Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale

This interview features Mike, co-founder of Second Measure, discussing the company's origins, its evolution from serving investors to also serving companies, and the core problem it solves: enabling non-coders to analyze behavioral data. Mike explains how their experience in the video game industry, building tools for game designers to understand player behavior, translated into providing analytics for investors using credit card transaction data. The discussion covers the types of questions investors and corporations are interested in, such as company performance, competitive intelligence, and consumer behavior, along with examples like analyzing the impact of food poisoning incidents on Chipotle's revenue or comparing market share between meal kit services. Mike also shares insights into their sales process, the value of alternative data, and the challenges of cleaning and normalizing credit card data due to its unstructured nature.