Jigsaw tries leveraging 'Wisdom of Crowds'

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only weeks old--the number of people voting on each company is relatively small.

Some wonder if the size of the "crowds" Jigsaw has pooling their wisdom is a problem.

"You're going to need more than just five people to make guesses," said Kent Allen, an analyst who runs The Research Trust in San Francisco. "I guess there's a couple different ways you can look at the wisdom of crowds. Crowds are not always so wise."

'That looks right'
But Fowler argued that even three or four members voting on a company is enough to arrive at numbers that are likely accurate.

"Once you've got enough votes and everybody says, 'Oh, that looks right,' the votes kind of tail off," he said. "It starts coming into the right range pretty quickly. Some of our members take wild guesses, but most haven't because they've got their names attached to (their votes)" and they don't want to look out of touch.

For example, eight Jigsaw members voted on the metrics for The Staubach Company, a property leasing and management firm in Addison, Texas. One said Staubach had 100 to 250 employees, while another voted for 250 to 1,000. But six voted for 1,000 to 10,000. Similarly, one voted for revenues of $1 million to $10 million, while seven cast a ballot for more than $1 billion in revenues.

The takeaway, then, is that The Staubach Company likely has between 1,000 and 10,000 employees and sales of more than $1 billion.

Fowler also acknowledges that arriving at ranges for the metrics isn't the same as coming up with pinpoint numbers. But he said that for salespeople, ranges are generally all that's needed.

"They don't have to know exactly how much revenue" a company has, he said. "A lot of salespeople will get territories and only target companies between $10 million and $50 million in revenues. Most products have a sweet spot."

Notwithstanding his concern that Jigsaw doesn't yet have enough people participating in the "Wisdom of Crowds" feature, Allen does see some merit in it.

"I'll look at the private companies and try to do the best guesses on the basic metrics," Allen said. "And I think it makes a whole lot of sense if (Jigsaw) can get enough people to do it....It's a heck of a lot cheaper (than other alternatives), and it's a way to hone an estimate, and that's something that's very valuable to the marketplace."

Allen also agreed with Jigsaw's contention that its members are uniquely suited to coming up with the kind of information on private companies that makes its new feature worthwhile.

"Salespeople (are) pretty savvy," he said. They "trade information a lot, and they're on the front lines."

Indeed, Jigsaw's members think the company is onto something given that private companies typically keep their key metrics close to the vest.

"From a private company perspective, this is probably the only way I can think of to get that information," said Paul Jones, sales manager for Forum Systems in Sandy, Utah.

And while he would prefer to see more participation in the "Wisdom of Crowds" feature, Jones said the data it produces is better than his alternatives.

"It's more information than I would have on my own," he said. "The collective wisdom of five people is more than my own wisdom if I don't have any information about that company."