Quid is a startup that describes itself as the artificial intelligence company that accelerates research and insights to address the world’s most complex issues. The company specifically points to its ability to process millions of documents and create a visual map of the results.
Earlier this year in March, Quid completed a Series D funding round that netted the startup $39 million, which raised its total funding to over $66 million. In addition, Quid said that it had signed up 80 clients since launching its current platform at the beginning of last year. It seems that the company has its sights set on the 2016 presidential election.
The reason that Quid could potentially play a major role is the fact that the platform would allow campaign managers to quickly and easily analyze massive amounts of big data. The idea is that being able to maneuver through that much data would give their candidates an edge.
Mobile devices have made it possible for us to live in a generation where everyone is connected to everything all the time. People are constantly on social media discussing everything from how many times they cleaned the kitty litter to which candidates they plan to vote for.
It was not too long ago that even before a campaign would start, the pollsters were out beating the pavement and knocking on doors in order to fill out their questionnaires in an effort to gather information concerning their candidate. Today, Facebook (News - Alert) postings and Tweets can reveal what someone thinks about a candidate’s latest remarks or actions.
The idea is that Quid can identify who the top influencers are for every topic, how often the media writes about a topic and how often the public shares those stories through social media. According to Quid sales director, David Katz, "A lot of social monitoring tools can tell you tweets are up on ‘Hillary Clinton’ and ‘Trust’ but they don't tell you anything else. We can tell you that, for example, this subset wants to vote for a Democrat, they want to trust Hillary Clinton, but they need to hear from her about trust. Quid provides context around the keywords, not just their frequency.”
If a campaign manager wants to take advantage of Quid’s services for the 2016 presidential race they will have to raise an additional $25,000 for a yearly subscription. However, when you consider that the price range for a quality poll is between $20,000 and $40,000, paying for a Quid subscription can be a viable alternative.