SBIR Phase I: Assessing Private Company Creditworthiness Using Advanced Information Extraction and Translation Techniques

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目解决了提供可靠的、可操作的和实时的关于私营公司的情报的挑战，这是金融机构、投资者、服务提供商、研究人员和企业家强烈感受到的挑战。该公司计划开发一个平台，该平台将(1)从数百万个相关来源收集私营公司的信息；然后(2)提取并构建这些信息，最后(3)通过算法提供对公司信誉和健康状况的持续定量衡量——从而开发出私营公司实力和情绪评分。第一阶段的研究包括三个阶段：(1)建立，包括确定推动得分的力量和情绪指标（ssi）以及确定相关数据源；(2)数据和技术，包括优化现有的收集SSI数据的技术，以及为测试样本收集真实的财务和运营私营公司数据；(3)分析，包括准备数据集、进行统计分析和创建SSI分数。第一阶段的最后一步需要检查产出与为私营公司收集的经验数据之间的相关性，以便评估预测价值。这一努力的主要商业效益将是增加美国小企业获得价格具有竞争力的信贷的机会。如果成功，这项工作将减少围绕私营公司信息的信息不对称，从而使金融机构能够更好地估计与可能寻求信贷的私营小企业相关的初始和持续风险。小企业管理局倡导办公室表示，小企业获得更多信贷带来的更广泛的社会影响包括促进“各种规模企业的经济增长、就业和工资”。除了使机构贷款受益外，这项努力还有可能为那些提供贸易信贷或供应商采购融资的企业以及股权投资界（例如风险资本、私人股本）带来重大好处。从长远来看，为创建和跟踪公司分数而收集的数据代表了一个丰富的创业和私营公司数据库，可以利用这些数据来创建数据驱动的产品，帮助企业家、学者、研究人员和公共政策专业人士理解和支持我们国家的创业生态系统。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project addresses the challenge of offering reliable, actionable and real-time intelligence about private companies - a challenge acutely felt by financial institutions, investors, service providers, researchers and entrepreneurs. The company plans to develop a platform that will (1) collect information on private companies from millions of relevant sources; then (2) extract and structure this information and finally (3) algorithmically deliver an ongoing quantitative measure of company creditworthiness and health - thus developing a Private Company Strength & Sentiment Score. The Phase I research is comprised of three stages: (1) Set Up, which includes the identification of Strength and Sentiment Indicators (SSIs) that drive the score as well as identification of relevant data sources; (2) Data & Technology, which includes optimizing existing technology for collection of SSI data as well as collecting real financial and operating private company data for a test sample; and (3) Analysis, which includes preparing the data set, running statistical analyses and creating SSI scores. This final step of Phase I entails examining correlations between outputs and the empirical data collected for private companies so that predictive value can be assessed. The primary commercial benefit of this effort will be the increased availability of competitively priced credit to US small businesses. If successful, the effort will reduce the information asymmetry surrounding private company information and thus allow financial institutions to better estimate the initial and ongoing risk associated with private small businesses who may be seeking credit. Broader societal impacts resulting from increased credit availability to small businesses include increased "economic growth, employment and payrolls at businesses of all sizes" according to the SBA Office of Advocacy. In addition to benefitting institutional lending, the effort has the potential to offer significant upside to those businesses providing trade credit or supplier financing of purchases as well as to the equity investment community, e.g., venture capital, private equity. Longer-term, the data collected to create and track companies' scores represents a rich repository of entrepreneurial & private company data that can be leveraged to create data-driven offerings that assist entrepreneurs, academics, researchers and public policy professionals their attempt to understand and support our nation's entrepreneurial ecosystem.