Brian Ley

He is hell-bent on global domination.

I am so ready, Nathan.

Epidemiology.

Epidemiology.

Yeah, how diseases spread.

And it's, in my mind, one of the most fascinating aspects.

You can kind of think of it as how anything spreads.

Right.

So happiness spreads through human networks.

Obesity spreads through human networks.

Decisions to buy a product or upgrade to a specific technology fashion would go to going to see a movie.

All of those things are what's called socially contagious, meaning that one person gets them, then another person gets them.

And what Alpharank does is it basically infers network structure so marketers can understand.

If they're going to send out 100 discount codes, who should they send them to in order to get the most impact and have that offer ripple through the network like a virus?

Yeah, this is my first venture-backed company, but I've been obsessed with this for years and years and years.

How much have you guys raised?

Alvarink makes money by charging sort of a data provider fee.

So we basically go into customer databases and we give each customer a score.

You know, how influential are they?

We say who are they're connected to, which other customers are they influencing?