are not included, but there are a variety of other data sets from places like retail websites available as well. I’ve bet Deysarkar a beer that LinkedIn isn’t going to put up with this, but he says 80Legs has been crawling them extensively for quite a while and would have stopped them if they wanted to. We’ll see. 80Legs launched at DEMO last fall and has been on our radar since last Spring. Its core product is crawling the web for a small fee – to index whatever its customers want. As Sarah Perez wrote in September : What 80Legs does is no easy feat. It provides its users a service which offers up 50,000 computers which can crawl up to 2 billion web pages per day. Yes, it’s like having your own little search engine that you can rent for a small fee. How small? 80Legs is about 50% less expensive than any other competitive service out there. Tonight it’s putting up for sale some pre-configured crawls, in hopes to reach a new market of people for whom the core service is too complicated. Either way, Shion Deysarkar may be a man from the future. We’re watching closely the slow opening of aggregate social network user data for bulk analaysis and innovation. It’s a hotly contested area. Here’s what Deysarkar thinks about four of the biggest questions in this area today. On The Slap-Down of Nice Facebook Data Harvesters Academic and innovation-minded researchers are harvesting large quantities of public Facebook user profile data, only to be threatened by Facebook’s legal department. Pete Warden is the best known example and one that Deysarkar called “a shame.” The people using that data are not doing anything that’s shady or wrong. They are trying to make new value on top of that data. In ways that Facebook or whoever is not doing. Facebook is in the business of bringing people to their site, they aren’t leveraging that data for other things, and there is many things they’ll never use data for. No harm is being done to Facebook. What would help them would be to become a data standard. As long as people are adding value then it’s good. On Users Approving of Data Aggregation Say “aggregate user data analysis” and most people freak out – presuming it’s a screaming privacy violation. Might that ever change? Deysarkar thinks so, perhaps too optimistically. “Going forward, the end user will hopefully understand that people are creating services that will benefit them. If I take a couple of actions and I see it benefits me that’s hopeful. The challenge is that people have to understand that it came from aggregation. The more people that are making a case and building things around it, the better. “If you look at social networking, quite often connections are made in unintuitive ways. Obviously market researchers can take advantage of that, but it can also help people connect with that we couldn’t otherwise. “At the end of the day, it’s going to happen. Sites are going to fight it, but that data is going to become available. Wherever there is value to be had, people are going to go for that value.” On the Black Market for Social Networking Data One of our arguements has been that Facebook and other networks should open up access to their public user data for aggregate analysis because the bad guys who want to do bad things with it already are, through the black market . Meanwhile, positive uses of data analysis are prohibited. Deysarkar confirms again that the black market is real. “Companies should want to work with us because we’re above board. The black market definitely exists. We have heard about it from some of our potential customers, who have asked about things we wouldn’t do. They just say, ‘we can get it through other ways.’ Things like wanting a crawler to log-in and get private data. It’s too bad that exists.” On the Still Infant Market for Good User Data 80Legs is cool. It’s a crawler-as-a-service. Pete Warden, one of our Big Data favorites, uses and endorses it. But it’s also a little complicated, especially because it’s like selling potential . It sells data that you then have to derive value from, it doesn’t deliver value directly in ways people are familiar with. The Economist’s Special Report on Big Data last month argued that data was a key new form of economic input, on par with land, labor and capital. Deysarkar says he agrees with that, “it is definitely a unit of value,” but also admits that too few people get it yet. “We do have customers who are using 80legs the way we intended, we have a decent set of customers. But we know that there is a whole other set of customers who are intimidated because it is a bit technical now. These pre-configured crawls we’re now selling still fit into the big picture, but the whole data market is not well defined. There isn’t a rich enough ecosystem of companies using the data, that’s the market we’d like to serve, but it’s still being formed right now.” What do you think? Is 80Legs just a little ahead of its time? A lot? Totally crazy and wrong? We would love for you to share your thoughts on these matters in comments below. Discuss
Originally posted here:
Thoughts From the Man Who Would Sell The World, Nicely
Tags:
black,
Business,
data,
demo,
facebook,
shion-deysarkar,
social,
social-networking,
thoughts,
users-approving
•
As part of my ongoing Online Strategy Roundtables , I met yesterday with four new entrepreneurs, all at the early stage of validating who their customers are and building their businesses. Entrepreneurs who are just starting out need to ask themselves some hard questions in order to develop a crisp go to market strategy. I pulled together a list of such questions that you can find here and in my Positioning book to help you “Clarify Your Story”. Up first was Martin Calle and his company OraQuel . Martin worked for years on product development for companies like Procter & Gamble and FritoLay, but eventually wanted to create a product that would be his own. Sponsor i> Guest author Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. /p> After researching what type a product would be best to get behind, Martin came across research showing a strong correlation between gum disease and heart disease, and came up with a heart-smart oral care product. Since large retailer stores won’t work with a “little guy” in this category, he has started to approach social media groups like mommy bloggers and TwitterMoms to try to build up a grassroots following. I believe Martin’s product does answer a real need, but he has positioned this as a product just for kids. I think he will get better pickup if he positions this as a product for the entire family – a much larger segment of the market. Martin will need to do some controlled experiments to validate whether or not my hunch is correct, and then move forward with his social media PR campaign. Nick Quay presented for BluNami , a mobile marketing company that has developed a technology to help clients connect to Bluetooth users in a certain proximity. Nick and his team have been working with a wide variety of clients looking to use their technology a many different ways, from a city