6 ms·

Mattermark (YC S12) raises a $6.5M Series A to keep VCs in the know

46 points by dmor 12y ago

pbreit 12y ago
The VC industry seems like a tiny niche. But I feel like I've heard them talk about being a more general lead identification tool which has far more upside (ie, "show me all the companies in Seattle with at least 5 salespeople and at least $5m in funds raised").
- manticore_alpha 12y ago
  Correct, like a better more niche discoverorg
- dmritard96 12y ago
  A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exact sales targets.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money (tech-savvy, relatively easy-to-reach B2B market, decent margin on an individual sale, small total market size but acquirer-friendly and can organically grow into other areas of finance intel driven by customer development). Raising $11.5M in total commits them to generalising though, and there's no shortage of competent competition in the market-data aggregation space.
    - larrys 12y ago
      "The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money" At what scale and how long would that take? The VC/angel money allows you to move faster, take more chances and perhaps hire better and faster. And lose money. Important point. Look at their pricing: http://mattermark.com/#pricing http://mattermark.com/#pricing Then this: "Today, Morrill’s curiosity and her 27-person team’s" Imagine the payroll for those 27 people and how many subscriptions they have to sell with what is (for now) a niche product. What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team?
      - dchuk 12y ago
        > What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team? Probably somewhere around $2mn - $4mn/year. That's a pretty big team for the amount of money raised to this point, they must be doing ok subscription-wise.
      - dmritard96 12y ago
        Somewhere (maybe the linked article) that it was 500 subscriptions for $400 a month meaning a little of 2M in annual revenue. 27 mouths to feed is a lot with that revenue.
andymoe 12y ago
Congratulations Danielle and team, really enjoy following along with your adventures via twitter and enjoy the daily newsletter from Mattermark. You're openness and candor is refreshing as well.
- eriksie 12y ago
  Congrats Danielle!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
philjackson 12y ago
Danielle seems like a great founder.
benhamner 12y ago
Congratulations! Y'all have had a wild ride so far, for being among the coolest and most practical companies in the data space
dmritard96 12y ago
So is this just an aggregator of crunchbase/angellist/linkedin or some combination of scrapers and other sources?
- maxpain 12y ago
  yes basically. i worked at a firm that used mattermark, datafox, etc. the amount of inaccurate, duplicate, and missing data was very high. all of these services are like a mashup of data sources that are not very good. there's a reason bloomberg, thomson, etc. focus on public companies.
  - birken 12y ago
    It is comical how often sources like crunchbase (and even the press) are wrong. Though it makes sense, private companies basically have no incentive to release any sort of data unless it plays to some narrative they are trying to create. For example, the date the company was founded is often wrong in Crunchbase (it is reported as more recent than it actually was). Many companies raise money and don't disclose it for months (staying under the radar). Many acquisitions never publicly release the price (so the founders can claim it was a "success" regardless of whether it was). It is just a tough space to be in to try to make something of the data that is available. Public companies are of course much easier.
    - zeeshanm 12y ago
      Data accuracy is important but sometimes the bigger problems to solve are discovery, advanced filtering, and readability. I've played around with Mattermark a little bit and I think it does a fantastic job in solving the later problems. From a hacker's perspective you can do curl/wget, awk, etc to aggregate and filter data from various sources yourself. But to make the same tooling available to a wider audience is what gets you to the market. Dropbox is a solid example, for instance, that made rsync super simple to use for anyone.
      - dmritard96 12y ago
benoits 12y ago
congrats Danielle and Kevin (and team!), you guys are awesome :-)
benoits 12y ago
congrats Danielle and Kevin (and team!), you guys are awesome :-)
tapp 12y ago
@dmor: First - congratulations to you and your team on the raise. Second - a question: your last post on the topic from June 28th announcing your 2M second seed funding said that after 27 consecutive months spent pursuing some kind of funding, it was time for you to take a break from fundraising mode. Given that was less than 6 months ago, it doesn't seem like you took much of a break after all :) Would you be willing to provide more insight and details re: what exactly changed? https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/mattermark-has-raised-2m-in-our-second-seed-round-e93b20dc59b0 https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/mattermark-has-raised-2m...
- steathf0under 12y ago
  she gives it away in this interview I believe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8vbDLdlqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8vbDLdlqU in a word... "war-chest"
- dmor 12y ago
  Thank you. After we announced the 2nd seed round the interest in us increased and we ended up raising more, and then when Brad Feld (at Foundry Group) offered to do the FG Angels syndicate on AngelList I figured "why not?" and I was curious to see the internal mechanics of doing one of those. So basically we raised because we've always be fans of "take money when you can". By this point we had a ton of momentum in sales, had clarified our vision a ton in our month-long company retreat in August, and were not in a position of desperation for once. I felt like I should take heed of the old advice that "the best time to raise is when you don't need the money" so we did some analysis, had some coffees, and picked 6 firms to pitch. We committed to testing the market again. This time, it worked. This stuff is just messy.
jfornear 12y ago
Congrats!

