On November 3rd, Boulder-based GNIP announced a $3.5 million Series B from Foundry Group, First Round Capital, and SoftTech VC, a substantial accomplishment for any startup in today’s venture capital environment. Adding the Series A of earlier this year, the company has raised a total of $4.6 million.
GNIP serves as a bridge between Internet firms that provide data and online companies that consume data. Historically, companies such as Plaxo – a data consumer – would need to code tools called pollers to reach out to data providers (like Twitter), scrape the information it sought, and carry it back to Plaxo. This method was inefficient for both the provider and the consumer, as the provider’s network could get overloaded with data requests while the consumer company might not receive the data in a timely manner. GNIP solves both of these problems: The providing firm merely sends its data to GNIP which turns around and delivers it to the consuming company, all at a very high rate of speed.
An effective metaphor here might be an airport: Data arrives from scores of locations and needs a ride to a multitude of different hotels, homes, or offices. But instead of clogging the airport road with hundreds of cars to pick up the data, GNIP provides a shuttle service that both eases congestion at the airport while reducing the resources expended in driving out to retrieve the newly arrived information.
GNIP operates on a freemium business model, whereby the service is free until consumer firms begin tracking data above a 10,000 person/rules threshold, at which point consumers must pay a penny per user per month.
