E9: "Diving Into the Data of 4000+ Tech Markets" | Anand Sanwal, CB Insights

Erik Torenberg sits down with Anand Sanwal, CEO of CB Insights. Over 900,000 people turn to CB Insights for the insights they share in their newsletter. Riverside.fm is a presenting sponsor of Media Empires. Go to https://creators.riverside.fm/MediaEmpires + use code MEDIAEMPIRES for 20% off individual plans. Media Empires is part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: www.turpentine.co In this conversation, Anand and Erik discuss data collection, scaling across different technology markets, media and data businesses, and more. - SPONSOR: Head to Beehiiv, the newsletter platform built for growth, to power your own. Connect with premium brands, scale your audience, and deliver a beautiful UX that stands out in an inbox.  🐝to https://Beehiiv.com and use code "EMPIRES" for 20% off your first three months. - We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Founding a business is just the tip of the iceberg; the real complexity comes with scaling it. On 1 to 1000, hosts Jack Altman and Erik Torenberg dig deep into the inevitable twists and turns operators encounter along the journey of turning an idea into a business. Hear all about the tactical challenges of scaling from the people that built up the world’s leading companies like Stripe, Ramp, and Lattice. Our first episode with Eric Glyman of Ramp is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/1to1000 RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Run the Numbers is a weekly podcast about financial metrics and business models, designed for ambitious people operating tech startups. It's a collection of things host CJ Gustafson (CFO at Partstech and writer of Mostly Metrics) has learned and thought about in the trenches as a tech CFO. Subscribe to listen on the platform of your choice: https://link.chtbl.com/runthenumbers TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Episode Preview (02:00) What is CB Insights (02:45) What CB Insights does (03:30) The needs of the CB Insight customer (07:00) Scaling to a thousand markets (12:16) Evolution of CB Insights (15:58) Which data is most helpful to collect? (17:51) A dataset Anand would want to acquire (19:45) Events and Community (21:32) The Future of CB Insights (23:15) Increasing density of coverage (26:48) Perspective on past opportunities (28:30) Litmus test for what is worth Focusing On (30:08) Breadth of data front (32:38) Private analyses (34:25) Data business idea: startup-investor pitches (38:16) Data business idea: Reference checks (39:12) Online reputations (42:20) Which media businesses should be data businesses? (46:10) Scalable and programmatic ways of acquiring data (48:50) If Anand was starting today (49:44) Building a data business on top of a successful media company LINKS: CB Insights: https://www.cbinsights.com/ SOCIALS: Anand's Twitter: https://twitter.com/asanwal Anand's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anandsanwal?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F Erik's Twitter: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg