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Boulder-based Gridcraft is tackling a big task: allowing any business user to analyze all types of data. And Bullet Time Ventures, which is backed by Techstars co-founder David Cohen, just stepped to lead a $2.2 million seed round to help the nine-person team deliver.
The capital will go straight toward Gridcraft’s launch out of of beta. The SaaS product is expected to be available this fall. About 25 companies are already using Gridcraft in beta so that they can aggregate, analyze and visualize data to make better decisions. The current product utilizes a spreadsheet format, which is familiar to non-techie users, and pulls in third-party data from sources like Salesforce. The team has also incorporated a “chart wizard” feature to help with fast data visualization for constantly changing data.
The business model so far is a free signup and free access to basic tools complemented by an optional paid subscription to access more in-depth features. When the product fully launches this fall, the 1-year-old company should be headed towards profitability.
As a former SVP at SAP and a former board observer at Rally Software, CEO and co-founder Lisa Reeves knows firsthand just how important data-informed decisions are for a company: “GridCraft empowers users to come together to make more strategic business decisions,” Reeves said in a statement.
“Companies are struggling to get a handle on their data, and desperately want to get to a place where they can make data-driven decisions quickly and efficiently,” Ari Newman of Bullet Time Ventures said in the statement. “GridCraft is poised to disrupt the data analytics market by combining powerful analytics tools that everyone across the organization can use with data sharing and collaboration features that just don’t exist in the analytics market today. GridCraft has the potential to truly democratize data.”
