OnlyBoth is worth 1,000 data

OnlyBoth, a startup based in Pittsburgh, is using big data analytics to reveal intriguing truths about US universities and colleges. The company has been a long time coming, with its cloud-based software based on work begun in 1998.

Funded by a National Science Foundation grant of $193,000, the technology was initially shelved by co-founder Raul Valdes-Perez to concentrate on Vivisimo. That company grew out of his research at Carnegie Mellon University, and was sold to IBM in 2012. Valdes-Perez has been self-funding the development of OnlyBoth – whose motto is “one sentence is worth 1,000 data – thus far.

The company’s product, a web-based service, has its algorithms sort through structured big data – 3,122 US colleges and universities described by 190 attributes. The software identifies interesting statistics based on a search term. Looking up the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, tells the user that “MIT spends the most on research ($1.128m) among all 3,122 colleges”. The software allows up to 25 concurrent insights per institution.

The company’s datasets are largely based on federal government reports, which are released every couple of years and in the public domain. That information is combined with data collected by staff, such as statistics on alumni that go on to play in the National Football League.

Valdes-Perez said: “One value of this technology is that it really shines a light on data, it makes what is hidden transparent Lots of people talk about college transparency… one way to do it is create a dataset  and generate this sort of content.”