Data-as-a-Service Startup Intrinio Unveils Content ‘Marketplace'

Chief executive Rachel Carpenter says Intrinio wanted to separate the data types it previously offered as bundled services, to allow users to subscribe only to the data they want.

"We realized that the datasets that we were bundling into one datafeed were very different. We pull in economic data, US public company data─which really shouldn't be that expensive because it's not difficult to obtain─but then we also got this FDIC bank data, which is really valuable data and difficult to scrub," she says.

The marketplace model allows the vendor to bring in third-party data providers to round out its offering, Carpenter says. "Most of our customers are happy with the data that we have, but that are certain datasets that we can't provide─things like analyst estimates, which we can't really source on our own. Allowing third-party providers to post their feeds on our marketplace makes it a more complete package."

The data feeds can be accessed via APIs. Customers can subscribe to as many feeds as they want, and can browse developers' applications and sign up for data plans to power those applications. "If you just want real-time pricing and corporate actions data, you can subscribe to those feeds and all of the pricing will be bundled together, and all of the APIs will be bundled together so that, in essence, you can just use one datafeed," she says.

Intrinio is different to other content marketplaces that resell data from other vendors under a different model, Carpenter says, since Intrinio owns its data and doesn't have to incorporate any resale markup. "If you're just reselling everyone else's data, it's going to get even more expensive, no matter how you break it down," she says.

Another factor that sets the Fintech Marketplace apart from its competitors is that it has its own security master, Carpenter says. "There are other marketplaces which didn't originate as a financial data marketplace... [so] when they started expanding into financial data, they didn't have an identifier system built into their data architecture for tickers─they were just individual databases, so there's no connection based on a security master. So we have our own security master which means that everything is extremely organized."

Initially the marketplace will only carry Intrinio products and real-time pricing data from US exchange IEX (IMD, June 27). Carpenter says it takes time to integrate and map datasets from third-party providers, but the vendor hopes to make data from three other providers available on the platform by early October. Carpenter says the vendor is working with several providers to onboard mutual fund data, corporate actions data, followed by some international data, then will add third parties on a case-by-case basis as part of rolling enhancements. "We're going to be adding international pricing for every exchange in the world apart from Australia and South Africa," she says.