Data Elite | First Venture Lab for Big Data Launched by Andreessen Horowitz, Formation8, Ron Conway & Others
Silicon Valley’s big VC firm’s The Social+Capital Partnership, Andreessen Horowitz, Formation8, Ron Conway, and Anand Rajaraman have today launched Data Elite, to help tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges through data science.
Venture lab & early stage fund for big data startups and scientists
Founded by Tasso Argyros and Stamos Venios, the lab is Silicon Valley’s first venture lab and early stage fund for big data startups and scientists, complete with working space, support staff That will help build disruptive big data firms.
Data Elite launches at a time when most needed as most big data companies lack the much required funding and incubation. Those that are there, have no knowledge of big data.
“Big data is solving big problems and we need a home to foster the next generation of this unique breed of scientist. This is the vision of Data Elite and why I’m excited to be on board,” said Ron Conway.
Limited big data funding & incubation
“There are many funds, incubators, and accelerators out there that entrepreneurs can turn to today for general business advice. However, none of these programs have the industry knowledge to help highly technical founders in the data sciences to commercialize their research or build out their products,” says Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and Managing Partner at The Social+Capital Partnership. “Data Elite was formed to bridge this gap, with hands-on support from today’s most accomplished and knowledgeable data scientists.”
Daniel McCaffrey, GM Platform and Analytics at Zynga said Data Elite was a novel move to help grow startups in the ever-growing data sciences industry.
The package of a lifetime
Data Elite startups will give a minimum of $150,000 investment, through common stock purchase and convertible notes, over 60 hours of business development, access to big data decision makers from Fortune 500 companies, direct connections with world-class Silicon Valley’s investors for follow-on funding and access to free office space in San Francisco. This package is however not for everyone.
Wanted: Companies that use data to drive big disruption
Beginning January 15 2014, Data Elite is searching for companies that use data to drive big disruption. Applicants to its three-month program should have at least five years data know-how or from a data-related field. Data Elite pick just 5-10 companies then within months transform them into entities with clear industry traction.
There’s no room to fail.
No room for failure
Joe Lonsdale, Partner at Formation8 and Palantir co-founder says that world-class advisors are one of the most important determinants of success for a young company, and Data Elite has them.
He said, “We are extremely excited to support such a unique launch pad which shares our common love of data science and desire to support companies tackling deeply important challenges facing the world today.”
Data Elite’s partners comprise Ken Rudin – Head of Analytics, Facebook, Daniel McCaffrey – General Manager, Platform and Analytics at Zynga, Jeff Magnusson – Manager, Data Science Platform Architecture at Netflix and Anand Rajaraman – Investor and computer science professor at Stanford, founder of Kosmix which became WalmartLabs in 2011 and many other data scientists from LinkedIn, Netflix, Level Up Analytics among others.
Jump on board, applications are open for individuals and teams until December 15th, 2013.
