49 Business Ideas For Data Scientists You Can Start Today [2023]

When I was still pursuing a MA degree in Computer Science, I, together with my groupmate Taras Machyshyn, already worked as a developer in one of the local outsourcing companies. There, I got acquainted with Yuri Kuznetsov (who was obtaining a MA degree in Applied mathematics). At that time, we had loads of projects and cut our teeth on coding and developing solutions for businesses. Back then, we were young, ambitious and we wanted freedom. At some point, we understood that we grew out of that company and decided to start our own business.

We launched our company in 2011. At first, we offered outsourcing business development services. Back in those days, we worked with CRM systems and other business solutions a lot. After some time, we understood that the market lacked software that would be a universal, budget-friendly solution for any company irrespective of its size and type. Realizing that the CRM market needs such a platform, I put forth a proposal to discuss the future of CRM software. This discussion marked the beginning of creation and work on EspoCRM.

Understanding that each of us has our own strengths, we divided the project into parts and started turning our idea into reality. Taras Machyshyn was working on the back-end and API interface, Yuri Kuznetsov was developing the front-end and UI/UX, while I was busy with website creation, database administration, and marketing. In 2014, after several months of the complicated development process, we released the first version of EspoCRM.

I started QuestionPro back in 2005. In fact, I bootstrapped it for the first couple of years - which is code for - I was working my day job and working on developing the core software behind QuestionPro during nights and evenings. One day, in the fall of 2005 I returned home from work, I can even tell you what time it was, 6:30 in the evening. I looked at my wife - Kalpana while we were cooking dinner when something just clicked, at that moment I said, “Honey I am going to quit my job and I am going to run QuestionPro full time. I’m done.” She looked at me with a sense of bewilderment, horror, and pride. “But what about our mortgage?” - was her next statement. My answer was - “Well - we’ll figure it out. I have 6 months of savings” - to which she said - “Ok cool.”

My biggest reason for quitting my day job was not actually money, it was the freedom. Freedom to do what I wanted. Freedom to pursue a technical strategy that I saw fit for the company. Freedom to experiment with business models. Freedom to create new ideas. Freedom to engage with customers and create value for all of us. Freedom to take a put my ideas to practice.

Ask anyone who has quit their day job towards the pursuit of entrepreneurship - and you will almost universally get the same answer - the best decision ever. Universally. I hardly know anyone who does not get an adrenaline high by going down the entrepreneurship route. Yes - it is hard - it requires that you work almost 3X of what you could coast by - but the intrinsic rewards are 10X more. In fact, it's hard for most folks, including me, to imagine working a normal 9-5 job anymore.

In 2020 I posted on Twitter and Facebook of an idea that would empower African creators in the music business by making sure they would earn something. I looked at how most digital distribution platforms don't really pay artists that well and let alone African Artists. This is how the idea came up. I received a lot of motivation from so many people telling me that I should develop the app. So I embarked on the journey of developing it.

I once was a rapper and I have friends who always complain about their music not selling or even getting nothing out of it. That combined with my technical expertise in programming, I began developing the web app and later on started working on the mobile app.

Since I'm close to so many friends who are into music, I sent them the beta for them to try it out and give feedback. It was great because they really loved it and that kind of helped me a lot in the whole development life cycle.

The idea behind Influence Podium started back in college. I used to play NCAA basketball and we could only work a certain number of hours per week. As an immigrant who had just moved from Barcelona, I would “ghostwrite” my classmates’ papers for $10/page (money back if I got them less than a B, of course).

After I graduated, I had a short stint in finances (I lasted 30 days) until I quit and moved back to Spain. There, I went back to the one skill I knew I had -- writing.

I wrote on Quora for 6 months, got 2 million views, and a few people started reaching out to me to ghostwrite for them. They happened to be B2B CEOs, and that’s when I learned the power of content, personal branding, and inbound marketing.

My intention during and after high school was to move to Europe and play soccer (football) as my career. However, I was persuaded to try my hand at college which eventually took me down the path where I am today.

I grew up in a family full of entrepreneurs, thinkers…people smarter than me so I was definitely lucky to be in the right room.

My first job was selling credit card machines and processing. I was raw in business but determined (or stubborn) to make it alone with the help of no one (NOTE, this was a dumb idea and everyone should get help at every stage of life). When I started, I thought I was in a finance position. It turned out I was in a sales position, responsible for calling businesses to sell them on our services. It was the best thing to ever happen to me at this stage in my young career.

I was forced to talk to people, negotiate, persuade, help strangers over the phone - I learned one of the greatest skills of all time, how to sell over the phone. I had never sold anything, I learned sales in 3 days, then practiced every single day. This position lasted 30 days, but the grass only got greener. I was somehow recruited to a company called Homestore, which owned Realtor.com where I eventually became a top sales account executive managing the East Coast as my territory.

I went from the worst at sales in the company to the top 10 in the company. I took my sales learnings from my first job selling credit card processing to selling to internet advertising to Real Estate Agents, Brokers, Lenders and those involved in the real estate transaction.

After just a few years, I left Realtor.com (for no reason whatsoever, I loved working there) to start my own company. Young, dumb, no plan, no office, no product, no smart idea, but I had one thing to offer… I decided to help realtors manage and promote their listings on the internet.

I founded Enterprise Bot alongside my wife, Ravina Mutha, and our CTO Sandeep Jayasankar. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs in Pune, India, and I originally planned to work in my family’s business. However, I realized very quickly that I wanted to forge my own path. I attended university in the United States, and while studying business I ended up doing an internship with the university’s web services. I was fascinated by information technology, particularly its problem-solving nature, and decided that I wanted to pursue business in tech.

I was particularly interested in AI, and my first venture was a messenger service that integrated AI into a Whatsapp-style interface. The app used AI to enhance the user experience by linking suggestions and shortcuts based on the conversation. I quickly realized that people didn’t want AI involved in their private conversations. It was a challenging time, but my work in AI had gotten attention and I used the opportunity to pivot.

With a new idea for a conversational AI service, I was accepted into Startupbootcamp London. I had a strong network in London, but Brexit led many UK businesses to pause significant decisions, and I knew we wanted to expand our base in Europe. We had the opportunity to join F10 in Switzerland, which was meant to be five weeks. We ended up fully relocating, and are now based in Zurich.

Last fall, I started my MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, but for a variety of reasons elected to take a one-year leave of absence after completing my first quarter. While Covid’s effect on the business school experience was a factor in my decision, my main motivation was the opportunity to craft my own entrepreneurial “independent study.” Taking a gap year from school is a perfect time to start a business for the entrepreneurially inclined. I have the freedom to commit to my new business, but also a diamond-encrusted safety net to fall back on at the end of the year. I spent winter break brainstorming ideas for how to spend my year away.

Growing a business is like getting fit. It is simple, but not easy. If you lift progressively heavier weights three times a week for a year, you’ll become jacked. The challenge comes from staying disciplined over a long period of time.

My only constraint was the idea needed to be video game-related. My background is in computer science and digital art, and video games are the perfect overlap for someone with both a technical and creative mind--an ambidextrous brain as my former employer called it. After compiling over 100 potential project ideas--from starting an eSports team to building a game studio focused on making one-versus-many games for Twitch streamers to play against their audience--I ultimately decided to buy an existing business. With only a year to dedicate to the entrepreneurial endeavor, I realized starting from scratch was not feasible.

Outsource everything. The classic entrepreneur’s mistake is to try and do everything yourself. When I look back on it I definitely had the funds to outsource more and bootstrap less.

If it wasn't for that struggle I would have never made it to where I am today. I was forced into entrepreneurship because I was not someone people could hire. I always got along with people at interviews and people liked me but I was not hireable due to the mistakes I made in the past surrounding my issues with drugs and alcohol as a teenager.

