This startup can pinpoint your company’s target market

Rishi Khan realizes the power of data.
After graduating with his Ph.D. in computational biology from the University of Delaware back in 2007, he spent some time studying next-generation DNA sequencing at Thomas Jefferson University. Once he finished his studies, he started a company where he started building DNA sequencers called Perfect Expression.
“At the time, the technology was very immature and we had a better way to get high-quality low-cost data,” said Khan. “If I were where I am right now there’d be no reason to do it. You can get a $1,000 genome now. At the time it was closer to $1 million.”
So where is Khan now? After spending a few years at Newark-based software company ET International, he decided to launch another venture in January 2014 called Extreme Scale Solutions, located in New Castle.
In a nutshell, Extreme Scale Solutions develops software that combines two trending fields in tech — big data and high-performance computing — to help companies better understand themselves and their target markets. Specifically, Fortune 500 banks.
The startup’s premier software (currently in beta) is called DiscoveryMiner, designed to automate your system of records. The software provisions users’ resources, monitor those resources are being utilized and forecast what the user needs to do in order to optimize workflow.
Khan said that the software is built on the notion that instead of telling users what to ask for, it tells users what they should be asking for. He explained:

What if I wanted to know of the top ten percent of people who are my best customers? What makes them different than everybody else and how can I market to them better? No chart in the world is going to tell you that.

What DiscoveryMiner does is process a series of statistical tests on datasets, analyze the tests and produce results that are statistically significant based and what the user is looking for — in this hypothetical case, the top ten percent of people who are Khan’s best customers.
“For example, the top ten percent of my customers, it turns out that they are highly affluent African-Americans in the Northeast,” he said. And when a new potential customer comes along?
“Now I can say, for this random guy, what’s the probability that he’ll be a good customer or a bad customer?”
That’s just DiscoveryMiner. Extreme Scale Solutions has two other branches of operations as well — basic research (where Extreme Scale is currently working with a client contracted by the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense) and advisory services for proof of concept projects.
But Khan said all of Extreme Scale’s services are centered on the same central questions: “What are you trying to solve, how are you trying to solve it, what kind of data do you have and how can we make that happen?”
The company is currently looking to bring on new hires from the local talent pool.