Iteratively Inc. today announced that it has closed a $5.4 million financing round led by Google LLC’s Gradient Ventures fund, which focuses on backing promising artificial intelligence startups.  

Fika Ventures and PSL Ventures participated in the round as well.

Seattle-based Iteratively has developed a software product that helps companies collect customer data from their applications more reliably. Customer data can take a variety of forms, from purchase logs to metrics on when users interacted with a particular component of a web service. Such information is valuable for analytics initiatives, but gathering it and loading it into an analytics system is often easier said than done.

Iteratively’s software addresses one of the main challenges involved in the task: unreliable data collection workflows. Traditional approaches to gathering customer information often introduce errors into the data, which in turn decreases the value of the insights provided by a company’s analytics tools. According to Iteratively, its product catches issues before they enter production.

The software allows application teams to define a so-called tracking plan that specifies what data they wish to gather, how to do it and to what analytics system the data should be sent. Iteratively uses the tracking plan to automatically generate a custom data collection library. From there, developers can embed the library into their application’s source code to start sending information to their analytics choice.

Iteratively improves data reliability by automatically catching data that doesn’t meet the requirements described in the tracking plan. For example, it can detect records that are formatted incorrectly or are missing some of the details that a company wishes to collect. Iteratively can also filter personally identifiable information such as payment card details to prevent sensitive data from accidentally being uploaded to an analytics system.

Bugs are detected during the development phase, after developers embed Iteratively into their application code but before the code is released to production, which reduces the risk of errors showing up in live data. The startup also provides testing features to make it easier for application teams to catch technical issues.

“It’s clear from pioneers such as Amazon, Netflix and disruptors in every established industry that data has become a company’s most valuable business asset and what will differentiate successful companies and products going forward,” Iteratively Chief Executive Officer Patrick Thompson wrote in a blog post. “Once you’re creating 1-1 user journeys or embedding data in your product, you can’t rely on data that’s 90% accurate.”

The startup reportedly plans to use the new $5.4 million it has raised from investors to double its headcount to 20 workers by year’s end. Iteratively intends to hire more sales, marketing and customer success personnel, as well as accelerate product development efforts. 

Image: Unsplash