This article explores some of the key data responsibilities that all startups need to be aware of. We will explore some key insights shared by Senior Data Expert, Alaric Snell Pym, here at Register Dynamics and we will explore some of the different ways to approach them.

Let’s start by looking at the core data responsibilities to be aware of:

Legal and ethical data management standards

Startups must ensure that all legal and ethical data management standards are upheld. Without this, when there is due diligence done, if there are any legal issues that crop up, it can result in the loss of confidence from users. This requires a lot of cross-team collaboration.

As an example, when a GDPR request for a user’s data comes in, someone must be sure that all of the requested data about that individual gets found. That means that they need to know exactly where all the different bits of data about people are.

As part of their due diligence checks, investors, business partners and insurers may ask for formal statements to ensure that specific data management standards are being met. Someone needs to take responsibility for this and for signing this off at board-level.

Growth and development in data infrastructure

The organic development of infrastructure can be very rapid in a startup. The positives are that it enables each team to choose the best tool for the job at hand, however, it can also be quite inefficient. With each team or department purchasing their own licenses and having to maintain their own platforms, as well as needing to set up systems between the various platforms to enable data sharing across teams – can lead to a very cost heavy and inefficient set up.

It is often useful to have someone, like a Chief Data Officer (CDO), in charge of general tool choice and set up so that opportunities for sharing and standardisation can be optimised. It is important to avoid technical debt building up in a startup’s data infrastructure.

Guidance and developing a coherent culture around data

Someone needs to take the lead in setting standards and policies when it comes to the data within the organisation. Without any guidance or formal direction, there won’t be a coherent culture around data.

Staff need to be educated so that they understand enough about data to do their job properly. It often works well if a CDO or Senior Data Expert, can help to educate everyone about data, and enable them to gain confidence around their role and part in the organic development of the data infrastructure. They need to understand how it all fits together with the overall policy and hopefully be given everything that they need to make data decisions for themselves.

The vision and big picture view

Whoever holds the vision and big picture view of where data is within an organisation, can spot new opportunities easily. As an example, Usama Fayyad, Chief Data Officer at Yahoo!, helped them to grow their revenues from user targeting by 20 times in 4 years.

For a startup it is really important to be open to and to find novel revenue streams and to understand your users’ behaviour and to be able to turn hunches into quantifiable key performance indicators.

What’s the best way to take charge of all of this data?

At the beginning of your startup you may not need a dedicated resource to manage your data. In practice, a startup’s data management workload often starts quite small. It then grows, sometimes smoothly as data infrastructure organically grows. However, sometimes bigger challenges can appear e.g. regulations around GDPR will need to be addressed before systems are opened to customer data.

Someone will need to address these needs. Perhaps you are lucky enough to have someone with the required skill set already. If so, you will need to make sure that they have the time and resources away from the other demands of their usual job, to handle these new responsibilities. They may also need support in developing and building a data team to help implement projects and carry out specific tasks.

If nobody has the skills or they are too busy with everything else to keep up, then there are 2 other options you can explore:

1. Hire a full-time Chief Data Officer – to take responsibility and lead the data agenda across the organisation. This can be an excellent option but is also a significant investment and it can take time to find the right person for the job.
2. Get support via a CDO-as-a-service organisation (such as Register Dynamics) – to work with a Senior Data Expert with CDO experience. They can focus on specific projects and plug skills gaps where needed. This can be a highly cost effective and flexible alternative to hiring in a full-time CDO, and can be optimised to include training, up-skilling of staff and knowledge transfer for longer term data capability building.

Another option is to do both or all of the above! You can do it yourself initially for as long as that works for you, and then get interim support to move to the next stage in your startup’s development and then move towards hiring a full-time CDO if you wish too!

There are many ways to approach your data responsibilities. The first thing is to be aware of what they are. Then you can make a plan, and we hope that this article helps you with some of those steps. If you want more support, please feel free to contact us and to speak to one of our team or CDO experts.