Snowplow Analytics, the London-based startup that helps businesses to collect and own their customer data, has closed a €4.7 million funding round from research-led VC MMC Ventures. The fresh capital will support the company’s continued expansion in the US and Europe, and will help to further develop the technology behind its product.
Founded in 2012 by Alexander Dean and Yali Sassoon, Snowplow is a real-time event data technology that enables businesses to track, contextualize, validate and model customer data across different platforms and channels. Dean and Sassoon had previously experienced immense frustration when trying to unlock granular data from the likes of Google Analytics and Omniture (now Adobe Analytics). This experience inspired the pair to develop an open-source platform that would enable companies to collect their own customer behavioural data – anything from searching or shopping, to working or playing – across their entire digital estates.
Snowplow data is collected in real-time, and is rich and granular, meaning it can inform a wide range of functions within a business, such as customer journey optimisation, marketing attribution and operational reporting; Snowplow is also widely used to build data products. Snowplow already has over 150 customers across a broad range of sectors and geographies, including Strava, La Presse The Economist, Weebly, Hudl, Auto Trader, Omio and Secret Escapes. Auto Trader replaced its home-grown platform with the Snowplow product; La Presse powers its real-time marketing automation with Snowplow data.
Alexander Dean, CEO and Co-founder at Snowplow, commented: “Snowplow was founded with the aim of freeing data teams from the constraints imposed by traditional analytics vendors. Every industry now has its ‘Amazon’, ‘AirBnB’ or ‘Uber’: a determined tech or product-led disruptor that is using data to drive insights. In this new world, there’s an increased demand for organisations to become much more data-informed. Snowplow helps data teams build that strategic foundation for their customer data.”
He continued: “It’s fantastic to have the MMC Ventures team on board as our first VC investor. Ollie and the team showed huge engagement with our product and real enthusiasm for what we’re doing, so it felt an obvious, natural fit. We’re excited to see how their support will spur us on in this next phase of growth.”
Oliver Richards, Investment Director at MMC Ventures, said: “High quality customer data is the foundational building block for any data orientated company. The Snowplow technology has data ownership, governance and control at its core – a proposition loved by data teams who have deployed Snowplow open source products on over 600k websites, globally. I’ve been really impressed by the entire team and their plans for the future and we’re really excited to be partnering with them on the next phase of the Snowplow journey.”
Building trust around data is central to Snowplow’s vision. Snowplow provides its customers with complete data ownership: all their customer data is processed in their own cloud environment. Data quality is a first-class consideration, with an expanding set of product features to build assurance that customer data is accurate, complete and meaningful. Lastly, the core technology underpinning the Snowplow product is open-source, ensuring that businesses’ customer data capability is built on top of an open standard.
To get a better understanding of how Snowplow works, check out the video below:
