Thought Leaders in Big Data: Marc Alacqua CEO and Steve Davis CTO of Signafire (Part 3)

Steve Davis: One of our largest clients is one of the largest auto manufacturers in North America. They have a problem analyzing various data sources that might have valuable information that could contribute to analysis of emerging safety issues. All of their data sources are all in separate systems.

They had a notion to incorporate all of that data into a data lake. What they realized is the data lake doesn’t really solve the problem. It just consolidates the access. They brought us in to fuse that data so that the users don’t have to worry about where the data came from. They can just access it all at the same time. >>>

Building a VC-Funded B2C CRM Company From Virginia: Zaius Founder and CTO Spencer Pingry (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Chronologically, where are you at this point?

Spencer Pingry: Around the end of 2013.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve been in the market now for a year and a half?

Spencer Pingry: For the first portion of it, the company’s name was Voodoo Lunchbox. As we went out to look for funding, we raised capital from a venture capital firm. At that time, our evaluator was somebody who was also incubating this idea. We ended up joining >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Marc Alacqua CEO and Steve Davis CTO of Signafire (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with a little bit of an ecosystem map of your space. What is your worldview in terms of who are the players, what are the issues? What does the world around you look like? Where do you position yourself in that universe?

Marc Alacqua: In the Big Data space, there are hundreds and hundreds of companies. We try to focus where our strength is based on our history. It’s about that data fusion side of it. A lot of people talk about data integration. A lot of that focus has been on the data lake. That’s the big trend. Companies feel that they’ve accomplished a lot by creating this data lake. >>>

Building a VC-Funded B2C CRM Company From Virginia: Zaius Founder and CTO Spencer Pingry (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the beginning and tell me how you got the platform built and how you got to the 10 to 15 customers. That is one of the most important parts of the story.

Spencer Pingry: Having been at Netezza, me and one of the other guys had spent a lot of time working with digital media companies and different companies that had this problem. We built the platform by consulting with some of these large news sites.

We built it on our own. We bootstrapped the first part and then we got some seed funding from some individuals to build the platform. Then as we started to develop the interface on top of this platform, we were doing things like funnel-based analytics, basic reporting, >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Marc Alacqua CEO and Steve Davis CTO of Signafire (Part 1)

Complex search queries remains a tricky arena. Read on to learn more.

Sramana Mitra: If you could provide us with some background about yourself as well as Signafire to start us off, that would be great.

Marc Alacqua: I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Signafire. Steve Davis is one of my partners and also Co-Founder. I come from the military world. The origins of our company are from that world. I’m an ex-army officer and worked in special operations. Signafire was born out of the post-9/11 world where there was a mandate in the intelligence world to break down the silos of data across various >>>

Building a VC-Funded B2C CRM Company From Virginia: Zaius Founder and CTO Spencer Pingry (Part 1)

We love companies that have roots in off-center geographies. Zaius started in Virginia, raised capital in Boston, and has grown to ~500 customers with a $24k average ARR per customer. These are healthy metrics, and for the team in Virginia, accomplishments to be proud of.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Spencer Pingry: I was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. I lived there for the first 24 years of my life. I went to the University of >>>

A Kick-Ass Woman Entrepreneur: Cooper Harris, CEO of Klickly (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: One of the questions that comes out of that is what role do you have in showing or not showing products. Does that mean that you’re operating a marketplace of what brands influencers show?

Cooper Harris: Yes, in a sense. It’s able to predict what product to show to whom. We are able to do that now.

Sramana Mitra: You have to recruit the influencer or the brands are recruiting?

Cooper Harris: The brands and the influencers are both our clients. They’re our customers who pay to promote their own products. They’re both on the same side. >>>

A Kick-Ass Woman Entrepreneur: Cooper Harris, CEO of Klickly (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Cooper Harris: Hiring. We went out and we hired really fantastic folks. At first, you, as a founder, are forced to draw upon your own circles of awesome people you know. We were able to get one of the heads of design from Yahoo!. That was very cool. It allowed us to up the game. We mainly hired engineers, product, and design.

Sramana Mitra: Who was doing sales?

Cooper Harris: Me and two team members. It was a lot of work. We also felt really strongly because now the platform had grown to >>>