Embrace the struggle. Good times can make you soft. I appreciate my life now and keep an attitude of gratitude but I never forget where I came from. I never forget not knowing where my next meal would come from or not knowing where I was going to sleep at night. Believe it or not, I have had worse times and been worse places than being homeless but I won't go there here

I got my GED at 16 so I didn’t even finish high school, before starting my business I did take some college classes at a local community college. I wanted to become a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine and attend Bastyr University.

I loved learning things but always struggled with the long road of school which held no guarantee of success, just a guarantee of debt.

My journey into entrepreneurship started as an early teenager hustling here and there just to put food in my mouth and fuel in the gas tank. My first real business was a landscaping business I started with a friend that didn't work out. We thought it would be a good idea because he had the work and I had the business mindset of growing and scaling. The opportunity was there but we did not collaborate well. Even with my guidance he did not want to change his habits. This led to us butting heads, ending our business, tainting our friendship, and me $20,000 in debt. After that had failed me I came across a program that taught people how to dropship on eBay for $20 a month. I really liked the idea of this as it gave me the opportunity to work from anywhere and be my own boss which are two things I really wanted. After a few months of hard work, things went well and I paid $500 for the selling on Amazon training. I literally had no idea what I was doing when my Amazon business took off. In a sense, Amazon was my crash course in business. It taught me how to hire and manage employees, how to set up payroll, how to outsource, how to do accounting, how to leverage credit and financing, how to market, how to do advertising. It taught me everything I know about business in the harshest way possible lol

I had spent my whole adult life after college living in Los Angeles working in the entertainment industry, first as an actor, then in production (Greenstreet Films) and talent representation (Endeavor and 3 Arts). After years in the business, I got frustrated with how long it took to get movies made and wanted a change.

A friend of mine was working in wealth management at UBS in Beverly Hills and got me an interview. I was always trading stocks since college and envisioned myself as Bud Fox from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, where I would one day grab some whale clients and make millions managing money for them. My salary tripled overnight from my Hollywood assistant salary and I quickly aced my Series 7 and was on my way.

The year was 2008, the beginning of the financial crisis. I remember being sent to UBS headquarters in Weehawken, NJ for training in the same week that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were on the verge of bankruptcy. It wasn’t a good sign. They ended up laying off all the young advisors and towards the end of 2009, I was unemployed and jobless. I moved back to NYC to try and find a job on the institutional side of Wall St.

I grew up in Marseille, France, and moved to the US for school when I was 18. After graduating from school, I worked for Banque Nationale de Paris in their Houston, TX office, before getting my MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

At the time, I was in my third job in financial controls and analysis but wasn’t happy with that. I was frustrated working financial analysis jobs and decided I wanted to be independent.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the “international callback industry”. Small US entrepreneurs were selling this service abroad mainly through networks of independent agents. The article mentioned it was a fast-growing segment. They also pointed out small barriers to entry (no large dominant player, relatively low upfront capital investments). And I figured my international background and being trilingual gave me some relative advantage.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 10 years now - I started my first business in college - a meal plan service for college students. I worked on it on nights and weekends while I had a full-time job at a startup, eventually grew it to a 7-figure business, and was able to become a full-time entrepreneur.

I’m always looking for different tools and opportunities, and have been using many no-code tools including Zapier, Typeform and Squarespace before “no-code” was a trend.

About a year ago I came across Glide, a no-code tool to build apps using a google sheet as the backend. At the time, I was looking for a new side-project to start and decided to create a conference app business using Glide called ConferenceTap

I’m Zack Johnson, and I run ggCircuit,which provides premium software, services, and support for esports arenas around the world.

UC Irvine Esports Arena - One of our first university customers in 2016

Hello everyone! My name is Avi Grunwald; I’m the founder and CEO of Fair Capital.

Based on ACA International's recent report, our unique debt collection strategy demonstrated a debt collection success rate 52% higher than the industry average.

But let me give you some more background on that: Every day, agencies and marketing teams create, share and collaborate on millions of files. But the feedback process is messy and complicated for everyone involved.

SEON, the fastest-growing fraud prevention company, was founded by Tamas Kadar, who also serves as acting CIO.

