Obama’s big data team move into consulting

According to newspaper reports, Schmidt has invested “several million” into consulting firm Civis Analytics run by Dan Wagner (pictured), whose data analytics team was credited with producing Obama’s 5-million-vote margin victory.

The Obama for America (OFA) Analytics team – known as ‘The Cave’ – constructed what has been called the “most accurate voter targeting model ever used in a national campaign” and following the election, Civis was set up keeping two dozen of OFA’s analytics team under a shared ownership scheme with sole investor Schmidt.

Based in Chicago, the consultancy is focusing primarily on companies and non-profit organisations – using the big data expertise that guided the presidential campaign – although Schmidt has gone on record expecting Civis to work for Democratic candidates next year.

Talking to Bloomberg Businessweek, Wagner said: “We came out of the campaign having helped reinvent this category of using big data to reinvent organisations. There’s a huge commercial opportunity in that.”