Analytics are no longer for humans. Here’s how we can fix that.
By: Bill Su
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Critical Thinking, Digital Marketing, Data Science, Startup

Analytics are no longer for humans. Here’s how we can fix that.

Our vision and mission at Humanlytics: to humanize and democratize analytics so they’re accessible to everyone.

It’s time to make data analytics human friendly again.

Two years ago, I fell in love with data. A business school student at the time, I was extremely frustrated by the fact that much of business consulting is based on “assumptions” and “intuition” rather than concrete facts. The ability to analyze clients’ data in depth gave me confidence in the solutions I was recommending.

I then spent the entire summer learning about data science. This led me to become even more fascinated by the power of data, and how it could be used to benefit the lives of millions if not billions of people.

Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between what it could be and what it actually is. In the current world, our data is concentrated in the hands of the privileged few, the ones that have the money, influence, and power, to collect, analyze, and make sense of the data they have. On the other side, small players, especially small business owners, struggle to make sense of and obtain meaningful business insights even when using basic data tools such as Google Analytics.

Even worse, this “data gap” has widened over recent years. If we were to look at all of the data analytics startups of the recent past we would find that the majority of them are still making tools for large corporations to help that are focused on helping businesses understand customer behavior at a more granular level. This allows them to target customers more precisely, and eventually, make more money.

In these cases, rather than act as an agent of equality, data has been contorted and used as a tool of corporate machines to suppress and further exploit the ordinary people, it has become an agent of inequality…

Technology should be created for people, to fuel the pursuit and preservation of universal values such as equality, freedom and happiness, but data is not. As a machine of exploitation, data is no longer human, it is scary and boring and we need to change that.

I am not going to pretend that I am some sort of data analytics expert: I am a business person who happens to know data. But the fact is that the issues that I have described above do not require deep analytic capabilities to solve — they require compassion, close attention to user experience, and a deep conviction that technology should benefit the masses rather than the privileged few with the money and tools to take advantage of it.

What drove me to found Humanlytics, is the very thing that led Steve Jobs to found Apple, Bill Gates to found Microsoft, and Elon Musk to found Tesla. We all want to see a world where technology ( and in my case data) is useful to everyone, a world where the small businesses down the street can use data to better their customer experience and improve the experiences of customers — a world where data is used to create happiness and liberty, instead of prohibiting them.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. Image via Bookishly.

Today, my founding team and I embark upon a journey. We are not creating something that is ground breaking or fundamentally different. Rather, we are trekking in the other direction- we’re focusing on the small things and the fundamentals and we’re focusing on doing them really really well. This will help small business owners understand what data truly means and help them leverage the fundamentals into improving their own businesses.

The ultimate goal of our company is impact. That’s the very reason that, after graduating, I joined the Venture for America fellowship and moved to Cleveland (ventureforamerica.org). It is also the very reason I decided to forgo other opportunities to join my family business in China and pursue a career in data here in the United States.

I see a more urgent need here: where data knowledge is scarce, where people are frustrated, and where I can help. The bottom line is, like a spoiled millennial, I want to help people through my work and make an impact.

So, what’s next? At Humanlytics we’re still in the early phases but as we explore and experiment we want to bring you along for the ride so we will be publishing tons of free content and tools to help small and medium sized business owners explore tools like Google Analytics, Social Media Platforms, and E-commerce platforms. Most of the content is posted on our website (humanlytics.co), social media (twitter, facebook), and this medium account. And please, leave us some good feedback.

Don’t tell me “Oh, your tool is amazing, I never thought of that!” We don’t want to create fancy tools that are totally useless. We came into this expecting some of our content to be worthless and our tools to crash and burn. So please, don’t bear the pain nobly. Let us know.

Thank you for reading this article, this is something that I am really passionate about. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please email me at bill@humanlytics.co. I’m looking forward to our conversations! :D