Bio
- Age of business: Less than a year
- Name of business: instats.co
- Location: Tallinn, Estonia
- Team: Indrek Vainu, Hendrik Luuk
- Funding: €89,000
- Elevator pitch: Find and visualise datasets to create insightful presentations.
What does Instats do?
Instats allows you to discover statistics data and easily visualise it. It helps consulting companies, thinktanks and citizen journalists, to name a few, to easily use fact-based information.
How did you meet?
We met through mutual acquaintances and found that we both share the same vision for building a company.
Where did the business idea come from?
We had friends working with statistics data and they had trouble updating their presentation slides manually at a regular basis so we thought we could make that work easier.
Are you working with any other partners?
We are currently working with a thinktank that is looking for ways in which to display their reports online and visualise their work. It is about how to make large chunks of fact-based information easily understandable for the readers.
How has ODINE helped you so far?
ODINE has helped us by connecting to the open data community, especially with the ODI Summit and training seminars. In addition, we have received excellent mentorship through the program.
What advice would you give to other companies pitching to ODINE?
Narrow down the user problem that you are solving and the value that you provide. Everything else builds from that.
What would you say to other startups thinking of working with open data?
I would encourage them to talk with potential customers and find ways in which open data can bring value to the customers.
How would you encourage big business to buy into the open data movement?
Understandably big businesses are motivated when they see measurable value that open data can provide them. Like with any innovation, demonstrating this may take some time and I would encourage businesses to keep an eye on the open data movement as new solution emerge at a fast pace.
What’s the key trend in open data at the moment?
What we have noticed through our work is the way in which data visualisation is becoming important. One example is citizen journalism where publishing stories that are based on visualised facts can have better argumentation and are easier to understand by the readers. In addition, visualisation plays an important role for the increasing number of businesses that are becoming data driven.
This article first appeared on the Guardian.
