The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund on The Value of Small Data in Fund Evaluation

The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund invests in software and services designed to help low income communities and organizations that serve them. In this episode Liz Luckett, Managing Partner, expands on the way we can use small data to evaluate investment opportunities, the risks of algorithms in large data and how organizations within the fund are already creating impact in the world during COVID-19.

“A Lot of the ways people are collecting information today is not transparent. For example I don’t know what goes into my credit score, I know what the number is, I don’t know what went into it, it’s very hard to figure it out and it changes all the time. People pay to have it monitored and looked at but again it’s a mystery. Because algorithms are so prevalent and opaque they are concerning and they should be increasingly concerning to people because more decisions are being made by an algorithm and I think the need for better data even if you are using algorithms, if those algorithms are alive and they are constantly updated they are probably quite good. To me small data is what is going into a decision and how frequently and often are we updating them. Small data is that constant information that is specific to you.” Liz Luckett, Managing Partner of The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund