Beekeeper Data, a Madison startup that’s developed a simple analytics service for businesses, launched its product as it announced $550,000 in fundraising.
The company, founded by former Foursquare engineer Matthew Rathbone, develops reports for businesses and their customers that are easier to understand and generate.
So far, those using Beekeeper Data include the restaurants on the EatStreet delivery platform and the retailers that use Solomo Technology’s sensors to track traffic patterns in their stores. The ease of developing those reports through Beekeeper Data saves time for EatStreet staff who would otherwise spend their time pulling data.
But at the Texata Summit in Austin on Monday, Beekeeper Data moved beyond the beta rollout stage to pitch its product to new customers.
“It’s amazing to actually get it out there and spread the word,” Rathbone said. “There’s no better feeling as an entrepreneur than when your product launches.”
As an engineer at Foursquare, Rathbone had to manually generate spreadsheets over and over and figured out an easier way to do it. The internal prototype he developed for Foursquare was a “tremendous success,” he said, but he couldn’t use it after he left the company.
So Rathbone started a broader product with Beekeeper Data to more easily share data with customers via email newsletters, targeting digital marketplaces.
Rathbone says that’s a major improvement from the “hodgepodge” of online solutions that offer complex data dashboards. And that’s something that Joe Barneston, Solomo Technology’s director of product, agreed with in a news release yesterday.
“Before Beekeeper, we tried more traditional [business intelligence] tools, but found our customers got lost in the data,” Barneston said. “Beekeeper’s unique product allows us to answer our customers’ key performance questions in a simplified and automated way.”
Wisconsin Investment Partners led the fundraising round, and its co-manager Michael Thorson will join the startup’s board of directors. Other investors include BrightStar Wisconsin and Champaign, Ill.-based Serra Ventures. The company came in slightly above its fundraising goal of $500,000, Rathbone said.
— By Polo Rocha
WisBusiness.com
