Analysts aren’t always right. In fact, far from it, as many investors well know. That’s why the smart money is on Estimize, a crowdsourced platform for financial estimates, and talk about the wisdom of the crowds: Estimize beats The Street 67% of the time – or more!
And the smart money that invested in the company’s $3 million Series B includes WorldQuant Ventures, et al.
CEO and cofounder Leigh Drogin tells us more about the funding and why Estimize is such an odds on favorite.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
This was our Series B. We raised $3M led by WorldQuant Ventures, with WorldQuant LLC being our first customer. Several of our Series A investors participated as well, including Bob Greene at Contour Venture Partners. Our new investors, most of whom come from buy side and sell side institutional backgrounds, include: Agilic Partners, Ross Garron (Head of Cubist Systematic), Frank Sica (Soros Funds), Brian Finn (CEO of Credit Suisse), Jarrod Yuster (Founder of Pico Quant Trading), Peter Nesvold (Argent Square Advisors).
Tell us about your service.
Estimize is an open financial estimates platform that facilitates the aggregation of fundamental estimates from independent, buy-side, and sell-side analysts, along with those of private investors and students. By sourcing estimates from a diverse community of individuals, Estimize provides both a more accurate and a more representative view of expectations compared to sell side only data sets which suffer from several severe biases.
How is it different?
Unlike the “Wall Street” consensus for corporate earnings and revenue estimates, the Estimize consensus includes more than just sell-sideinputs. We incorporate estimates from the buy-side, independent research shops, and non-professionals such as academics and students. Our consensus represents true market expectations, not just the view of one group.
Since you defer to the wisdom of the crowds, what percentage of the time do you best Wall Street?
On average, our consensus is more accurate than Wall Street 67% of the time. On stocks with over 20 estimates, we are more accurate 75% of the time. Law of larger numbers!
What’s your business model?
While the Estimize platform is free to use, we make money through sales of our API, Excel plug-in and premium features, and by licensing data to academics and third party platforms.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’re currently developing more premium products, such as the Estimize Signal, Notable Estimates, Select Consensus and a stock screener. We’ll also be expanding our economic indicator coverage internationally.
