What Now

Andrew Cherwenka and I soft launched our startup, Authintic, last week. Authintic is an analytics technology company enabling permission marketing.

Andrew wrote a much more detailed piece for the Huffington Post on the topic. It’s worth a read. He’s very eloquent and accessible.

I have nothing contradictory to add. Nothing really controversial to say.

Being at the confluence of three mega-trends is where I’m comfortable.

The first is privacy in marketing. The FTC and the EU have made their opinions known. There’s this big fear out there that consumers won’t opt-in. Why the fear? Is anybody doing anything wrong? Common’ people – let’s treat people with respect.

The second are advancements in machine learning and processing power. There are more pragmatists solving interesting problems in more fields than ever before. I know I’m a marketing scientist. I’m going to use the best advancements in machine learning and data science to marketing.

The third is data scale. There’s a lot of complex data out there. There are a lot of complex people asking great questions. Those should be answered. And things should get better.

What Now

Not much changes for most people. I’ll continue to host the Toronto Data Science Group. I’ll carry on with the Digital Analytics Association and the Research Committee. And I’ll continue to blog. These are nice things.

The startup is something that is very important to me; but it isn’t necessarily important to most of the people who happen upon this place. I seek to be really mindful with the sharing. I seek to share the valuable bits.

I’ve been greeted with well wishes by many. Thank you. Wish us luck on this mission.