Every single minute, 2.5MB of new data is generated per every human being on the planet — a staggering figure that just keeps growing. Though one might think that Silicon Valley titans are responsible for this flood of information, the vast majority of new data actually comes from small and medium sized businesses. Growing alongside this pool of data is a hungry global market of data brokers and exchanges, poised to top $4T by the end of the decade. The problem? Most of those SMEs lack the expertise and resources to properly value and leverage their data assets. Instead, data assets languish, unoptimized, and SMEs miss out on the opportunity to realize their value.
Prior to launching Gulp Data, Lauren Cascio felt this tension first-hand as both a founder and an investor. While spearheading the data monetization strategy at one of her earlier companies, she could clearly see that her company’s data had intrinsic, if intangible, value beyond the revenue that it generated. However, there was no place for data on the balance sheet under traditional GAAP rules, and the highly opaque data brokerage market offered little transparency as to how the market might value their particular datasets.
Lauren realized that founders of all stripes were facing the same problem: loaded with data assets, but unable to access or quantify their value. She also saw benefits to data’s unique properties as an asset — non-depletive, highly fungible, and just as liquid, if not more, than traditional assets like equipment or real estate. Now, as co-Founder of Gulp Data, she aims to prove that data is not only valuable, it’s a good bet for borrowers and lenders.
Gulp Data offers loans backed by a copy of the borrowing company’s data assets as collateral. Alongside partner investment banks, Gulp Data helps companies unlock real value from data assets that have been ignored by traditional accounting practices. These loans can be a key non-dilutive funding source, allowing growing companies to optimize on all their holdings without giving up equity or control of their operations.
Lauren Cascio, Partner
Gulp Data also provides rapid valuations of data assets, complete with insights into the sprawling data marketplace. In addition to human expertise, they leverage proprietary machine learning models trained on tens of thousands of datasets across multiple data liquidity exchanges to reveal real-time market demand for data. These valuations inform the loans Gulp Data offers, while also giving companies a better understanding of their data assets.
While traditional data valuation is a costly and lengthy affair, often requiring months of work from big name consulting firms, Gulp Data has forged a path that is both more efficient and comprehensive. In their first year in operation, they completed more than 100 data valuations, each in a matter of days.
Gulp Data’s headquarters in San Juan acts as the central hub for their growing hybrid team and network of borrowers, lenders and data partners. From this vantage point, Gulp Data is poised to lead the charge and bring data-as-an-asset into the mainstream so companies of all sizes can leverage its value.
