Meet SizeUp, The Startup Using Fintech To Narrow The Information Divide For Small Businesses

SizeUp CEO Anatalio Ubalde is the architect of a fintech platform that provides data for small businesses that only Fortune 500 companies could typically afford. He’s also a springboarding platform diver who once chose between entering grad school and training for the Olympics.

The difference between diving and business? There’s no medal for second place in business, Ubalde said.

That’s not a concern for SizeUp, a startup based on an idea he had 20 years ago that's now possible due to advances in computing power.

“In our case, it’s all blue ocean.”

Ubalde will hold a SizeUp demo during the Benzinga Fintech Summit on Sept. 28 in San Francisco.

See more companies like SizeUp at the BZ Fintech Summit!

Neighborhood-Level Data For Entrepreneurs

The San Francisco company’s platform is licensed to banks, insurers and governments to provide small businesses with customized and local data on competitors, customers and advertising.

Its customers include Wells Fargo & Co WFC — which powers its Competitive Intelligence Tool with the software — the U.S. Small Business Administration and, in Germany, Deutsche Bank AG (USA) DB.

It’s launching in another European market with a “leading European bank” in the coming months, Ubalde told Benzinga.

SizeUp CEO Anatalio Ubalde. Courtesy photo.

It’s cost-ineffective for banks to manually provide the level of consulting to small businesses that they do for large clients, Ubalde said. That’s where big data and algorithms come in.

Despite the volume of information it handles, SizeUp itself is run by about 15 employees.

“Our model is about using big data and algorithms to provide a sustainable model and experience for small businesses,” Ubalde said. “This is where the bank can be an authoritative partner in helping small business customers succeed.”

In a demo of the software for Benzinga, the CEO used the example of a coffee shop opening in Detroit.

SizeUp tracks data on more than 20 million businesses, Ubalde said. After he entered the hypothetical coffee shop’s information, a dashboard showed metrics such as how the salary it paid compared to other coffee shops in the neighborhood and region; how its revenue compared; and how employee turnover stacked up to competitors.

“Small business don’t have access to market research and business intelligence. There’s no researcher at the local coffee shop. They can’t do what a large company can do, like hire a KPMG, Deloitte or Accenture Plc ACN,” Ubalde said. “We try to make this information that’s invisible visible to the small business.”

Too Small To Fail

SizeUp updates revenue data for businesses each fiscal quarter and updates demographic data twice per year.

“Businesses don’t like making decisions based on old data. Today, the U.S. Census data is 8 years old,” Ubalde said.

In another demo of SizeUp’s platform, Ubalde showed how someone opening a beauty salon in Beverly Hills, California, can use the fintech software to pick a location that’s near customers, including the modeling agencies the businesses would target — as well as nearby vendors. Ubalde created a mapped overlay of the household consumer spending on beauty services among females near the salon location.

For advertising purposes, SizeUp helps entrepreneurs find underserved markets for their business.

The service SizeUp provides is, at its root, good for the economy, the CEO said.

“Many small businesses will fail. I don’t think they should fail because they don’t have access to information.”

If you’re looking for cool fintech startups and access to top financial institutions, and are sick of attending stuffy corporate conferences, the Benzinga Fintech Summit is the event for you. Visit www.bzsummit.com for more details.

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