Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with John Plavan, CEO of EarthRisk (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else you would like to discuss?

John Plavan: The main thing I want to address is that we are not a big data company, but we benefit from big data processes. This kind of [technology] has a huge economic and human benefit that comes from being able to quantify relationships and use predictive analytics techniques and tools that didn’t exist a decade ago. If we can be this successful in weather forecasting, to say nothing of the number of advancements that are happening all around the world in other fields, well, we can’t begin to understand the developments that are going to come out of this a decade from now.

I think everyone should be paying as much attention to these tools [as possible] to try to be creative and determine what kinds of relationships exist between data sets and desired outcomes. If we can continue to improve our processes with weather forecasting, we can employ these methods with other types of weather events and other types of valuable outcomes. To me it is not that we have a big problem and a great company we have developed to solve the problem. We have all of that. But what has enabled us is really the big story here. The developments in predictive analytics, big data capabilities, and cheap computing processing power are the next big story. I am excited to play in this space right now, but I feel we are still in the very beginning stages.

SM: That is very interesting. How long have you been in business?

JP: Technically we formed the company in July 2010 to build a software prototype to be tested, to determine if in fact we wanted to build a company around it. We didn’t hire any employees and didn’t start building the company until about a year later. June 2011 was when we really started hiring and building up the production version of our software. Generally, I would say we started in June 2011.

SM: And you are at over $5 million in revenue right now?

JP: We are right about there, but we are growing.

SM: Five million dollars in a couple of years of business is a very good rate. It shows you are very sharp and well positioned in that space.

JP: We think so. We have a very capable team and really smart PhDs, and we have an extended team of consultants and researchers. I think it is great, and we are doing some things the market really wants.

SM: Very cool. Thank you very much for sharing your story.

JP: Thank you for your time, I appreciate it.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with John Plavan, CEO of EarthRisk
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