Big Data has become a Big Buzzword – and Big Business. Companieshave invested millions to acquire, store and access exponentially larger and larger quantities of data, because data-driven decisions are better…providing that data is lost, broken, corrupted or malformed.
All of which can lead to Big Problems.
strongDM is a monitoring service that detects data errors in real time, helping businesses avoid the high cost of bad decisions based on inaccurate data.
And no manual set-up required, so you can begin detecting errors within minutes. In real time.
Cofounder, CEO and successful serial entrepreneur Elizabeth Zalman (Media Armor, acquired by Nomi), tells us about the funding and her company’s plans to help prevent Big Data damage.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
$800k in seed funding from Bloomberg Beta, Data Collective, Laconia Ventures, Jerry Neumann, Social Starts.
Tell us about your service.
Two trends are colliding to cause a data quality nightmare for the enterprise:
- Real time: Automated data-driven decisions are entering the mainstream. The consequence of an error is now immediate. Knight Capital lost $10M a minute for 40 minutes before an error was caught and corrected…
- Big Data has gone mainstream: companies invested millions to acquire exponentially more data in the hopes of unlocking untold profits and efficiencies.
The problem is, now data-driven decisions are being made in real time, with no ability to monitor or detect data errors before it’s too late and the damage is already done. We started strongDM to ensure that companies avoid the high cost of bad decisions based off of flawed data.
What inspired you to start the company?
No matter how sophisticated your BI tool is, its recommendations are useless, if you can’t trust the underlying data. You wouldn’t buy a Ferrari only to fill the tank with crude oil, so why ask your teams to analyze faulty data? We built strongDM to ensure that businesses make their decisions based on accurate information in order to deliver the profits Big Data promised.
How is it different?
strongDM is the first monitoring tool to provide real time data error alerting across an enterprise’s entire stack from ingestion through ETL and reporting.
Are there particular verticals that you’re targeting and why?
strongDM’s target market includes any business who experiences directly result in financial loss as a result of a data error. There are applications in Financial Services, Commerce, Healthcare and more.
What’s your business model?
Pricing has not been disclosed publicly.
What was the funding process like?
Because strongDM was founded by veteran entrepreneurs who’ve hadthree collective prior exits, our fundraising process was very efficient. Several of our investors had backed the team previously.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital? Fortunately, none
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Build the best possible product for those clients we have already admitted into our closed beta.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
At a seed stage, investors are betting on the size of the market, severity of the pain point, and the team. Building personal credibility and trust with investors requires years, not days. Don’t think that you’ll walk in and persuade an investor to cut a check after meeting you for the first time. It took years of working with our investors at prior startups to get to the point that they said “yes” 20 minutes into a meeting.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We will be heads down building product for the next six months.
According to your data, which is the best NY bar to hang out in on a warm evening?
St. Mazie in Williamsburg.
