SpaceCurve Scores $2.7M to Analyze Location Data

By Derrick Harris, GigaOM

SpaceCurve, a Seattle-based startup pushing a database designed for location data, has raised $2.7 million on the promise it can help application developers better leverage the Internet of things. The money, which comes from Reed Elsevier Ventures, Divergent Ventures and Musea Ventures, will help SpaceCurve educate the market on its unique database.

According to newly appointed CEO John Slitz, SpaceCurve could be a godsend for companies in the mobile, advertising, financial, intelligence and other sectors that need to analyze lots of complex location data in a hurry. That could be geospatial, geotemporal, network or sensor data that’s constantly created by devices from mobile phones to water-safety monitors. The main problem, he said, is that this type of data accumulates fast and doesn’t necessarily follow any standard structures, so storing and analyzing it can be a burden.

“If we can consistently answer the question of who you are, where you’re at and what you’re doing, [there's huge value],” Slitz said.

Aside from the inherent value in anything targeting location data in today’s hyperconnected world, SpaceCurve also is trying to ensure its success by making the database available as a cloud service. Slitz thinks being in the cloud will help SpaceCurve appeal to a wider variety of developers.

SpaceCurve’s technology is definitely high science (from the company’s website: “SpaceCurve has a distinct method for indexing geospatial polygons that provide it with unmatched scalability. Support for geodetic geometry also enables SpaceCurve to deliver the most accurate geospatial-analysis results possible.”) but Slitz explains it a little more simply. Essentially, he told me, it’s able to discover the underlying patterns in multidimensional geodata rather than trying to work around the complexity in the data values. The goal is a product that gives users a familiar database experience on data that are not at all ideal for traditional databases.

The company has a strong data pedigree. Slitz comes from IBM, where he was general manager of the threat, fraud and intelligence business unit. He came to IBM by way of Systems Research and Development — the company whose software famously brought down a team of MIT card counters in Las Vegas (and whose founder, Jeff Jonas, is speaking at our Structure: Data conference next month in New York) — where he was CEO when IBM bought the company. SpaceCurve Founder and CTO Andrew Rogers was previously with Neopolitan Networks as well as a member of the Google Earth team.

SpaceCurve is raising another round of funding and building its technical team. Slitz said he would like to have 5 to 10 partners integrating SpaceCurve into their applications by the product launch later this year or early next year.

Image courtesy of SpaceCurve.

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