Ellie.ai, a pioneer in product design and collaboration software for data teams, announced that it has secured a €2.5 million seed funding round co-led by Newion and Crowberry Capital.
The startup is on a mission to reverse a troubling trend: as a study indicates, a staggering 80% of data initiatives struggle to provide business value. Surprisingly, the biggest challenge behind this low success rate has nothing to do with technology. Over 90% of Chief Data Officers report culture as the most significant bottleneck in companies getting value out of their data initiatives.
“If we look at the Modern Data Stack there are hundreds of tools to help you automate, build, and document your data architecture. Despite this, the percentage of data projects that provide a clear return on investment hasn’t changed. People get lost in their complex data tools and stacks. We believe the most productive data products start from people, culture, and the need to drive better collaboration across the organization,” said Johannes Hovi, CEO and Co-founder at Ellie.ai
Ellie was founded to lead the market for data product design and collaboration tools. The company has experienced increasing traction, which aligns well with the surging market demand. In retrospect, Ellie has capitalized on a significant opportunity by applying their expertise in conceptual data modeling on a larger scale. This has led to the creation of a technology-supported Data Product Design workflow, which is designed to enhance collaboration between businesses and data teams more effectively than previously possible.
“You can think of Ellie as ‘Figma for data teams’, an easy collaboration platform, but designed specifically for large-scale data initiatives. From template-based brainstorming workflows to seamless integrations with other tools, and ease of use of a modern collaboration platform – where everything is connected, easily shareable, and secure,” explained Hannu Järvi, CSO and Co-founder at Ellie.ai.
The company has made significant growth since launching in 2019 and has today over 50 enterprise customers across the world. Ellie.ai ensures that data initiatives provide tangible business value before companies commit to building complex and costly data pipelines.
“Meeting Ellie we found a team that had decided to approach the data world from a unique angle. They put the needs of humans before the needs of the computer. The opportunity to democratize how data is being used and understood within the enterprise is something we’re very excited about,” commented John Sjölander, Partner at Newion.
Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdottir, Founding Partner at Crowberry Capital, added: “Ellie.ai is a standout startup in the data space. Their drive to reshape how enterprises manage their data initiatives aligns with our commitment to support startups that redefine their markets. We’re thrilled to back Ellie.ai on this exciting journey.”
Both investors have made significant strides in backing innovative data companies. Newion is well known for being an early supporter of Collibra, which is one of the leading Data Catalog solutions on the market. Crowberry Capital has recently backed Dreamdata which is a fast-growing B2B revenue attribution platform.
With this funding, the company is developing new workflows for its customers, making Ellie accessible to more people across the organization, and giving them the tools to design great data products with ease. The team is committed to empowering its users and is passionate about helping data teams understand and validate their product ideas swiftly.
