How did you amass a critical amount of respondents (a directory) on your website? Did you hire people to recruit respondents or did they apply?

You mention, that you can code and maintain yourself, and at the same time it sounds like your data can be dispersed across multiple sources. And you want to minimise license cost. In my business we use R a lot for both analysis and reporting. It is free (open source), but you will have to build programs. But it will read any format, and also create output to any destination you want. So you could start off with a mix of R, Excel and pdf, just to get things going. However, it could make sense for you to build a database already so you familiarise yourself with data warehouse thinking, since you want to expand with marketing automation. At that point you will need a database for monitoring response, sales etc. So it is important to build the right foundation as ealy as possible. If you don't want to code, but want point-and-click, there is boatloads of software for that, but probably more license cost (unless you can find open source for that). So If I were you, I would start off with something smaller. After all, you want to focus on the value you create for the business and your colleagues, and the time you save, rather than a smooth IT-infrastructure for this. I have lots of experience building reporting and analysis in the areas you mention, so if you want to discuss further, feel free to set up a call. Good look with your development. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

No. GPA is a performance measure for academic pursuits. Memorization, rote, and perhaps a little critical thinking. It's the real world out here, unsafe and prone to sudden breakdown. Your ability to interact with people, deal positively with the unexpected, and handle ongoing stress are far more important than regurgitation of some process upon command. In the real world, you can always pay someone to learn the thing. Or take the time to look the thing up yourself. Memorization is not important. Problem-solving is. Frankly if you were too methodical a person, I'd be more concerned about your entrepreneurial future than if you're spinny and prone to getting struck by new ideas. But any type of person can be an entrepreneur. The key issue is whether you can handle the stress. And no school can prepare you for that--even the one I went to, that made us wade through 10 and 11 courses a term, resulting in a 40% student failure rate. Entrepreneurship is more than just hard work. Hard work is easy. If that's all it took, many more people would be rich. But the universe doesn't care how hard you work...nor how hard your competitors are working, either. Remember that on your journey.

My experience with the different aspects of confidentiality ranges from military/government, through corporate R&D (at IBM Research) and as an executive in the private sector (as CEO and founder of a tech company). Of course, if the disclosure of any details could do harm for anyone outside yourself or your organization (as is the case in government applications) - then the information should not be disclosed. If the information is an idea, my experience has been that people are too worried about sharing ideas. I've had many situations where I disclosed the details of my idea in full, to people who have the resources to compete with it against me if they wanted, and I have never had anyone do that. To make an idea reality you have a thorough mental image in your mind of what the final product would look like, and chances are only you have that image at the necessary level of detail. Regarding specific product information (when it is not publicly available) or quantitative business data (like forecasts): I have always been very careful with those, and only disclosed after signing an NDA. I also viewed the disclosure as a point of no return in the relationship, and assessed how much I personally trust the person I share the information with. I'd be glad to chat further and provide more input based on the specifics of your debate. -- Ran

As a tech marketer - I am always looking for the fastest, cheapest yet reliable research in order to create competitive intelligence internal documents, stats for blog posts, etc. Some people live by the "if it isn't on the first page, it doesn't matter" when it comes to leveraging search engines as a research tool. However, often when we are looking for value, we have to realize that anything REALLY worthwhile these days from a content perspective is typically gated behind a web form, or nestled inside a blog post. So, expect to spend a few hours in order to get through all the form gates, and also make sure you're using as specific and direct search terms as possible - then getting more generic if results are not ideal. Some other tips: -Have a few "burner" email addresses setup with gmail or hotmail, etc. - these allow you to get content when filling out forms to get White Papers, Reports, Case Studies, etc. without your primary inbox getting stuffed with marketing emails. -In the form fill process, if available put "student" or "researcher" as typically sales reps pass by these "leads" when the form gets dumped into the CRM queue. -Don't forget specialty search sites and tools like Wolfram Alpha for more "numbers" derived searches. -Also, like your question here - always seek the wisdom of crowds in addition to machine learning algorithms! Hope this is helpful! Search on!

You can try either Tableau or Qlick software. Both work amazingly well with diverse set of data sources.