Unlocking the Long Tail of Knowledge: Keynote by Max Cartellieri, MD of Alpha Sights at the NOAH 2012 Conference in London, Old Billingsgate on the 6th of November 2012

1. Unlocking the Long Tail of Knowledge
Max Cartellieri, Co-Founder & MD, AlphaSights

2. Ten minutes – three messages
 It’s exciting
 It’s complex
 (and yes, there’s money in it)
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3. The Long Tail of Knowledge
Knowledge
Experts
“Regular” People = Long Tail
Population
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4. It‟s exciting because…
 7 billion „users‟
 Asking for advice in human nature
 Potential for knowledge sharing vastly increased online/mobile
 Notion of „collective intelligence‟ -> can we as a species become smarter?
 Wisdom of Crowds
 Crowdsourcing (e.g. Innocentive)
 …
 A lot of research happening right now (e.g. MIT Center for Collective
Intelligence)
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5. It‟s complex because…
 Peer-to-peer knowledge traditionally not monetized
 Information goods – headache for traditional economics:
 Experience good -> Can‟t value
 Adverse selection -> Don‟t trust
 Nobel Prize for “analyses of markets with asymmetric information” (Akerlof, Spence and
Stiglitz, 2001)
 No “eBay of Expertise” - Google Answers, Keen.com, Inforocket etc. all shut
down / morphed
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6. Knowledge – trying to make some sense of it…
Objective /
Fact-Based
Subjective /
Experience-Based
Standardized / Repeated Bespoke / Unique
Traffic-driven, ad-supported models Pay-per-use / subscription models
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7. Take 1: ciao.com (*1999)
 5.7 million consumer-written product reviews
covering more than 10 million products
 Leading pan-European online shopping portal -
19.1m Unique Visitors / month*
 Local language sites in the UK, France,
Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden
 Revenues from advertising and e-commerce
commissions
* Comscore, January 2012
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8. Take 1: ciao.com (1999-2008)
Ciao
Ciao
launched
Year 0
1999 Year 1
2000 Year 2
2001 Year 3
2002 Year 4
2003 Year 5
2004 Year 6
2005 2006 7
Year 2007 8
Year 2008 9
Year

9. Take 2: AlphaSights (*2008)
 B2B „knowledge broker‟
 Connecting professionals seeking specialist
knowledge with those possessing it
 Core users in knowledge-intense, cross-
sector functions such as
 Asset Management (Hedge Funds)
 Private Equity
 Strategy Consulting
 Corporate M&A
 …
 ~ 100 professionals in London, New
York, Hong Kong
 First interaction delivered in February 2009 -
now delivering several thousand interactions
per month
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14. Take 2: AlphaSights (*2008)
Ciao
AlphaSights
Today
Launch
Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7 Year 8 Year 9