Big data just got bigger: New VC infusion adds $100MM
No matter how you define “big data”, the market category is scorching hot. How hot? Accel Partners has just launched a new $100 million fund dedicated to funding so-called big data companies.
With its “Big Data Fund 2”, Accel is betting a hefty sum on organizations developing big data solutions. Their rationale for another infusion of capital in this space? Quoting Shlomo Kramer, CEO of Imperva and a new advisor to Accel’s big data group, “The enterprise world has already embraced the concept of Big Data and is starting to leverage insights derived from data to solve security and other business problems in ways previously unthinkable.”
Having written extensively about Big Data on behalf of clients including Sumo Logic and Glassbeam, it’s clear to us at Write Angle that companies vying for market leadership will have a harder and harder time differentiating themselves. Consider the findings of CB Insights who is tracking this space closely. According to their big data report, funding for these companies rocketed from 55 deals in 2008 to 164 in 2012. Over a five-year span, the total sits at 523 deals.
Does this signal market saturation? Too early to tell, probably. But the takeaway is unmistakable. The dogfight in the big data space will create a deafening amount of noise. And the companies with the best chance of survival will be those that can articulate a compelling, well-differentiated and highly defensible value proposition that will stand the test of time. And that means content creation efforts needed to tell a compelling story, one with rock-solid business use cases, are nothing less than essential.