I got to see the rise and spectacular fall of this space with my own eyes. From my point of view, these companies simply sourced data or blatantly stole it by paying people to break captchas. I always felt their business models were in shambles because it only took 1 major data supplier to block api access to their data to make them completely useless. On top of that, their leadership team was completely inexperienced and lacked basic discipline and leadership skills, causing absurd levels of rotation at key executive levels and unnecessary spending across the board. They’ll surely be better off getting bought by a bigger player, competition is fierce out there and these people are not true technologists, the pond has gone dry at this point…
Indeed, the stories about leadership at some of these companies are insane. I wouldn't want to bring those up because it feels a bit gossipy. But it is well known and cannot be a positive influence.
I got to see the rise and spectacular fall of this space with my own eyes. From my point of view, these companies simply sourced data or blatantly stole it by paying people to break captchas. I always felt their business models were in shambles because it only took 1 major data supplier to block api access to their data to make them completely useless. On top of that, their leadership team was completely inexperienced and lacked basic discipline and leadership skills, causing absurd levels of rotation at key executive levels and unnecessary spending across the board. They’ll surely be better off getting bought by a bigger player, competition is fierce out there and these people are not true technologists, the pond has gone dry at this point…
Indeed, the stories about leadership at some of these companies are insane. I wouldn't want to bring those up because it feels a bit gossipy. But it is well known and cannot be a positive influence.