When Zoomdata CEO Justin Langseth explained to some Goldman Sachs executives last year what the data analytics and visualization tools his company built was capable of, they were downright eager to lead a $25 million funding round in the Reston, Va.-based startup.
"They asked us about a couple of extra features and we told them we could deploy them faster with enough money," Langseth told DC Inno in an exclusive interview. "Financial services have tons of data that we can analyze, and in real time too."
"We're building new and exciting stuff."
The new funding marks $47.2 million raised by Zoomdata since it launched in 2012. Comcast Ventures joined Goldman Sachs as a new strategic investor in the company, along with several returning investors. Comcast's interest is just as direct as Goldman's according to Langseth.
"NBC is part of Comcast and it has tons of data, just like any financial service," Langseth said. "The real-time advantage is important to them too, of course."
Rapid team and client list growth has put the company into a profitable setting, which makes any kind of IPO talk way too premature, Langseth said. Right now, the new capital will be drilled into hiring more engineers and other staff while putting the next stage of Zoomdata's "Data Sharpening" tech into practice.
"We've got a mix of users who have reached the limit of the [data technology] they were already using and new ones building data-driven services with our software embedded in it. We're building new and exciting stuff and mixing it with the stuff that we already have."
Zoomdata's software offers real-time and historical explorations of multiple data streams. It turns all of that information into a coherent format with much more accessible analytics, useful for those who don't have a statistics degree.
"We started later than the big wave of settled tech from 10 to 20 years ago," Langseth said. "That means we could start from scratch. Older tools haven't gotten around to updating and adapters are the lowest common denominator if it works at all."
And with the new influx of cash, there's no reason that Zoomdata's lead can't be maintained or even extended, Langseth said.
"Any new company is going to have to answer questions about how they're different from us," Langseth said.
