Background
Demo Day was held on April 28th, 2016 to provide select buy-side invitees with insight into:
- How alternative data can support and advance fundamental research.
- The emerging alternative data landscape – major players and the roles they are vying to fill.
- What has and hasn’t worked for funds already active in this space.
Demo Day was organised in partnership with Matei Zatreanu, head of data science at a $20bn hedge fund, as an extension of his long-running alternative data meetup.
Student demos
Four students chosen out of over 1,300 participants in this year’s iteration of our talent development program presented their work:
Ju Tan, NYU Stern ’16
Overview of practical applications of Orbital Insight car count data. Based on the author’s earlier academic work.
Taylor Henderson, Texas A&M ’16
Analysis of Chipotle’s performance following the E. coli outbreak. Uses car count data from RS Metrics.
Aldo Eysaman, Boston College ’18
Demonstration of several ways to use Ayasdi‘s Topological Data Analysis platform in investment research.
YipitData demo
We are pleased to have been able to host Vinicius Vacanti, Co-Founder and CEO of YipitData, for his first public presentation of his company’s work. Vinicius presented research on Priceline, AirBnB, JD.com, Etsy, and Groupon.
About YipitData
YipitData is a research firm specializing in analyzing company web data for investors. YipitData is a NYC-based, VC-backed team of data & research analysts and engineers who work with over 60 of the top institutional investors in the world.
Using data publicly available on company and other websites, YipitData provides frequent updates on company metrics, assesses progress of long-term strategic plans, provides data around company developments and alerts investors to trends in the data.
For more information, please visit YipitData’s website.
Coverage
Companies YipitData analyses using scraped data:
- Chinese E-Commerce (BABA, JD, VIPS)
- Online Travel (PCLN, EXPE, TRIP, AirBnB)
- Online E-Commerce Marketplaces (W, EBAY, ETSY, MELI, GRPN)
- Auto Marketplaces (AN, KMX)
- SaaS (WDAY, VEEV, NOW)
- Social Media (TWTR)
- Financials (PYPL, LC, Prosper)
- Retail (LULU, SLCY), and
- Real Estate (ZG)
Keynote
Gene Ekster has built a wealth of alternative data experience in his roles as head of R&D at Point72 Asset Management, Director of Data Product at 1010Data, and Senior Analyst at Majestic Research (now ITG Investment Research).
He currently works with asset management firms and data providers in a consulting capacity to help integrate alternative data into the investment process. He can be reached via LinkedIn.
Gene kindly agreed to share his thoughts on the state of alternative data space – and how he sees it evolving going forward.
Show speech highlights
Our partners
Our students had access to a number of alternative data sets and analytics platforms. The following stood out as particularly helpful:
Each of these has been featured in Demo Day presentations.
If your firm is interested in having their data featured at our next event, please contact us.
Special thanks to
You!
Thank you for making our first Demo Day a resounding success. We hope to see you again soon.
To make sure you are notified when we are planning our next alternative data event, please register here: