Zoomdata announced today it raised $17M to grow the Reston startup’s marketing and big data product expertise. The round was led by Accel Partners’ big data fund. NEA, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Razor’s Edge Ventures, and B7 also participated. The big data analyzer has 20 paying customers, with at least one investing $10M to license the software. Founder Justin Langseth says the company, which previously raised $5M, has doubled in the last year to 50 employees and expects to hit 100 in the next year. Zoomdata was spun out of Augaroo, the company owned and run by Justin's wife, Tatiana. The two firms will move into office space in Reston Town Center in a few months, going from 1,000 square feet to 6,700. The two companies occasionally collaborate and hold team-building activities together.
Zoomdata’s product was originally designed for iPads, but Justin says customers were asking for the company to ship them the devices to use the software. So the team built a web interface that embeds in applications, portals, and websites. The company also started to let users get analytics and visualizations of their historical data, not just real-time data. NY-based PlaceIQ, for example, gathers huge amounts of data on shoppers for advertising analytics. The company launched its product recently using Zoomdata to present a visual picture of shopper behavior.
The company also opened offices in San Francisco, New York, Ukraine, and Chicago in the last year. Justin (second from left), who has launched four other (successful) companies, says Zoomdata’s growth pace has been pleasantly surprising and credits the product market timing. Justin experienced the pain many DC entrepreneurs feel when raising a Series B round—you can’t raise big money in DC. Top-tier firms are raising multi-billion dollar funds, but DC-area investors have smaller funds and are investing in fewer things. Justin says Accel looked at other big data companies but waited for Zoomdata’s series B round so it could participate.