using it to make emergency announcements to restaurants offering deals to lure in customers. (As soon as I hear anyone is trying to work with a government entity, especially a startup venture, I immediately want them to stop wasting their time there. Unless they are paying you upfront as some type of consulting situation, most startups need their cash flow and can not sustain the government’s slow 12-24 month sales cycles.) Like many entrepreneurs with a versatile technology, Nick is trying to do too many things right now – the old “spray and pray.” While there may be many different segments interested in the product, each requires a unique go-to-market strategy. The best way to scale this business is to figure out what is the best value proposition and the easiest segment to sell to, and then focus time and energy on that while continuing to bootstrap your way to profitability. Later there may be time and money for exploring other avenues. Frederic Guitton gave a nice presentation for ActivSalesAgent , a business that combines its software with call centers as a way to help convert visitors on client websites into better qualified sales leads. This business is further down the road of validation than the others, and is profitable. As I questioned him about price point, Frederic was ready with metrics to show that what they are doing is indeed working. We discussed how using solid statistical information along with references from early customers is the best was to convert potential customers into clients – and those reference accounts do not need to be the biggest clients. Small business references work just as well. That’s how Salesforce.com did it. I think this business has legs, but urged Frederic to be open to doing some type of offshore chat centers down the road because I think reducing costs will become a bigger issue as this business continues to scale. Then Linda Muncy, who is just starting out, presented her business idea. She is hired to provide photo-related entertainment at events. Guests are creatively photographed and given the image in some form as a giveaway. She has started reproducing the images onsite on a material similar to Skinit so guests can attach the image to their handhelds, laptops, etc. She would like to develop a product kit so other event planners can do this as well. Linda has yet to truly validate her product and service. I always tell entrepreneurs to validate your idea before building any product. I think Linda will be amazed by what she learns after calling 100 event planners to get their feedback. This may only be a small business, but that is perfectly okay – as long as it is profitable. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. If you are an entrepreneur working on an idea or an early stage business, I am also very interested in hearing what you are looking for from 1M/1M. Please weigh in here . We are crowdsourcing the design of 1M/1M, and requests that have come up include Receivables Financing as a way to bridge to a validated business without giving up precious equity, I would love to hear your thoughts. i> You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . /p> em> Photo by Svilen Milev . /p> Discuss
Originally posted here:
Startup Strategy Roundtable: Early Stage Business Building
Tags:
Business,
design,
Entrepreneur,
image,
India,
india 2020,
Linda,
Martin,
Martin Calle,
mass reconstruction,
massachusetts institute of technology,
Mitra,
Nick,
Nick Quay,
positioning,
product,
Silicon Valley,
small-business,
Social Media,
strategy,
thoughts
•
Friday is the last day of New York Entrepreneur Week which upon its completion will have featured over 100 speakers from across the globe sharing their thoughts, advice and experience with attendees, but interesting stories have been surfacing around the event since as early as last week. A guest post on the event’s official blog by Janine de Nysschen , a business consultant and endorser of change dynamics , raises the interesting truth that women play a very small role in startups and venture capital , but as her passion might indicate, she feels this trend is changing. Sponsor It’s true. Though there are significant exceptions, we seldom here about female CEOs launching startups and receiving boat-loads of venture capital funding, heaven forbid it be from a female venture capitalist. But it’s not just a startup problem, its a problem that persists in the majority of business fields; business is an industry that was only a man’s game for a very long time, and women are still playing catch up. However, de Nysschen thinks there are factors about venture capital that make it less appealing to the businesswomen of the world. “The truth is that VCs invest in a stereotype, and that right now, the stereotype of high risk-tolerance, abnormal work ethic and business acumen seldom comes in the female form,” says de Nysschen. She also says that a lot of VC deals are formed from existing relationships in the community, and points out that men and women tend to socialize in different circles, “especially in business,” she adds. She also notes that while there is a shortage of female VCs and entrepreneurs, 70% of female VCs have been involved in deals that included female-led companies. Based on this, it’s only fair that de Nysschen concludes that “if there were more women doling out money, there would be more women getting it.” But things may be beginning to change. According to de Nysschen, women are the fastest growing subgroup of entrepreneurs – a fact she attributes to a growing trend of women choosing new career paths and educations. One of the reasons she says women have struggled in the venture-backed sector is that many VCs and founders come from backgrounds in which women are traditionally in the minority, such as engineering, computer science and biotechnology. However, women are statistically better startup founders than men, she says. “Women have been proven to build companies that are more capital-efficient than those founded by men, and they use less capital to achieve the same or higher revenue performance in early-stage years,” she says. “Women don’t fail as often as men: in fact, women-led high-tech start-ups generate higher revenues per dollar of invested capital and have lower failure rates than those led by men.” Gender issues are nothing new to ReadWriteWeb, as in the past we’ve discussed the need for female oriented tech events , the unique market of female bloggers , while at the same time opening up discussion about whether women should be specifically catered to or not. As de Nysschen mentions in her post, there are more women in the world, and women do more purchasing of products and services than men do, so why shouldn’t there be more women in the VC industry? Let us know you thoughts on female entrepreneurs and VCs in the comments! Discuss
Read more from the original source:
Why There Are Hardly Any Female Founders and VCs
Tags:
analysis,
businesswomen,
Entrepreneur,
event,
interesting,
more-women,
Nysschen,
stereotype,
thoughts,
unique,
venture-capital,
women,
World