Five years ago, companies wanted data. Today, companies have so much data that they’re wringing their hands, wondering how they can possibly make use of it all.
That’s the problem being solved by Unsupervised, the Boulder-based startup enabling companies to use their data to answer questions that they didn’t even know that they had. The engineers at Unsupervised have developed machine learning algorithms that find patterns in huge, vastly complex datasets, digging out insights that can fundamentally change business.
We first met Unsupervised when the company was only a few months old, but it was clear from the beginning that this team, led by two experienced entrepreneurs, would be able to find a fit in the data-heavy connectivity industry. In 2018, Unsupervised Co-Founder & President Tyler Willis was invited to present to a small group of customer experience executives at the C5 Pitch Event, presented by UpRamp.
We were hugely impressed by the traction they got from that group, and invited Co-Founder and CEO Noah Horton, along with Tyler, to give a live demo at the CableLabs Innovation Showcase, presented by UpRamp, at the 2018 Summer Conference in Keystone. Since then, Unsupervised’s trajectory has been up and to the right - and we’re not at all surprised.
“When we first met UpRamp, we saw it as a chance to learn more about the connectivity industry and how we could expand Unsupervised to meet that industry’s unique needs,” said Tyler. “Up until that point, we had worked with a number of Fortune 500 customers across retail, consumer products, and financial services, but we had not yet touched cable and broadband.”
Unsupervised has found fit within the connectivity industry by focusing on data relating to churn, customer acquisition, and network performance. The operators they have worked with are focused on using their existing data to increase KPIs, moving beyond the human capabilities of traditional data analytics platforms.
According to Tyler, Unsupervised's unique selling point is that it can analyze data with millions of attributes. Not only that, but Unsupervised doesn’t rely on human analysis to find patterns and answers in the data, unlike most other data analytics platforms.
Ultimately, says Tyler, Innovation Showcase provided Unsupervised with the ability to quickly learn about the industry by getting into existing data and seeing what kind of problems would need to be solved. They’ve met with around 15 different operators since then, with several engagements underway.
The past few years have taught us that data capture is the easy part - but processing it in a way that enables timely, data-driven decision making is the challenge. The journey towards truly data-driven business operations continues, and we can't wait to see how Unsupervised leads the way there.