{"id":1269,"slug":"data-categories-public-third-party-operational","title":"Three data categories for SMB-facing analytics: public/government open data, live third-party feeds, and operational (first-party) data","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["open-data","data-infrastructure","data-moats"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Data inputs for SMB-facing analytics fall into three categories:\n\n1. **Public / government open data** — statistical agencies (Census/StatCan/Eurostat), central-bank indicators (FRED, BoC Valet), weather, GIS, transit (GTFS), business / property / permit registries.\n2. **Live third-party feeds and APIs** — commercial market data, mapping/places, embedded-analytics SaaS.\n3. **Operational (first-party) data** — the business's own transaction logs, CRM, inventory, scheduling, product-usage logs.\n\n**Source:** Industry framework — synthesised from FRED docs (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/fred/), BoC Valet docs (https://www.bankofcanada.ca/valet/docs), gtfs.org, and the build-vs-buy-data literature (https://medium.com/@audaciatech/data-products-build-vs-buy ; https://www.audacia.co.uk).\n\n**Confidence:** Industry-consensus.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** The three buckets carry very different cost / defensibility profiles. Categories 1 and 2 are non-exclusive (anyone can use them). Category 3 is the only one with native defensibility — see [[a16z-empty-promise-data-moats-2019]], [[data-as-asset-vs-byproduct-synthesis]], and [[rule-build-only-on-data-you-already-own]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-data-driven-tools-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: live data and data-driven tools for SMBs — when it's an edge, when it's overkill (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-20T16:57:38.838Z","updated_at":"2026-06-20T16:57:38.838Z"}