Originally published on Quora: Why are there so many analytics startups?
Question:
Why are there so many analytics startups in the past 2 years? With Google Analytics getting better every year (for FREE!), what is the value proposition? I understand the need to augment with some new perspectives such as Clicktale, but I’m not sure I understand the value prop of KissMetrics, SpringMetrics, etc?
Answer:
There are two main reasons:
- Features gap between google analytics (free) and google analytics (premium aka 360 now!) — there are a lot companies (esp. with multi-million customers) that want to use premium features but still cant justify the ROI of GA premium. So there are analytics startups out there that try to cater to these “gaps”. Even though GA is improving, there will always be some feature gap(s).
- Access to venture capital for these startups — so these startups found a market and they went for it. They also had access to venture capital (easier two years back then it is today!) and it also helped them that “big data” and “data science” was (and still is!) a highly discussed tech topic.
I believe we will see some consolidation in next few years.