There’s a lot of opinion on the internet, most of it trivial or rubbish. Eagle Alpha trawls the hubbub for insights and trends that subscribers can use for financial gain. For example, knowing the type of people that companies are hiring can give clues to future product strategy, and Eagle Alpha analyses the types of people Apple has been hiring over the last ten years.
The company has built a proprietary algorithm that identifies experts on any topic, and this comment may be something financial investors are willing to pay for.
The Ballsbridge-based startup was founded in 2012 by Emmett Kilduff, a former investment banker who worked with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse in London. He is the son of well-known businessman Tony Kilduff, founder of financial software firm Kindle and chairman of Elgin Capital.
According to Kilduff (38), Eagle Alpha curates the web to provide business insights to clients, who in the main comprise hedge funds and investment banks. Using algorithms and bespoke software, the company scours blogs, social media, forums and websites for data which is parsed by a team of research analysts.
Eureka Moment
Kilduff had his ‘eureka’ moment after reading an article about the importance of Twitter for investment analysts. “I realised that Wall Street was not exploiting the world’s biggest information resource, the World Wide Web,” he says. He then spent several months talking to potential customers about his web-monitoring idea and improving the business plan.
In Association with
Since launching, Eagle Alpha has signed over 40 clients, predominantly in London and New York. Kilduff says that customer inertia is still a big challenge. “Most people think social media is just tweets about Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake. They don’t realise how Wall Street can exploit the web,” he says.
Connected: Eagle Alpha founder Emmett Kilduff
Inertia hasn’t been a problem when it comes to investors. Enterprise Ireland has invested €300,000 and Eagle Alpha’s return to September 2014 discloses equity investment of €1.26m. Kilduff says that the company has secured backing of €3.2m and an additional funding round for some €1.8m is underway to recruit technology and data science engineers to add to the current headcount of 19.
The company’s first accounts, for the period September 2012 to December 2013, show turnover of €85,000 and a net loss of €850,000.
Kilduff says that when fundraising he seeks out people who are “connected on the street and who can advise”. The Eagle Alpha share register includes Tony Kilduff, Guglielmo Sartorri di Borgorrico and Massimo Tosato. “Guglielmo is our senior advisor and was on the executive board of Barclays,” says Kilduff. Tosato is a board member of Schroders plc.
Share Options
Evan Weaver, the firm’s technology advisor, ran the technology group at Twitter. “We award all employees with share options. I believe that employees should be shareholders so that they are incentivised to build shareholder value,” Kilduff maintains, adding that he has plans to increase staff numbers to 70 people over the next two years.
The entrepreneur can bend the ear of his father whenever he needs business advice, and Kilduff advises others thinking of starting a business to embrace the possibility of failure. “Investors in the US applaud you for failing – for having the guts to go down,” he says.
