Scoop analytics secures $3.5 million seed funding to transform data analytics

Scoop Analytics, a business analytics tool powered entirely by spreadsheets, has announced securing $3.5 million in seed funding. The new capital will be utilised to improve the company’s distinctive solution, which will allow individuals with spreadsheet skills to effortlessly acquire data from any application, combine data from multiple sources, and present visually compelling data narratives through live, drillable slide presentations to facilitate the advancement of their respective business operations.

The funding round was led by Ridge Ventures, with participation from Industry Ventures and returning investor Engineering Capital. Yousuf Khan, a director at Ridge Ventures and former CIO, has been appointed to Scoop’s board. Khan has previously advised early-stage companies like Material Security, Productiv, and Zoom.

Brad Peters, founder and CEO of Scoop, expressed that the company is well-positioned to eliminate the wasted time and money companies spend on preparing data for business analytics. He emphasized that with the new support and expertise, Scoop aims to elevate its efforts in empowering operations teams in finance, marketing, and revenue. Peters highlighted that traditional methods required substantial investments and months to set up data warehouses for self-service analytics, which were ultimately limited and time-consuming. Scoop simplifies accessing, combining, and utilizing data to create repeatable, automated data stories without needing a data team or significant financial commitment.

Yousuf Khan mentioned that Scoop’s goal is to make self-service business intelligence a reality by providing data analytics in a format that doesn’t require a data team. He added that Ridge Ventures is excited to collaborate with Scoop and its founders, Brad, Janet, and Gabe, to strengthen this unique approach and support companies.

Scoop was created by experienced professionals in the business analytics sector. Brad Peters began his professional journey as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley, where he employed spreadsheets. He was the leader of the analytics product at Siebel, which was subsequently acquired by Oracle Business Intelligence, following his graduation from Harvard Business School. In 2005, he founded Birst, a product that enabled daily data-driven decisions. Gartner, Forrester, and other analysts considered Birst revolutionary as it allowed broader access to sophisticated analytics. However, Peters noted that most enterprises, which are younger and smaller, lacked the big data teams to create comprehensive reports. They needed simple, strategic decision-making tools.

Peters continued to work with former Birst colleagues who shared his vision for simplifying data access. Gabe Jakobson, Scoop co-founder and CTO, led Birst’s visualization team and saw the potential for more user-friendly analytics tools. Janet Gehrmann, Scoop’s Head of Customer and co-founder, managed SMB go-to-market at Birst, encountering many customers who struggled to get the necessary resources from their BI teams.

These customer challenges inspired the innovative concept of Scoop Analytics. It is based on the belief that data-driven decisions should be accessible to everyone in an organization daily, without requiring engineering skills. Scoop’s novel approach eliminates the need for technical setup or data infrastructure. Users only need to know how to operate a spreadsheet.

Scott Whitaker, head of finance at Codesmith, stated that ntil now, it has been impossible for anyone from line-of-business leaders to CEOs to address problems with the most comprehensive and current data available.