

A Tiny Startup’s Plot to Beat Google at Big Data - hwang89
http://wrd.cm/1k2ZiLj

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inconshreveable
The thing that's missing from this article (which is relevant to this crowd)
is the incredible focus on simplicity of Keen's API. Keen's API for reporting
metrics is the right one. Any Keen SDK has essentially one API call for
reporting metrics:

    
    
        keen.add_event("collection_name", {
            "arbitrary": "dictionary properties",
            "with_any_type": -11.23
        })
    

For developers accustomed to instrumenting their applications with various
metrics libraries, this is akin to finding the holy grail. Most APIs for
metrics collection require you to decide up front what metrics you want,
whether it is a time series or a count or a gauge or a ratio. And even after
you've figured _that_ out, there is a combinatorial explosion of different
metric collections you have to create for every combination of filters that
interest you.

For the developer, Keen's API is so powerful because it lets you defer almost
all of your "question-asking" until later (which is when you want to think
about it anyways because you can never predict up front all of the questions
you want to ask about your data).

When I began to evaluate options for monitoring ngrok's usage and performance,
Keen struck me both for getting the abstraction right, and because I have
watched company after company dump countless amounts of money and developer
time into homegrown analytics systems that materialize either too late or far
over budget.

Disclaimers:

\- I am Keen customer for ngrok.com
([https://ngrok.com/status](https://ngrok.com/status))

\- Compelled by the power of their product, and the competence of their team,
I now work for Keen.

~~~
jxf
I see that they price in terms of events/month.

Is there a limit as to how big an "event" can be? Is there a limit to how long
they hold onto it?

~~~
mwetzler
Hi! I'm on the Keen IO team. We have a limit around 1000 properties per event.

For small accounts, we don't currently enforce data archiving, so your data
sticks around as long as you want it to.

For large volume customers, where storage & querying large data sets becomes a
significant cost, we discuss retention requirements when doing the pricing
negotiation.

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noelwelsh
As inaccurate titles go, this is a exemplary one. Other than that, a nice if
fluffy overview of Keen. The "data" space is getting incredibly complicated
and it will be interesting to see who finds a profitable niche.

~~~
mwetzler
The title was definitely a surprise! We don't see ourselves as David to
Google's Goliath, though that title & dramatic shadowy photo might have you
believe otherwise. :)

~~~
tucaz
You should revisit the David to Goliath story :)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_the_unheard_story_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_the_unheard_story_of_david_and_goliath.html)

It is worth watching, if not for the accurateness of the facts, but by the
amazing point of view.

~~~
mwetzler
I'm a big fan of MG and this was so great! It really does paint the story in a
new way. Thanks for sharing.

Still, David was intent on destroying Goliath. I want our company to be the
best at what we do, but that's not the same as wanting to beat and/or destroy
Google. I'd like for Google to stick around for a long time, inventing new
cars and better internet and whatnot :)

------
welder
Why not a more automatic approach like
[http://heapanalytics.com](http://heapanalytics.com)? Their js snippet starts
automatically collecting all click events, then I group and analyze events on
their website.

How is this "big data" when I have to make backend code changes to manually
add each event using keen's api library? There's no way I can get as many
events adding them one-by-one.

~~~
pnachbaur
We emphasize "event data" which goes beyond blanket monitoring. This is "big
data" because what you're tracking could still happen at high volume and
velocity. We leave the third V, variety, up to you - ultimately you will know
your business best and can create and extend the data model you need. Making a
backend code change to add a single event collection could immediately lead to
millions of very rich data points!

My colleague wrote an excellent blog post on about the event data approach and
I think you might enjoy the read! [https://keen.io/blog/53958349217/analytics-
for-hackers-how-t...](https://keen.io/blog/53958349217/analytics-for-hackers-
how-to-think-about-event-data)

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dpiers
Keen is one of those companies like GitHub, Heroku, or Mailchimp that makes it
easier to focus on what I'm actually trying to do. Best of luck to them.

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drone
Keen has a great team, and some great ideas + technology. They were on it back
at the Techstars Cloud program, and glad to see them getting some press these
days. Kyle and Ryan are both wonderful to talk to about big data problems.
Keep up the good work guys!

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AznHisoka
Beat Google at Big Data? OK, great sneaky way to put "Beat Google at X" in a
headline.. too bad Google's business isn't primarily about providing tools in
X (and if it is, it's probably < 0.01% of their focus/revenue).

~~~
david927
You don't understand: whoever gets Big Data, beats Google. Period. Google's
main business is web text search -- but the best text search doesn't stand a
chance against good data search. All those pages will happily become data as
soon as someone makes that breakthrough to make it feasible and compelling.

Text search is "horse-and-carriage" and Google is certainly its king. But data
is the coming "automobile", and all bets in that space are off.

~~~
AznHisoka
But who has that data? Google. And who else??? Big data is not just the tools
to analyze that data. It's also HAVING Big Data.

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apandhi
Keen seems awesome, except I have a high volume startup with no funding and no
revenue right now. We'd blow past the 50k event/month within the first few
days for sure.

I really wish there was a more affordable way to do this. Though, I guess you
get what you pay for.

It actually reminds me of Mixpanel. Both are too expensive for my liking :(

~~~
mwetzler
We offer discounts for startups! Email me! michelle@keen.io

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Jormundir
.. tomorrow around 9am .. Google buys KeenIO for $900 million.

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mariusz331
The thing I like most about Keen IO is their team. They are very open and
would help anyone who finds their way to their Hipchat room.

~~~
dataisfun
You are not the first to note this about the team. Uniquely nice ppl.

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yungether
The Next Big Thing You Missed: A Tiny Startup’s Plot to Be Purchased by Google

