Crunchbase — the database spun out from TechCrunch that charts startups, other tech companies, the people who work for them, and those who fund them — has..
Crunchbase — the database spun out from TechCrunch that charts startups, other tech companies, the people who work for them, and those who fund them — has secured some new funding of its own — $18 million — and with it, a new plan.
The company is announcing a new service called Crunchbase Enterprise for business intelligence. And in addition to this, it’s in the planning stages for another new product currently operating under the working title of “Marketplace,” which will see Crunchbase turn into a platform, where visitors can search and analyse not just Crunchbase data, but information from third-party sources that will complement and enhance it.
Crunchbase Enterprise lets users perform typical business intelligence and analytics queries, such as setting up and following investment trends, identifying and tracking growth industries, and identifying companies that are close to their own for partnerships (or to watch for competitive purposes). In a way, Enterprise is the large-company version of the Pro product that Crunchbase launched last year.
So far there are about 5,000 companies using the Enterprise product, including Affinity, Datafox, Datanyze, Deloitte, Engagio, Everstring, Infer, Microsoft, Nestle, Samsung, Slack, Target, Volkswagen, and IBM Watson.
Meanwhile, the plan for Marketplace will be to launch later this year, CEO Jager McConnell told me in an interview. Crunchbase is not announcing which companies and what data will be a part of the Marketplace product, but McConnell said that around 10 companies have already signed deals to provide their data — mainly by way of an API — and the aim is to have 15 secured by the end of April. People will be able to choose to add to their searches by way of an “app store” model, bringing to mind services like Slack and the many apps that users can select to integrate into its platform.
Both Enterprise and Marketplace are part of a bigger strategy at Crunchbase to turn the service into “the master record of companies on the internet,” in the words of McConnell, the ex-VP of product at Salesforce who took the helm at Crunchbase as part of its 2015 spinoff from TechCrunch and owner Aol/Verizon.
“Can we be the equivalent of LinkedIn for resumes, or Facebook for friends? We think that with Crunchbase Enterprise, we are taking a novel approach to achieve that goal.
