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Andreesen Horowitz And Index Lead $25 Million Round For Big Data Startup Factual

Factual, the open database company, closed a $25 million series A financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. VCs Ben Horowitz of AH and Danny Rimer of Index will be joining Factual’s board. Ron Conway’s SV Angel and former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz also invested, as did some of the previous angels who put in about $2 million earlier this year (only half of which was previously disclosed). “The company has very significant aspirations,” says Rimer,” what they are seeking to do is extremely ambitious. We believe they will need a lot of funding.”

Factual started out as sort of a wiki for databases. Anyone can create or add data to Factual, and it has all sorts of APIs to make it easy for Websites and developers to build apps on top of the data. It also lets developers and consumers visualize this big data in all sorts of ways. But over the past few months, the company started to focus on a few key areas, especially local. It is also building datasets around healthcare, education, entertainment, and government.

But its big push right now is in local. It has a places database filled with the names, locations, addresses, phone numbers, and other info on 14 million businesses in the U.S. Geo apps like Booyah rely on this places database for their services. Factual’s biggest potential customer, however, is Facebook. Right now, Facebook Places in Japan and the UK is based at least partially on Factual data. If Factual can grow with Facebook Places, it has a chance to win the bigger business in the U.S. and elsewhere. It probably doesn’t hurt that Marc Andreesen sits on Facebook’s board.

Factual was founded by Gil Elbaz, who earlier co-founded Applied Semantics (that company was bought by Google for $100 million and became AdSense). He wants to build a big data company that creates and maintains valuable datasets that other Websites and developers can then build their apps on top of. Access to the data is very cheap or free at low volumes, but once an app starts to take off, Factual starts to charge data licensing fees based on how much data is used.

CrunchBase Information

Factual

Ben Horowitz

Danny Rimer

Information provided by CrunchBase

Andreesen Horowitz And Index Lead $25 Million Round For Big Data Startup Factual

President Clinton on Technology, WikiLeaks & the World’s Problems

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In the closing keynote at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, former U.S. President Bill Clinton discussed the significance of using technology to solve what he believes to be the world’s three greatest problems: Inequality, instability and unsustainability.

To make his point, Clinton spoke around economic inequalities and the huge disparity between the rich and poor, both in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. He also briefly addressed the ongoing “Wikileaks issue” as an example of instability in cyber security.

The whistleblower organization and its creator have come under intense fire from the U.S. government following the publication of confidential diplomatic cables. Clinton spoke of the matter as regrettable, pointing to the untold stories of people who have been outed and lost their jobs as a result of publication. He also anticipates that world leaders and diplomats will be more reluctant to speak to the U.S. for fear of another lapse in cyber security, as he describes it.

The 42nd U.S. President, who arrived roughly 45 minutes late due to inclement weather conditions, spoke in stark contrast to the preceding optimistic message shared by musician Stevie Wonder. Clinton’s message was peppered with somber words on everything from the state of education, healthcare and the U.S. economy.

According to Clinton, the idea that the American Dream is most available in America has become a myth.

Still, he left room for hope and appealed to the audience to use technology to lessen inequality, instability and unsustainability in the world. From Clinton’s perspective, it’s merely a matter of finding a way to use technology to solve discrete challenges.

“You can be a risk-taker in answering the ‘how’ question,” he said. “You are all sitting in these chairs because you are in the tomorrow business.”