Quandl, one of the leading alternative data providers, is rethinking its business strategy as traditional data giants Bloomberg and S&P crash the alternative data party.

Dan DeFrancesco filed this report Quandl’s new for Business Insider:

Tammer Kamel, Quandl’s CEO and co-founder, told Business Insider that the company, which was acquired by Nasdaq in 2018 for an undisclosed amount, now sees more opportunity creating proprietary data sets as opposed to just selling others’ feeds. The change in philosophy comes at a time when larger data companies have gotten into the lucrative business of selling alternative data.

“I don’t want to be offering a data product that’s on eight other platforms,” Kamel said. “What’s my case to the customer that they should buy it from me as opposed to anyone else? … I can’t out compete Bloomberg at that game, so why would I get into it? I will out compete Bloomberg by offering better data products.”

Alternative data has exploded in recent years, as investors are increasingly using datasets that range from flight records to satellite images to get a financial edge. What started out as area explored by only the most advanced quantitative hedge funds in the world has now trickled down to fundamental traders.

Traditional data companies have taken notice of the increased interest in the field which, according to Deloitte, could surpass $7 billion in spending by 2020. S&P was one of the first movers of the larger players, offering alt data feeds in September 2017. FactSet, meanwhile, moved into the space in April 2018. Finally, and arguably most notably, financial data giant Bloomberg entered the fray in February when it announced a marketplace for alternative data.

With each new entrant, Kamel said it has gotten increasingly harder to get the owners of data feeds to agree to sell exclusive rights to Quandl. And while competition is a good sign because it means there is more opportunity, he said, it also makes obtaining valuable feeds vastly more difficult.

“So these people come to us and say, ‘I’ve got data. How many zeros are you going to put on the check you are going to write me?'” Kamel said. “They’re empowered by the fact that there’s eight or 10 different organizations they can go to.”