46 points by dmor 12y ago

The VC industry seems like a tiny niche. But I feel like I've heard them talk about being a more general lead identification tool which has far more upside (ie, "show me all the companies in Seattle with at least 5 salespeople and at least $5m in funds raised").

manticore_alpha 12y ago
Correct, like a better more niche discoverorg
dmritard96 12y ago
A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exact sales targets.
- notahacker 12y ago
  The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money (tech-savvy, relatively easy-to-reach B2B market, decent margin on an individual sale, small total market size but acquirer-friendly and can organically grow into other areas of finance intel driven by customer development). Raising $11.5M in total commits them to generalising though, and there's no shortage of competent competition in the market-data aggregation space.
  - larrys 12y ago
    "The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money" At what scale and how long would that take? The VC/angel money allows you to move faster, take more chances and perhaps hire better and faster. And lose money. Important point. Look at their pricing: http://mattermark.com/#pricing http://mattermark.com/#pricing Then this: "Today, Morrill’s curiosity and her 27-person team’s" Imagine the payroll for those 27 people and how many subscriptions they have to sell with what is (for now) a niche product. What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team?
    - dchuk 12y ago
      > What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team? Probably somewhere around $2mn - $4mn/year. That's a pretty big team for the amount of money raised to this point, they must be doing ok subscription-wise.
    - dmritard96 12y ago
      Somewhere (maybe the linked article) that it was 500 subscriptions for $400 a month meaning a little of 2M in annual revenue. 27 mouths to feed is a lot with that revenue.

andymoe 12y ago

Congratulations Danielle and team, really enjoy following along with your adventures via twitter and enjoy the daily newsletter from Mattermark. You're openness and candor is refreshing as well.

eriksie 12y ago
Congrats Danielle!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

philjackson 12y ago

Danielle seems like a great founder.

benhamner 12y ago

Congratulations! Y'all have had a wild ride so far, for being among the coolest and most practical companies in the data space

dmritard96 12y ago

So is this just an aggregator of crunchbase/angellist/linkedin or some combination of scrapers and other sources?

maxpain 12y ago
yes basically. i worked at a firm that used mattermark, datafox, etc. the amount of inaccurate, duplicate, and missing data was very high. all of these services are like a mashup of data sources that are not very good. there's a reason bloomberg, thomson, etc. focus on public companies.
- birken 12y ago
  It is comical how often sources like crunchbase (and even the press) are wrong. Though it makes sense, private companies basically have no incentive to release any sort of data unless it plays to some narrative they are trying to create. For example, the date the company was founded is often wrong in Crunchbase (it is reported as more recent than it actually was). Many companies raise money and don't disclose it for months (staying under the radar). Many acquisitions never publicly release the price (so the founders can claim it was a "success" regardless of whether it was). It is just a tough space to be in to try to make something of the data that is available. Public companies are of course much easier.
  - zeeshanm 12y ago
    Data accuracy is important but sometimes the bigger problems to solve are discovery, advanced filtering, and readability. I've played around with Mattermark a little bit and I think it does a fantastic job in solving the later problems. From a hacker's perspective you can do curl/wget, awk, etc to aggregate and filter data from various sources yourself. But to make the same tooling available to a wider audience is what gets you to the market. Dropbox is a solid example, for instance, that made rsync super simple to use for anyone.
    - dmritard96 12y ago

benoits 12y ago

congrats Danielle and Kevin (and team!), you guys are awesome :-)

benoits 12y ago

congrats Danielle and Kevin (and team!), you guys are awesome :-)

tapp 12y ago

@dmor: First - congratulations to you and your team on the raise. Second - a question: your last post on the topic from June 28th announcing your 2M second seed funding said that after 27 consecutive months spent pursuing some kind of funding, it was time for you to take a break from fundraising mode. Given that was less than 6 months ago, it doesn't seem like you took much of a break after all :) Would you be willing to provide more insight and details re: what exactly changed? https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/mattermark-has-raised-2m-in-our-second-seed-round-e93b20dc59b0 https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/mattermark-has-raised-2m...

steathf0under 12y ago
she gives it away in this interview I believe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8vbDLdlqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8vbDLdlqU in a word... "war-chest"
dmor 12y ago
Thank you. After we announced the 2nd seed round the interest in us increased and we ended up raising more, and then when Brad Feld (at Foundry Group) offered to do the FG Angels syndicate on AngelList I figured "why not?" and I was curious to see the internal mechanics of doing one of those. So basically we raised because we've always be fans of "take money when you can". By this point we had a ton of momentum in sales, had clarified our vision a ton in our month-long company retreat in August, and were not in a position of desperation for once. I felt like I should take heed of the old advice that "the best time to raise is when you don't need the money" so we did some analysis, had some coffees, and picked 6 firms to pitch. We committed to testing the market again. This time, it worked. This stuff is just messy.

jfornear 12y ago

Congrats!