PeakMetrics is a company that provides a narrative intelligence platform that helps enterprises and governments identify and combat emerging online narrative threats. Pulse 2.0 interviewed PeakMetrics CEO and co-founder Nick Loui to learn more about the company.
Nick Loui’s Background
What is Nick Loui’s background? Loui said:
“I’ve always been an engineer/entrepreneur/marketer at heart. My interest in media and the power of storytelling brought me to Emerson College, where my senior thesis project included building a crisis communication tool on top of Twitter (yes, when it was still called Twitter!).”
“Right after school, I found myself being part of an LA-based digital media hybrid-team created by Ashton Kutcher. Among other things, I helped “@aplusk” become the first person with a million Twitter followers and did some work that would eventually inspire Thorn, Kutcher’s nonprofit that uses Big Data to combat human trafficking. I’d begun to find my niche at the intersection of social media online influence and understanding how data flows online.”
“This path eventually led me to Vixlet, an AdTech software company. I became the company’s CMO and reunited with [PeakMetrics co-founder and COO] Bobby Lincoln, who took up the role of COO.”
“During our time there, Bobby and I spent a lot of time developing digital, data-driven fan communities for large brands. As part of that, we knew the power of an online audience for a brand, but we were always iterating around the question: How do we actually measure and predict the way these trends spread online? It’s the essential question that helped us make the leap to founding PeakMetrics.”
Formation Of PeakMetrics
How did the idea for the company come together? Loui shared:
“Misleading or untrue narratives go viral daily. A single post turns into hundreds, and suddenly, it’s everywhere. Once a narrative is out, it takes on its own life, and it’s hard to stop. Whether you’re a coffee company or a government organization, building and maintaining a positive reputation is crucial to financial prosperity — and even survival. But the hyper-speed world of internet opinion and public sentiment is often difficult to navigate.”
“This is frustrating and confusing for the individual internet user. It’s dangerous for enterprises and governments who must protect their brands, reputations, and people.”
“What if that narrative causes customers to threaten a boycott of your products, as it did for Starbucks? What if a fake memo triggered a massive drop in two different companies’ stock prices, something the Department of Defense can attest to?”
“Enterprises, governments, and communities are increasingly challenged by media manipulation and social media attacks. Organizations are generally operating in a crisis-response mode, turning for help to costly crisis management firms, rushing to lock down systems, and hurrying to protect team members.”
“This reactive approach is both time-consuming and costly. Wouldn’t it be better to implement more proactive, data-driven measures to get ahead of emerging issues?”
“This is why Bobby Lincoln and I created PeakMetrics.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Loui explained:
“PeakMetrics uses state-of-the-art machine learning to analyze millions of media sources and social media platforms to identify media manipulation and adversarial attacks before they cause damage. Our AI/machine learning technology helps organizations discern source credibility, understand how audiences spread narratives, and quantify risk and response scenarios – without spending millions on crisis communication and manual sentiment analysis.”
Evolution Of PeakMetrics’ Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Loui noted:
“We were involved early in working with machine learning technologies, like Transformers, that are the basis of many AI breakthroughs today, like LLMs. As the technology has developed, we’ve been early adopters in leveraging the latest models to help our users. We’re excited to continue to invest more heavily here, including working with multiple modalities and alternative LLM models over the coming year.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Loui cited:
“Some significant PeakMetrics milestones include announcing a groundbreaking partnership with Reality Defender to combat digital deception and deepfakes at scale, raising $3 million in funding to help organizations combat online narrative threats, and introducing Newsguard source ratings to enhance clients’ ability to identify adversarial online trends and manage brand risks.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Loui about the company’s customer success stories, he highlighted:
“In the early days of the COVID, we were identifying COVID-19 related disinformation backed by state-sponsored actors. This work was fundamental to us developing our methodology and allowed our customers to identify bad actors and networks of websites that they weren’t previously aware of.”
Funding
After asking Loui about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“PeakMetrics has raised $5.7 million to date.”
“The last round was led by York IE, with follow-on investment from Argon Ventures and participation from Parameter Ventures and CEAS Investments.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Loui assessed:
“A 2019 study estimated the disinformation market costs the economy $78 billion per year globally. The rise of generative AI exponentially increases the risk for companies and the need to protect their reputation and people from this new category of online risks.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Loui affirmed:
“At PeakMetrics, we offer a new approach. We’re bringing a data science and intelligence lens to reputation — an issue that historically was only seen as exclusively an issue for Comms teams, social listening and crisis PR firms.”
“We’ve worked with large government/DoD agencies and high-profile enterprises. That means we know how to service commercial and government clients in a way that speaks to their specific needs.”
“And we have an amazing team with a diverse set of backgrounds and complementary skills. Clients trust us because of our proprietary technology and real-world experience. Here’s what we bring to the table:
1.) Comprehensive Data: PeakMetrics offers a robust dataset that tracks about 6x of the content of some of the leading media databases.
2.) Narrative ML: Our proprietary methodology helps organizations take a proactive approach to anticipate and mitigate risks, reducing the cost and impact of disinformation attacks. Rather than forcing analysts to manually sift through thousands of individual data points or create complex queries, our AI/ML programmatically summarizes multilingual and cross-channel datasets to surface key themes and trends, or narratives.
3.) A New Approach: We’re bringing a data science and intelligence lens to reputation — an issue that historically was only seen as an issue for Comms teams and crisis PR firms.
4.) Brand and Government Versatility: We’ve worked with large government/DoD agencies and high-profile enterprises. That means we know how to service commercial and government clients in a way that speaks to their specific needs.
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Loui concluded:
“As the field of Narrative Intelligence is still an emerging opportunity, we want to be the preeminent player in the space. We’re at a pivotal time for the information environment and as more organizations realize this is a requirement today, we look forward to supporting them.”
