In a key scene from my favourite movie of all time, Wall Street, Gekko launches into one of his many great speeches. It begins: “The most important commodity I know of is information…” and goes to show what an unfair advantage he generates for himself (and hence how much wealth or value he creates) through the information he can access.
Gekko was no startup investor, but observations rings true for tech startups as well. In my recent interview with Carl Mercier from Defensio he said as much himself when he talked about why Websense acquired them:
“They thought what we were doing was very interesting and they really saw the potential of Defensio. The data that flows through us is extremely valuable for their ThreatSeeker Network.”