Insider Update, Jan 2024 Edition
Hello, Babbage Insight Insiders! We hope this email finds you in great spirits.
A Warm Welcome
You are receiving this because you form our core group of Insiders. You have been active friends of ours, sharing your time and knowledge these past few months as we look to hone our products and the company.
We would love to continue having you share this journey with us. We're thus excited to share the first chapter in our journey to revolutionize Storytelling with Data! Here we go...
This Past Month
The most important thing we’ve done recently is reach internal clarity on what our initial product should be, how it should be built, whom we should look to sell to, and how our products might evolve in the long run.
We’ve also been doing the more obvious stuff like competitor analysis, detailed artifact production etc.
Well, What Is Your Product?
Our first product is Babbage Insight Ada. (It’s alphabetical, and apt.) It will provide Exceptional Insights to Decision Makers, by exploring their data exhaustively.
“Exceptional Insights” mean two things:
Insights about Outliers. For example, Babbage Insight Ada notices that some measure is moving differently than expected... the exact same way it did back in May 2016! To solve that, you did action X then. Perhaps you want to consider action X again?
Insights that are Surprising and Unexpected. A go-to example we use is that companies would rarely look to correlate staffing a Customer Support Center to hourly ambient temperature variation… until Babbage Insight Ada suggests they do so.
Babbage Insight Ada is built for the busy businessperson. We make it incredibly easy for you to get the story; it’s personalized to your role and interests. You take action the moment you discover an Exceptional Insight, without waiting days for analysis to surface it.
This Next Month
Babbage Insight Ada is likely not easy to build. As James Cameron said, it being difficult gives us a tactical edge.
We are refining our messaging, and plugging holes in our documentation and understanding. We are continuing to actively interview widely to validate our product portfolio.
We will most likely start looking seriously for fundraising opportunities. If you are interested in helping us out here, reach out! (Feel free to forward this email, as well: we’re Building in Public, after all.)
Some Exceptional Insights
A fun part of our journey is how we have started using ChatGPT as a tool to help us do our work. Here are some of the ways we’ve used it:
Populating our FAQ with questions to ponder.
Researching target markets and their potential.
The structure and tone of this email is, of course, a ChatGPT suggestion. The images are obviously Dall·E.
Summarizing our interviews has by far been the most time-efficient use of the tool, though!
We record our video conversation, let it flow naturally, and don’t get distracted by note-taking.
Zoom or Google Meet automatically transcribes it into, well, an unintelligible mess.
ChatGPT consumes that unintelligible mess and turns it into a fairly decent, if trite, summary.
We add our key takeaways to that summary, manually.
We feed that summary into a private chatbot that is now a repository of all of our past conversations.
How You Can Help
Spread the word! Your referrals and introductions to potential clients or partners are invaluable. Also, we welcome any feedback on our product or strategy - your insights are always appreciated.
Contact Information and Feedback Request
We love hearing from you! Reach out to us at team@babbageinsight.com for any questions, suggestions, or just a friendly chat about our company, the industry, or really anything at all.
Search Engine Optimization
“AI”. (Sorry, we just had to do it.)
Looking forward to our continued collaboration,
Karthik & Manu (Co-Founders)
Karthik Shashidhar (LinkedIn) (Email) is an award-winning data science leader, having performed multiple roles across data science and analytics over the last dozen years. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President of Data at Delhivery (one of India’s largest logistics companies). In addition to this, Karthik has written a book on market design, written a column for one of India’s largest business newspapers and taught at IIM Bangalore. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Madras, and a PGDM (equivalent to an MBA) from IIM Bangalore.
Manu Bhardwaj (LinkedIn) (Email)) has 15+ years of US-based technology product leadership experience, focusing on online consumer lending platforms and investment banking technology. While in Chicago, he built consumer lending+BNPL+credit card issuance platforms at Amount Inc., for partners HSBC, PNC Bank, Capital One, Avant and others. While in New York City, he led global risk management and software development functions at Deutsche Bank, JPMorganChase and Bloomberg LP. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from PESIT Bangalore, and a PGDM (equivalent to an MBA) from IIM Bangalore.