No different than who you grew up with as a kid, as the old saying goes you are who you hang around and if you’re in circles with smart people that are making a big impact in their fields (finance, philanthropy, etc.) that’s a tribe you should be a part of, and we fortunately are which has given us a unique perspective on that.

It has been both a wild ride and fun journey guiding top hedge funds on ways to better understand social media data along with SEO initiatives (discovering social media trends, understanding why certain things rank in XYZ position in Google search, etc.) while everything is coming full circle today with AI in the mix.

In particular, there’s a seesaw effect happening now where hedge funds, VCs and other financial institutions are relying on social media data/insights more than ever while at the same time trying to effectively market their solutions to beat competitors using the same methodologies/platforms, yet many times those two worlds are independent and never fused together – yet have to be.

Going back to another old saying because we’re geeks, if “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” which is similar to the above dilemma, how can you paint a true picture of the situation at hand then incrementally execute on specific goals? You can’t.

The quant approach hedge funds took early on was limited by blinders whether that’s tech obstacles (limited hardware, bandwidth, etc.) or simply personal blinders where teams were pushed so hard to solve specific problems that they ended up being oblivious to the world around them, including new innovations taking place that could maybe help them. And that’s where taking a multi-modal approach to everything shines.

Think about it this way: If you can fuse all of the data/numbers that matter for any particular solution using a quant approach that would be magical, however how do you break through internal roadblocks to fuse silos across all departments? That requires the sales team sharing with the marketing team and tech team, etc.

The point is, companies need to operate more holistically to bring both data and people together to achieve the best results in the end based on common goals.

As one of the few consulting firms that sees what’s around the next turn based on our experience, if you need help understanding the future we got your back.