- The Rollup
- Posts
- Data as a Service- Finding the Next Winners
Data as a Service- Finding the Next Winners
Matt Ober
November 29, 2024
In partnership with
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here
Finding the next DaaS company. Who & Where
I have been reading the World of DaaS newsletter recently and was specifically looking at their analysis of 60 public DaaS companies.
What’s interesting to me is I worked with, took demos from, bought data from, or have partnered with almost every one of these companies in my career. These companies have also bought so many other companies that I have worked with over the years. I have said many times in my newsletter posts in the past, that the best Data companies are rollups. They acquire hundreds of unique data assets to continue to build their moat. The largest of the acquirers also tend to be the ones that spit off and sell the smaller assets over time as well.
One thing that continues to amaze me is how many DaaS companies come out of the UK. Whenever I read the Asymmetric newsletter from Alex Boden I find out about another UK company either raising money, making an acquisition, or that has been around for a century and is now marketing more into the US. Some of the largest data conglomerates like the old Informa Intelligence have been built and scaled in the UK. Maybe it’s because data businesses from the UK tend to come out of media assets or events businesses or maybe it’s just that the UK understands what it takes to build a data behemoth.
So where will the next DaaS conglomerate come from? As I take pitches from early-stage founders in and around the space, one thing I try to understand from their big vision is how they will really continue to protect their data moat. What’s different? Is it how they collect, clean, and structure the data? In this AI technology boom we are living in, it feels like there will be huge opportunities to build data businesses that compete with the big guys much quicker than it took in the past. The big conglomerates in many cases still have tens of thousands of employees offshore in India or the Philippines doing a lot of manual data work. What if all this can be done with 1/10th or 1/100th of the team size by leveraging the latest technology that is coming from our AI boom?
I think real data companies are being created right now and will get to scale and efficiency 10x quicker than I would have thought possible just a few years ago. What’s exciting is these companies are doing it with small teams, getting revenue quickly and the founders are excited and in many cases surprised about the results they are having as they experiment with all of this new technology/capabilities.
Hopefully, in the next 10 years, the World of DaaS will have to expand the market map from 60 public companies to 600 public DaaS companies.
Long Angle: Where HNW Investors Access Institutional-Grade Alternative Investments
Long Angle is a private, vetted community that connects high-net-worth entrepreneurs and executives with institutional-grade alternative investments.
Leveraging collective expertise and scale, members access top-tier opportunities across private equity, private credit, search funds, litigation finance, energy, hedge funds, secondaries, and more.
Investing hundreds of millions of dollars each year, Long Angle negotiates preferential terms and exclusive allocations.
No membership fees.
Reply