This fraud-detection startup creates a customer's "digital footprint" to weed out fake accounts and stop fraudulent transactions.

This business, which helps online businesses combat online fraud like fake accounts, has raised a $12 million Series A round led by Creandum and included PortfoLion, an OTP Bank subsidiary.

SEON successfully became Hungary's most financially secure tech startup after receiving a $94 million series B investment from IVP recently.

They have a talented team of consultants and developers to make the online business environment safer. Their goal is to make the online space much safer for high-risk merchants.

To date, 1 billion+ transactions have been reviewed, 50+ million Euro saved, and SEON has helped over 5000+ merchants.

Watch the full video on youtube.com ➜

Hi there! My name is Vivek Bhaskaran the Founder of QuestionPro. The most robust survey software you are going to find on the market along with Customer Experience, Employee Experience, and a Research platform that will give your company every advantage. We focus on not only providing the tools for creation, distribution, and analysis of surveys, but also provide the platforms for polling, tablet-based mobile research, and data visualization.

Hi! This is Fida Haq and I am the MD and CEO of shurjoPay since its inception in 2010.

During Q1 of 2021, shurjoPay is averaging a transactional volume of USD 1.5M per month with the total number of merchants exceeding 600. We believe shurjoPay's impact in bringing about a change in the country’s online payment collection system has been transformational.

My name is Matt Bentley. I’m the Marketing Lead at Sniply, a custom URL shortener that adds a custom CTA button to any page you share on social media. Sniply is a B2B product and our customers are usually startup founders, brand managers, and social media managers.

We have 550 paying customers, including large marketing companies, and have been featured on Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Moz. Our annual revenue is about $420k.

Hi there, my name is Robb Fahrion and I am the Co-Founder and Partner of Flying V Group, a digital marketing and advertising company located. We service clients all across the globe and help them grow their business through the power of the internet. My passion is for business and there is nothing more rewarding than helping others grow their businesses and share in their successes.

Today, Flying V Group employs 12 people, has worked with over 300 clients, operates internationally, and is on pace to double revenue for the second year in a row. Crazy to think about being here when my brother and I both got up and quit our corporate jobs and put $5k into the project to get us started!

My name is Chelsea Rhoads and I am the CEO/Co-Founder of pup-eeze, the smartest device on four legs. pup-eeze is a wellness tracker for dogs that tracks activity, monitors location and automates our dog’s lives by connecting them with hundreds of smart home devices giving ourselves and our dogs the ability to monitor, maintain and change the environment of the home if we’re concerned about separation anxiety or well-being.

We’ve had great success speaking with and testing the wellness tracker among those who love their dogs and love technology. We thought, “we bring our dogs on every other journey with us, why not include them in the technology journey as well?” With the overwhelming support from the technology community we were able to strategically partner with an emerging leader in the IoT enterprise solution field; Fathym.

Hi! I’m Suan, Co-Founder of Porterhouse. Porterhouse is a mass-texting service that lets you text large groups from your cellphone number with a single click. After about 1.5 years in business, Porterhouse brings in $2,400 in monthly revenue.

What makes Porterhouse different from other mass-texting services is that we send authentic blue iMessages to iOS recipients instead of green SMS, and texts come from your cell phone number instead of a different provided number.

Hi, I’m Prof. Jed Macosko, and I have the privilege of telling the story of how AcademicInfluence.com got started. I serve as president and academic director under the capable leadership of our CEO, Wayne Downs, and alongside an incredible team that includes Prof. Robert Marks, Drs. Winston Ewert, Brian Carlson, and James Barham, and Dave Tomar, Jenn Finley, and Dan Edelen. Our website helps parents and students find colleges that are a good fit. But more importantly, we strive to connect learners to leaders, which is why a large portion of our site is devoted to highlighting the works and lives of influential people.

We launched the current version of our website in August 2020, and as of the time of this writing in August 2021, our traffic, as measured by SEMrush, has grown to over 100,000 organic search visits per month. We monetize by generating leads for universities and college consultants and by licensing our proprietary ranking algorithm to other sites.

