Hi there, 

Since starting CB Insights, 2 of the thorniest technical challenges we’ve dealt with have been:

1. Building a competitor algorithm to identify competitors programmatically. We discussed the challenges of building this algo here.

2. Creating a taxonomy that works and is adaptable to very fast-changing emerging technology markets.

On #2, clients have suggested that we let them organize the data into their own private taxonomies, as they often have very organization-specific ways they like to classify companies.  

So we’ve just launched a feature to let you do that. 

Now, if you're visiting a company profile like that of ghost kitchen Kitopi (which just raised $60M), you can tag it as #ghostkitchen or #on-demand as shown below.

When you're on a profile that has been tagged by you or your team, you can click the tag to see all the companies under that tag and pull data like total funding, investors, geography, etc.

From there, in a single click, you can create an entire dossier on #cloudkitchens and see investment and company trends, as illustrated below.

Go from data to insight in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. If you’ve never tried CB Insights, sign up for a free trial here.

Finally, if the competitor algo and the taxonomy challenge are the types of problems you find interesting, our engineering team is hiring for 8 different roles right now.

Can't put a Band-Aid on this one

China’s public markets plummeted amid concerns about the coronavirus, wiping out a cumulative $445B in market value on Monday in its worst fall since August 2015. 

But how might the outbreak affect private funding? We analyze how virus outbreaks have impacted tech financing in the past here.  

Picks & shovels

Last week, we shared this fantastic cartoon by Alfred Twu on Silicon Valley’s economy on Instagram and it quickly racked up 1K+ likes and numerous comments.  

The most frequent comment was that there is 1 other recipient of VC dollars that is missing, and that is big tech à la AWS for hosting and Google/Facebook for ads.

Bullseye

Work management software co Asana announced today that it is filing for a direct listing. 

It's one of the many tech companies that we anticipated could go public in our 2020 Tech IPO Pipeline report. Check out the rest of our predictions here.

You’re doing great, sweetie
 

2019 saw the birth of 5 new insurtech unicorns, doubling the number of insurtech unicorns globally. 

Dive into more insurtech funding trends in our Q4’19 insurtech report, made in partnership with Willis Towers Watson.

Business Insider. Lea Nonninger (@LeaNonninger) reports on the growth of financial regulations and noncompliance fines and references CB Insights data.

CNBC. Lauren Thomas (@laurenthomas) covers the increasing number of retail bankruptcies and cites CB Insights research. 

WWD. Alexandra Pastore (@ABPastorevous) writes about the future of retail and references our latest State of Retail Tech report.

P.S. We're growing our Strategy & New Business Incubation team. Check out the Business Strategy Manager role here. 

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Chaotic good. Government social media accounts are using memes to increase brand awareness.

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A different kind of streaming war. Big tech cos are scrambling to lure the biggest video gamers to their streaming platforms. 

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Tok the vote. Buzzfeed News is recruiting teen ambassadors to make election-themed TikToks.

Nieman Lab

Stay humble. Was the Amazon HQ2 spectacle driven by Bezos’ envy of Elon Musk?

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