I just read a great post over at the Scout blog about what website operators can learn from Wall Street. I have had this thought before, that web analytics and stock trading have a lot in common.
By looking at our websites like their own micro-economies (especially web apps, subscription, and saas sites), we actually have a lot more control over our financial outcomes than Wall Street investors. It’s a pretty cool way to think about it, I think.
We know that Paulson’s trades paid off. In fact, Paulson’s personal share of the profits ($4 billion) was almost as much as Google’s net income in 2007.
Only from the outside did Paulson’s actions look high risk. From the inside, it was a data-driven decision. It was anything but a gamble.
On the surface, a software business seems dramatically different than credit default swaps. However, when you’re delivering software via the web like us, you’re not really in the business of writing software. It’s 30% software, 70% micro-economy. It’s a world John Paulson would dream of – mountains of data, collected in real-time, with ample opportunities for testing theories.
