Innovator: Vik Singh's Infer Mines the Web for Sales Leads

As a coder at Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, Vik Singh, 28, learned firsthand that state-of-the-art data processing gives tech companies a big advantage. That includes data as old-fashioned as sales leads, says Singh. His two-year-old startup, Infer, has developed software that treats a sales transaction as a puzzle that can be solved with an algorithm—instead of finessed over a round of golf and a hearty meal. “The way the typical company manages data is piss-poor in comparison,” he says.

Palo Alto-based Infer has developed analysis software that connects to a company’s sales-tracking system, such as Salesforce.com, and rates customer leads based on the likelihood they’ll pan out. The ranking system relies on 150 signals, including dozens of online data feeds. With basic information about a potential customer’s name and corporate address, Infer begins mining local demographic information pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau, then delves into company hiring practices, job boards, and sample tweets from both the potential customer and other employees of that business. “Companies are doing all kinds of stuff to generate a large volume of leads,” says Singh. “You might as well make sure that the right kinds of deals are being pushed in front of your sales reps.”