Over the weekend I celebrated my 31st birthday and as usual I began to reflect over all the things I’ve done over my lifetime.  I can truly say that in 31 years there are very few things that I have not been exposed to either willingly or otherwise.  All in all it has been a thrilling ride that I wouldn’t change for the world.  OK well maybe a few things.

The one thing that I wouldn’t change about my life for anything is my love of computers and IT.  Ever since I could read I have been writing computer programs and trying to figure out new ways to solve common problems.  In my adulthood this has resulted in a number of business ventures, some successful and some not, that constantly keep me busy.  One common thread in all of these businesses has been one simple key, data.

Data is what makes the world go round.  It is what has propelled Google to the leader in internet search and what makes people so wary about buying things online.  Lots of people and companies have found new ways to process it and there are lots of ways that still remain to be invented.  At the end of the day each of us is nothing more than a group of 1s and 0s stored somewhere in a computer.

So if data is so important, why don’t more people collect it.  Data is available about each and every aspect of our lives.  Much of it is mundane but even the most boring piece of it can give valuable insight into who we are.  In a conversation over the weekend I began the think about the differences in the transit system in Dallas, DART and the one here in the DC area, Metro.  Although I prefer the DART system from an economical standpoint, I am very much a fan of the Metro system due to its technical innovation.

I think of DART as a legacy system as they are still very much dependent on paper processes.  Monthly passes are nothing more than a color coded card that you show whenever you get on a bus, and that allow for unlimited monthly rides.  Metro offers the complete opposite with no flat monthly pricing, everything is based on how much you use the system.  Additionally Metro also uses an electronic system to keep track of ridership.  Although it is not publicly exposed, Metro knows every detail of my individual ridership and can analyze that information in any way they please.  I don’t know that much about what they do with this information, but I would hope that they use it to gauge ridership and plan for improvements in the future.

Sure DART knows how many people ride its system in a given day, but they have no means of tracking who they are.  They can possibly segment into my neighborhood depending on where I start my trips, but they are missing key pieces of granular data that could easily aid in their decision making processes.

If there is one key that I could give to any prospective entrepreneur, it would be to capture as much data as you can about your users.  While it may at first seem irrelevant, with time you will be able to do new and interesting things with this data that will help you increase the level of service you are able to offer your user base.