Comments on: Leadspace Receives Investment. Begins Recruiting. http://startupmania.net/2010/03/06/leadspace/ News from the Israeli Startup Scene Wed, 15 Sep 2010 05:48:48 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Pavel http://startupmania.net/2010/03/06/leadspace/comment-page-1/#comment-213 Pavel Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:17:17 +0000 http://startupmania.net/?p=644#comment-213 Data Essence originally targetted the financial sector - aiming at providing accurate info regarding 'hot' items that trigger trading/investments. However, given that their concept was actually a poor remake of ancient techniques as employed by companies such as Relegence (OpenNLP + MySQL database + Poor quality taxonomies and basic scoring mechanism) - their system was awfully slow and practically unusable, not to mention the terrible quality of information they provided and every piece of text that had the word 'cellular' - automatically popped up 5000 alerts for any company in the industry that deals with electronics. This made them fail all beta sites and they needed cash fast to survive. Vertex invested quite a lot in this company and wouldn't let it die, so it partnered with JVP in an attempt to save the company by shifting direction and trying to leverage what they have (which is currently too slow and non-scalable) in other markets where there's no need for accuracy or performance (and where your output cannot really be measured because it's just a 'lead' and you're not committing to anything). I'm sorry to say, but this move is quite poor - as they are entering a market that is dominated by a wealth of vendors which have by far better algorithms and genuine technologies (not to mention the fact that DataEssence/LeadSpace is actually infringing patents issued by Relegence years ago!) and they are not offering anything exciting or new, apart from arrogant claims of being unique. Websites such as SiloBreaker which employ similar algorithms and techniques, make LeadSpace / DataEssence seem quite pale and a big mistake by JVP (which I doubt have ever conducted a true due diligence of DataEssence before having made this investment). Sad but true. Data Essence originally targetted the financial sector – aiming at providing accurate info regarding ‘hot’ items that trigger trading/investments.
However, given that their concept was actually a poor remake of ancient techniques as employed by companies such as Relegence (OpenNLP + MySQL database + Poor quality taxonomies and basic scoring mechanism) – their system was awfully slow and practically unusable, not to mention the terrible quality of information they provided and every piece of text that had the word ‘cellular’ – automatically popped up 5000 alerts for any company in the industry that deals with electronics.
This made them fail all beta sites and they needed cash fast to survive. Vertex invested quite a lot in this company and wouldn’t let it die, so it partnered with JVP in an attempt to save the company by shifting direction and trying to leverage what they have (which is currently too slow and non-scalable) in other markets where there’s no need for accuracy or performance (and where your output cannot really be measured because it’s just a ‘lead’ and you’re not committing to anything).

I’m sorry to say, but this move is quite poor – as they are entering a market that is dominated by a wealth of vendors which have by far better algorithms and genuine technologies (not to mention the fact that DataEssence/LeadSpace is actually infringing patents issued by Relegence years ago!) and they are not offering anything exciting or new, apart from arrogant claims of being unique.
Websites such as SiloBreaker which employ similar algorithms and techniques, make LeadSpace / DataEssence seem quite pale and a big mistake by JVP (which I doubt have ever conducted a true due diligence of DataEssence before having made this investment).

Sad but true.

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