More and more companies across industries -- from government to transportation to healthcare to marketing -- are realizing the potential benefits to be gleaned from big data analysis, and at the same time are realizing that they're under-resourced and ill-equipped to deal with big data's volume and subsequent issues. As such, the startup ecosystem in the data arena is thriving.
This flourishing landscape is evidenced by the number of startup accelerators and community hackerspaces emerging to assist entrepreneurs and data scientists. Just in recent weeks, veteran accelerator Startupbootcamp launched an offshoot accelerator, which I already reported on in HealthXL Adrenaline Shot for Health Technology, for heathcare-related technology startups; Arizona Furnace Accelerator announced its inaugural 10 startup teams; Samsung announced plans to open an accelerator in downtown Palo Alto; and a nonprofit big data workspace for hackers and data scientists called hack/reduce opened in Boston.
Further evidence highlighting the booming data startup ecosystem can be found in the rise in investor interest in big data startups. There are, of course, the big players, such as business intelligence startup Platfora announcing $20 million in its second round of funding, and log data management and analytics startup Sumo Logic announcing $30 million in its second funding round, as reported in Business Journal. Also important, however, are investments in startups that may be more on the edge of emerging tech developments and disruptions. These are perhaps as, if not more, illuminating with respect to the ripeness of the startup environment.
Following are five startups to keep an eye on, from all walks of big data -- from business intelligence to energy to data visualizations to behavior analytics -- that have garnered recent investment attention. Is there an interesting big data startup that has caught your eye? Please share with us in the comments section.
1. Zoomdata
Data visualization platform Zoomdata launched last month, with Washington Business Journal reporting $1.1 million in seed-round funding. Zoomdata allows users to integrate, analyze, and visualize data streams in real time on multiple platforms, including web, TV, and tablets. Justin Langseth, Zoomdata's founder and CEO, said in a press release: "Zoomdata tablet users can pinch-zoom through beautiful visualizations of their data from the highest to lowest levels -- all updated in real time. We are making big data real time and accessible to everyone." A full list of investors was not disclosed, but angel investor and advisor Hemang Gadhia said for the release that "the genius of Zoomdata is that it bypasses legacy ETL and database stacks by directly turning raw data streams into beautiful, interactive visuals on mobile devices."
2. Bidgely
Energy analytics platform Bidgely recently closed a series A investment round of $3 million from Khosla Ventures, reported in peHUB. Bidgely's platform is gaining momentum with the rise of the Internet of Things. The platform works with the smart meters that utility companies are installing in homes and businesses, and aims to increase energy savings realized through the smart meter technology and to make better use of the data gathered by the meters. The platform allows utility companies to provide customers with appliance-level itemization on electric bills, and it performs real-time analytics on the smart meter data, which consumers can access through web and mobile apps. Bidgely's co-founder and CEO Abhay Gupta explained to Katie Fehrenbacher in an exclusive interview for GigaOm that because the platform relies solely on the smart meter, the consumer doesn't need to install extra hardware or additional sensors or plugs, that consumption patterns and behaviors are determined strictly through Bidgely's algorithms.
3. Ginger.io
Khosla Ventures also invested $6.5 million in series A funding for behavioral health analytics startup Ginger.io, along with previous seed investors True Ventures and Romulus Capital. Ginger.io's platform allows researchers and healthcare providers to gather patient data, and allows patients to more actively participate in their treatment. After a patient installs the Ginger.io mobile app on his or her phone, the website explains, the app "runs in the background of the phone collecting passive (phone sensor) and active (patient-reported outcome) data." Patients then can consent to share their data on a web-based dashboard with researchers and healthcare providers. According to a report at TechCrunch, current Ginger.io customers include Cincinnati Children's Hospital's Chronic Collaborative Care Network and the Carolinas-based hospital system Novant.
4. AgilOne
Predictive marketing intelligence startup AgilOne recently announced a $10 million round of funding, led by Mayfield Fund. AgilOne's cloud-based platform is a predictive analytics and business analytics tool to help marketers better utilize their customer data to create more efficient, effective marketing campaigns. As it describes on its website, the platform provides a "data scientist in the cloud" -- the platform pulls historical and real-time data from internal and external multi-channel sources, "cleans and standardizes it, runs calculations and predictions, and makes it available in the cloud for predictive analytics." Rebecca Grant at VentureBeat notes that AgilOne also makes use of machine learning to provide marketers with insights about why a particular trend or result is occurring.
5. Continuuity
Big data app development startup Continuuity recently raised a $10 million series A round of funding from such investors as Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, and Ignition Partners. In a press release, the platform calls itself "the industry's first Big Data application hosting platform" and explains that "the company's flagship product [AppFabric] harnesses the full power of the Hadoop ecosystem, allowing developers to rapidly deploy, scale and manage Big Data applications both in and outside of the firewall." Continuuity co-founder Jonathan Gray told GigaOm's Derrick Harris that the future success of the Hadoop market is riding on the ability of Continuuity and similar platforms to succeed: "If there are no applications... then the market is going to go away. Fundamentally, people who pay for infrastructure really want to pay for apps."
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— Jenn Webb, Technology Blogger
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