When I lived in San Francisco I was chatting with a venture capitalist who invested in consumer brands. I mentioned that Peloton had set up a display in an upscale mall in suburban Cincinnati, where I grew up. He was shocked, and said “Wow — that shows you how hard growth is to come by these days, that they are trying to sell Pelotons in a place like Cincinnati.”
I was mildly annoyed but mostly just astounded that someone whose job it is was to understand consumers and decide which brands to invest in had such a warped view of the United States. He had grown up on the East coast and gone to Stanford and Harvard. It made me wonder about the effects of the schools and geographies that funnel people into positions of power.
Several months ago I found a dataset that aggregates LinkedIn profile data to show where college graduates live. I found it through the excellent newsletter Data is Plural, which curates new datasets each week. The dataset came from this paper, and you can follow the author John Conzelmann on Twitter.
I have been playing with the data and made this dashboard, where you can select a university and see the percentage of graduates in different metros.
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