"Big Ass Data" Wins NYC Pitchfest

If you’re looking for one of the major themes of the current startup scene, look to the marriage of social media and organization of huge amounts of data generated on Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like. That, at least, is one takeaway from a pitchfest Monday evening by young entrepreneurs put on by Under30CEO.

Indeed, the winner of the competition could fit right into the space where social data meets search and more traditional content creation and organization—all assuming, that Knodes does what founder and CEO Ron Williams said it will in what was easily the slickest presentation of the night.

The founders of six young companies proved that it takes a pretty wide masochistic streak to be an entrepreneur by showing up in the Midtown Manhattan offices of Microsoft to present their companies to venture capitalists and try to respond to the VC's tough questions and at times harsh advice. And they did it in front of a group of fellow entrepreneurs, with no promise that they’d land any backing out of the ordeal.

The idea, instead, was to teach the entrepreneurs to face the kind of tough questions and feedback they’ll confront in the real rough-and-tumble world of raising money.

Feedback like this, given by Hezekiah Griggs of H360 Capital to Jason Nadaf of SureDone: “I just don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

Five out of the six companies that made presentations touched on the integration of social information on everything from tapping into common interests among workers at large companies to raising money for charity.

Williams’ company, for instance, started as a search tool to help people connect more closely with those in their social network who had expertise in certain subject areas—to give users a more targeted feed of news and information in their social groups.

It has since pivoted to become what Williams called a Big Data as a Service, or “badass,” company. Knodes (which uses the Web address Knod.es) is still mining the social Web to parse people’s interests, likes, dislikes, and areas of expertise. But Williams said he planned to work with publishers and other content providers to target their information to those most likely to be interested in it.

“We are acting as an agent,” he said. But there is still a big weakness, which the venture capitalists, despite generally positive responses to Williams’ presentation, pounced upon.

He’s not yet ready to talk dollars and cents. “I think people are going to pay,” he said. But who and how much aren’t as clear.

Williams told Portfolio.com his company was in talks with a major radio broadcast company, as well as a publisher. “We’re having those conversations now,” he said.

We’ll see how those talks go, and whether Knodes really is a badass company.

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Kent Bernhard Jr. is News Editor of Portfolio.com