Hi, my name is Edwin Lisowski and I am a co-founder and a CTO of Addepto.

Addepto founders: on the left - Edwin Lisowski (CTO), on the right - Artur Haponik (CEO)

Hi, my name is Edwin Lisowski and I am a co-founder and a CTO of Addepto.

Addepto founders: on the left - Edwin Lisowski (CTO), on the right - Artur Haponik (CEO)

My name is Chelsea Rhoads and I am the CEO/Co-Founder of pup-eeze, the smartest device on four legs. pup-eeze is a wellness tracker for dogs that tracks activity, monitors location and automates our dog’s lives by connecting them with hundreds of smart home devices giving ourselves and our dogs the ability to monitor, maintain and change the environment of the home if we’re concerned about separation anxiety or well-being.

We’ve had great success speaking with and testing the wellness tracker among those who love their dogs and love technology. We thought, “we bring our dogs on every other journey with us, why not include them in the technology journey as well?” With the overwhelming support from the technology community we were able to strategically partner with an emerging leader in the IoT enterprise solution field; Fathym.

Shekar Raman & Francisco Borges launched Birdzi, a provider of a unique Personalized Shopper Engagement & Analytics Platform, in 2014. The business idea was a brainchild of Shekar’s 11-year-old girl when she dreamt of designing an app to assist consumers in locating items in a grocery store in 2010.

Shekar, Birdzi’s CEO and co-founder, adopted his daughter’s concept and began the process of invention and innovation that became the core of Birdzi’s Shopper Engagement & Analytics Platform.

Birdzi Inc offers a platform for retailers and brands to improve their shopper engagement and analytics. It allows brands to connect with shoppers at the right time and place, increase sales, and improve their marketing ROI.

This platform can be implemented quickly and does not require integration with the retailer’s systems. In addition to the platform, Birdzi provides white-label solutions to improve digital engagement and the in-store experience.

Shekar began his career in university research, focusing on the Human Genome Project at UPenn and UNLV. During this time, he developed algorithms for pattern recognition in proteins and retroviruses.

After working at AT&T Bell Labs in the Speech Group, where he gained expertise in systems, storage, and scripting, Shekar transitioned to IT. In this field, he worked as an infrastructure architect for various telecom companies and was involved in designing and implementing various projects.

In addition to gaining new clients, Birdzi’s ongoing relationship with Weis Markets found even greater success in 2021. Ron Bonacci, VP of marketing and analytics at Weis Markets, received a Retail Innovator Award from Retail Touchpoints for his work with Birdzi.

Key Notes:

• In 2021, Shekar Raman and Gary Hawkins, Birdzi’s advisor, introduced “The Retail Perch,” a podcast that helps retailers stay informed about industry news and technology.
• The Retail Perch celebrated one year of episodes in August, with 40 episodes featuring guests from various companies and organizations
• Birdzi values the contributions of all members of its community, including employees, clients, and partners
• As of Q3 of 2022, Birdzi only served grocery stores but plans to offer the services to other retail stores.
• Birdzi plans to introduce health and wellness-based solutions and retail media networks to benefit its customers.
• In 2022, Birdzi had 10 paying customers with average revenue of $40K per month per customer, making the total ARR $480K

My name is Marvin Hosea, I have been developing software for more than five years now and I am the founder and lead at Apps: Lab KE. We are a team of expert software developers, data analysts, and designers specializing in problem-solving using technology and data for businesses and communities.

We are good at what we do and that is software development as stated by our slogan Heart of Tech

Hi! I’m Sergey, a serial entrepreneur in the booming cybersecurity industry and the founder of G-71 with an annual turnover of almost $2 million. I have been working in IT since 2001. I started as a consultant and project manager, then worked as a top manager of several international companies. Today, more than 110,000 people use solutions developed by my companies.

If Quentin Tarantino had used LeaksID when handing over the script of The Hateful Eight, he would not have had to sue the online publication, Gawker because he could have discovered the source of the leak in less than 10 minutes.

