Individuals are generating unprecedented amounts of data, and companies have an unsatiated appetite for it, so DemystData created the largest external data marketplace in the world. DemystData serves several sectors – like banking, insurance, and industrials – to help analysts access data from various angles, which is enhanced by its access to over 100,000 third party data attributes. Demyst’s marketplace allows users to filter data by attributes and serves a variety of use cases like consumer intent, fraud detection, and real-time risk reviews.
AlleyWatch spoke with SVP of Product and Data Adam Fisher to learn more about the future of data, Demyst’s data, which its closer to ever before now that is has raised a total of $31.5M across six rounds.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Extension of our Series B: The investment round was co-led by MissionOG and Notion Capital with participation from Singtel Innov8.
Tell us about the product or service that DemystData offers.
DemystData has built the largest external data marketplace in the world and helps data scientists/analysts tap into the explosive growth of emerging alternate data.
The company’s Labs and Live products enable rapid data evaluation and deployment for commercial use cases.
What inspired the start DemystData?
The typical way that large corporations test and onboard data is much too slow and the data is very important to help allow financial institutions to make fair and honest decisions about consumer and small businesses.
How is DemystData different?
We don’t know of any other marketplace that offers such seamless and tangible access to this many data products using one well documented and highly available API. We see ourselves as the first true retailer of external data and our providers see us as a natural extension of their own sales teams. The goal is to get useful data into the hands of decision-makers as fast as possible.
Who do you consider to be your primary competitors?
Our primary competition is a bank or insurance companies own internal process for onboarding new or expanding current data products that they use or want to use.
What market does DemystData target and how big is it?
For now, we target the massive global financial services market and our core customers are typically tier1 and tier 2 banks and insurance companies. We are working more and more with FinTech and InsureTech firms as the proliferation of external data is currently growing at a fervent pace.
We have done some of our own measurements of the market by looking at the revenues of several leading data producers and we think the TAM will be north of $70B (2020 all Industries).
We have done some of our own measurements of the market by looking at the revenues of several leading data producers and we think the TAM will be north of $70B (2020 all Industries).
What’s your business model?
Demyst is a SaaS company. Our software is a well documented, highly available set of API(s) that allow end-users to test and deploy the widest collection of external data the world has ever seen.
What was the funding process like?
Very responsive. No one can deny the massive growth and appetite for external data. It’s important for Demyst to find investors that really understand the external data market today (which is typically and opaque world. Part of why we are called Demyst!)
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Finding investors who really understand the external data ecosystem today and where and how it can be disrupted.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our ability to show that we can grow as a tiny entity between massive parties: on one side it’s the world’s biggest data providers (and many small ones too) and on the other its massive banks and insurance companies that typically move pretty slow. We have shown that all these parties can and like to work with a middle entity such as Demyst to catalyze the process of evaluating and deploying external data.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Releasing the world’s largest interactive data dictionary of external data product attributes.
Helping to power the data marketplaces of other AI/ML and 1st party data analytics platforms that want to be even more end-to-end (we think one large gap among those environments is external data).
Raising a substantial Series-C so that we can be even more certain that we have built a lasting place in the external data ecosystem.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Cut as much of the unnecessary spend that you can. NYC is an expensive place to do business, but also a very productive place to be, so you might be surprised what some house-cleaning can accomplish.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Continued growth and availability of the world’s best data products. Even more global growth. Expansion of necessary meta-data that describes all the most important facts and details about data and attributes on our platform. Becoming more of a common place utility for banks and insurance companies to evaluate and acquire external data.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Quality Eats – Nomad. It’s very close to our Flatiron office locations. Our HQ-office.
Shake Shack – Mad Sq.Park (I think it’s the original location !). Love to head there on a Friday late-afternoon beer in the park with the team.
