As a coder at Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, Vik Singh, 28, learned firsthand that state-of-the-art data processing gives tech companies a big advantage. That includes data as old-fashioned as sales leads, says Singh. His two-year-old startup, Infer, has developed software that treats a sales transaction as a puzzle that can be solved with an algorithm-instead of finessed over a round of golf and a hearty meal. "The way the typical company manages data is piss-poor in comparison," he says.
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