My name is Chelsea Rhoads and I am the CEO/Co-Founder of pup-eeze, the smartest device on four legs. pup-eeze is a wellness tracker for dogs that tracks activity, monitors location and automates our dog’s lives by connecting them with hundreds of smart home devices giving ourselves and our dogs the ability to monitor, maintain and change the environment of the home if we’re concerned about separation anxiety or well-being.

We’ve had great success speaking with and testing the wellness tracker among those who love their dogs and love technology. We thought, “we bring our dogs on every other journey with us, why not include them in the technology journey as well?” With the overwhelming support from the technology community we were able to strategically partner with an emerging leader in the IoT enterprise solution field; Fathym.

I am Matt Dawson and am the President of Ironmaster. We manufacture and sell our brand of home gym fitness equipment domestically and in more than 20 International markets. Ironmaster specializes in strength training gear, primarily of our proprietary designs. Our primary market is individuals who want to have their gym at home.

Ironmaster is a multi-million dollar company with a rock-solid reputation as an innovator, top-level service, and one of the longest established fitness equipment manufacturers in the world.

My name is Sean Green and I’m the co-founder of The Sports Gambling Podcast Network and co-host of The Sports Gambling Podcast. In 2011 I hosted the first episode of The Sports Gambling Podcast with my partner Ryan Kramer. At the time I didn’t realize I was starting a business, I just thought I was talking about betting on football with my buddy.

In the following ten years, we’ve grown it from two guys recording their conversation in a garage to a legit sports gambling media empire. We have over 15 shows under our brand, multi-million downloads per year and have reached $30K/month in revenue.

My name is Tyler Robertson, and I’m the founder and CEO of Diesel Laptops.

In three short years, it went from me in my dining room table and garage to a 21,000 square foot facility with over 90 employees.

Hello, my name is Arsen Sultanyan. I am the founder and CEO of Digital Caramel company. I have been in the digital business since 2006 when we just started with software production, and I was engaged in promoting and selling the product online.

At the moment, our company generates $150,000 monthly revenue, and this is not our endpoint. We are constantly working on improving the quality of services, expanding the geography of service delivery, and developing other technological solutions that will further increase the monetization of websites.

Hey, guys! This is Erman, an entrepreneur and a 12+ year veteran in digital marketing. Not long ago, in 2017, I co-founded a company named Solverhood that offers productized services for companies and entrepreneurs in Upwork. Up until now, we have already completed over 300 projects and passed $500K+ in revenue with a 100% proven success rate and only positive feedback.

At Solverhood, we’ve been receiving many data-analytics-related requests from Shopify stores. As a result, we decided to create our own Shopify Data Analytics app. We did not expect these numbers at all. Analyzify empowers over 350 Shopify stores and generates $12K+/month only after 7 months since the launch - and with the first version of the app.

Robert LoCascio is the founder of LivePerson, a conversational AI platform that provides solutions for customer care, Conversational Commerce, voice solutions, and more.

Robert has been the company’s chief executive officer since its inception in 1995. His mission is to make life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands.

LoCascio hails from a family of business owners. He graduated from St. John the Baptist High School in West Islip, New York, in 1986 and from Loyola University, Maryland, with a BBA in 1990.

He is a founding member of the Partnership for New York City’s NYC Entrepreneurs Council and a mentor to the NYC Venture Fellows. He is the driving force behind the company’s objective of connecting companies and customers in meaningful ways.

LivePerson had survived the dot-com bust and grown to become the market leader in intelligent engagement solutions, servicing over 18,000 clients and employing 1,000 employees in offices worldwide.

The company develops consumer interaction and conversational commerce apps and platforms. It offers solutions linked to various messaging platforms, allowing businesses to create more websites, mobile applications, and communication channels.

They offer a range of conversational tools and features, but its primary products are:

• LiveEngage: This messaging channel integration allows companies to create AI-powered chatbots that can answer messages directly from customers.

• LivePerson Insights: This tool inputs structured and unstructured customer chat transcripts and outputs business insights. It can provide customer service agents with customer sentiments.

The company's current revenue is $500M.