💬 Welcome to issue #80 of Between the Lines

Good morning & happy Thursday. I guess it’s time to play that fun game of where did January go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This week, Claremont founder and CEO Ritvij Gautam reflects on the current drive for data integration within UX and product, points out problems with data collection in the space, and shares how his company Trymata is helping data teams have greater success turning data into insights…It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇

~ Josh & Miles

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📢 👥 Community Voices: Bridging the Gap Between Data and Insight

Author: Ritvij Gautam

Claremont entrepreneur Ritvij Gautam is a UX Researcher, Software Developer, and the CEO of Trymata — a remote user testing platform that offers cross-platform services for testing and improving user experience. His passion for philosophy of mind and UX research drove him to found Trymata (formerly TryMyUI) with fellow classmate Timothy Rotolo. Trymata helps marketing teams understand how users interact with their digital products, and they’re trusted by leading brands such as Amazon, Bose, Priceline, and British Airways.

Ritvij recently outlined advice for bridging the gap between data and insights and the importance of a data-driven decision-making culture.

We are in an age now where the amount of data we have access to is staggering. There is so much data around us today that we’re practically drowning in it.
You might think that the world runs on data. But that’s not exactly the case. The world runs on the actionable insights gleaned from data.
Without doing the work to truly understand what our data is telling us, it’s all but useless.
I have no doubt that everyone reading this has at least a few data collection tools that they regularly use in their work. In the User Experience space, we rely on many different kinds of data. You probably also know that you have to analyze that data to find the proverbial diamonds in the rough – I know that it’s not a groundbreaking assertion.
What I want to do is talk more frankly about the problems with the data we collect in our space. In my view, there’s 3 big ones:
Quantity: The amount of data collected far outstrips the time we have to analyze it – and only some of it even contains the answers we’re looking for.
Bias: The very question of which datasets to collect is subject to our biases about what’s important, what we expect to find, and what problems we do or don’t already know about.
Siloing: With different datasets available in different tools used by different teams, we’re often missing out on the complete picture.
All 3 of these problems lead back to our overarching problem: How do we turn data into insight? Overabundance of data fuels inefficiency in finding insights. Bias in the collection process skews the reliability of our insights. And siloed data leaves us to fill in the blanks in our insights with assumptions. 👇

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📣 😴 Pardon the Announcement: Chorus Sleep

Ali Abramovitz Cook (she/her) is a CMC alumna, former Twilio business and product leader, and ski fanatic. She’s also the co-founder of the Y-Combinator-backed company Chorus Sleep - a non-pharmaceutical solution to insomnia. Chorus Sleep is an evidence-based mobile app and coaching program that helps people sleep better. It’s the first solution to bring everything you need for better sleep under one roof.

Chorus combines relaxing audio sessions that put most people to sleep in 15 minutes, with short, interactive content and sleep tracking to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. In a recent study with Asana, people fell asleep ~40% faster when using the Chorus program.

Chorus would love to help the Claremont community and get your feedback! Check it out for free with the special offer below:

Click here and enter code CLAREMONT for a free month.

Sleep Better

💼 Who’s Hiring?: WestComms, Sensible, & HMC Career Fair

Claremont entrepreneur Mike West is the founder of WestComms – a creative communications consultancy focused on helping companies expand their reach into audiences of every size. WestComms primarily works with technology startups and crypto clients and is trusted by companies like Tuesday Capital, Kruze, and Orchid. They help clients harness the power of traditional PR services while providing the creative guidance and advice needed to propel companies into key markets and conversations.

Mike is hiring for several junior and senior positions on his team. Crypto knowledge is ideal, but he’s looking forward to speaking with anyone. Shoot him a message if you’re interested:

Claremont graduate Josh Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of Sensible — the Twilio company for PDFs that transforms documents into structured data. Sensible’s mission is to bring about a world where computers do the work that computers are designed for (processing large volumes of data) so that humans can do what humans are best at (critical thinking and empathy). The company raised a $6.5M Seed round led by Craft Ventures last year, and they’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join their team:

Harvey Mudd’s Office of Career Services just announced that registration is now open for the Harvey Mudd and Caltech Winter 2023 Virtual STEM Career Fair on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, from 11am-3pm PT. The fair will take place virtually on their new platform — Mudd-Tech Connect. If you’re interested in recruiting from the entire 7C community of BS/MS/PhD/alumni/postdoc students, click here to create a Mudd-Tech Connect account and register for the fair.

🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:

This week’s Claremont financing 💸

Congratulations to Ethos on their recent $4.2M Seed round led by Boldstart Ventures and gumi Cryptos Capital. The Sui-Based EthosWallet is a reimagined web3 wallet experience and programmable virtual wallet infrastructure that allows users to access digital assets and decentralized applications. Claremont graduate Jared Cosulich is the co-founder and CTO.

Ethos ✨ Wallet @EthosWalletXYZ

✨Seed Funding News ✨ Ethos has raised $4.2 million in a seed round to continue development of their reimagined wallet focused on discovering and engaging with apps on the Sui blockchain, and the accompanying wallet infrastructure. 1/

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🍽️ BTL Snacks:

👪 Solving The Struggles Of Family Caregiving….. Forbes recently featured two Claremont-founded companies on their tech solutions list for employees facing the burden of family caregiving. Founded by Claremont graduate Julia Cole, Seven Starling is a digital platform that makes high-quality mental healthcare more accessible for new mothers and caregivers. Kinside, founded by Claremont entrepreneur Shadiah Sigala, was also highlighted on this list for offering an online marketplace that matches employees with vetted childcare providers by location, need, and availability.

A: In 2022, we tracked 70 venture-backable startups that were founded by 7C entrepreneurs.

Feedback? We love to hear it. Hit us with an email. 👊🏼

🌉 Issue #80: Bridging the Gap Between Data…