Second Measure

Overview

Second Measure turned card transactions into daily estimates of company performance. Founded in 2015 by Michael Babineau and Lillian Chou, the Summer 2015 YC company normalized billions of purchases into revenue growth, customer growth, retention, cohorts, market penetration, and competitive benchmarks.^[1][2]

The company did not fail. It expanded from investors to consumer brands, reached tens of millions in founder-reported annual recurring revenue, and was acquired by Bloomberg on December 24, 2020.^[1][3] The acquisition mechanism was data distribution and context: Second Measure supplied normalized alternative data; Bloomberg supplied company identifiers, fundamentals, institutional reach, entitlements, and established research workflows.

Founding Story

Babineau and Chou founded Second Measure around proprietary consumer-purchase feeds. Their thesis was that transaction data could reveal public and private company performance days or months before conventional disclosures.^[2]

At launch, Babineau said the company was focused “primarily towards VCs and hedge funds.” Hedge funds used the data to “inform their financial models.”^[2] Venture firms could inspect private-company momentum; public-market investors could compare reported narratives with observed consumer spend.

The difficult work sat between raw transactions and an investable conclusion. Merchant descriptors were inconsistent. A consumer panel could differ from the population. Small customer bases could create false affinity signals. Second Measure had to normalize merchants, model panel bias, distinguish cohorts, and expose uncertainty without making the product unusable.

That discipline let the company widen beyond finance. By 2018, customers included Spotify, Barneys, and Blue Apron alongside investment firms.^[4] Brands wanted the same evidence for market share, retention, and competitor benchmarking.

Timeline

• Summer 2015: Second Measure joined Y Combinator and launched daily company estimates for venture firms and hedge funds.^[1][2]
• 2018: The company served consumer brands as well as investors and reported 51 employees, with no employee departures to that point.^[4]
• February 2019: A financing report said Second Measure raised $20 million; later acquisition coverage estimated about $25 million total funding.^[5]
• December 24, 2020: Bloomberg completed its acquisition of Second Measure. Terms were not disclosed.^[3]
• 2023: Bloomberg described combining Second Measure data science with Bloomberg engineers to build the ALTD alternative-data function on the Terminal.^[6]
• May 2024: Bloomberg expanded Second Measure feeds into Data License for enterprise and quantitative workflows.^[7]

What They Built

Second Measure analyzed billions of anonymized purchases obtained through proprietary data-provider relationships. Its interface showed estimated revenue and customer growth, retention, cohorts, market penetration, and competition for thousands of companies.^[2]

Merchant normalization was central. A single company could appear under inconsistent descriptors across processors, locations, or products. Resolving those rows into a coherent company and brand hierarchy determined whether the dashboard represented economic activity or noise.

Panel correction mattered as much. The Company Affinity feature used Bayesian methods because naive estimates exaggerated relationships involving merchants with small customer bases.^[4] This illustrates the broader product: raw counts became useful only after statistical adjustment and defensible comparison.

Bloomberg later connected the dataset to traditional market information. Its ALTD function supported discovery and analysis of alternative data; Data License exposed feeds for enterprise and quantitative workflows.^[6][7] The current product advertises more than eight years of history with two-, three-, or seven-day delivery lags.^[8]

Market Position

Target Customers

Second Measure began with venture firms and hedge funds, then expanded to corporate strategy and consumer-insights teams. Reported users included Goldman Sachs, Spotify, Instacart, Postmates, and Domino's.^[9]

Market Size

No audited market size, contract value, renewal, or margin data was observed. Babineau's current YC profile says the company reached tens of millions in annual recurring revenue and a nine-figure Bloomberg exit; both are founder self-reported.^[1]

Bloomberg's 2024 release described more than 20 million U.S. consumers, 3,000 public and private companies, over 4,000 brands, billions of transactions, and a three-day lag.^[7] These are Bloomberg-reported figures.