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October 18, 2013

New Venture Firm Forms Around Big Data

Isaac Lopez

Big data startups may have a new friend in financing, as the newest Silicon Valley venture firm has put out its shingle. The new firm, Data Elite, says that they will put a laser focus on big data, offering everything from office space, support staff, and of course, capital.

The new firm, styling themselves as a “venture lab,” brings together an interesting amalgamation of characters from the IT world. Founded by Tasso Argyros, the original founder of Aster Data who later flipped it to Teradata for $300 million in 2011, Data Elite brings backing from The Social+Capital Partnership, Andreessen Horowitz, Formation8, Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway, and entrepreneur Anand Rajaraman.

The group says that the impetus for its formation is to fill a critical gap that is currently not being properly addressed by traditional venture capital firms. Per the release:

“Despite the plethora of early stage funds & incubators, so far entrepreneurs that are experts in big data have avoided those vehicles; rather, they most often attempt to bootstrap their companies on their own. The reason is that the support and resources that may appeal to founders in spaces like mobile apps or social media are too generic & inadequate to make a difference for a big data startup founder. For most big data entrepreneurs, the value of joining an incubator or teaming up with a generic early stage fund is simply not there.”

Promising a transformational experience for companies with the proper background and traction in the data science space, the new firm says it will provide startups with a three-month program beginning on January 15th, 2014 that will include a host of benefits. These include a $150k minimum investment (through common stock purchase and convertible notes), technical and business development counsel from Data Elite’s involved partners, access to corporate advisors, networking access for further funding, and office space in San Francisco.

The company is aiming at a very narrow target as it looks for startups to bring aboard its program. Per the statement:

“Data Elite is searching for companies that use data to drive big disruption. The fact is that nearly all successful big data startups are founded by people that can understand the technical challenges of data as well as the gaps in the market. As a result, Data Elite will be very selective in the companies it accepts, focusing on founding teams with at least five years of subject matter expertise around data, or proven success in a data-related field.”

Partners in the Data Elite program include some pretty weighty names in the data science arena, including such names as Ken Rudin (Head of Analytics at Facebook), Daniel McCaffrey (GM of Platform and Analytics at Zynga), Nicholas Wakefield (former Director of Decision Sciences at LinkedIn), Jeff Magnusson (Manager of the Netflix data science platform architecture), Jerome Boulon (Technical Director of Data Services at Riot Games) and others.

The newly formed venture firm says that they have started taking applications for the three month long program, and will continue doing so until December 15th. For those interested in applying, they can do so by visiting the Data Elite website.

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