Big data, little companies: These six startups want to disrupt the data world

Above: The Strata startup showcase after 8 PM.

Image Credit: Eric Blattberg / VentureBeat

JethroData

JethroData is an index-based SQL engine for Hadoop that promises faster queries than Impala, HAWQ, or HIVE.

“As data comes in, we index it on the fly and store it in [the Hadoop Distributed File System],” explained JethroData CEO Eli Singer. “And now we know the results when you need those records.”

So rather than scanning the entire database for a query, it’ll pull specific records related to that query — which it already knows, because they’ve been indexed in advance.

In other words, JethroData is really good at picking the needles out of digital haystacks. If you search for the whole haystack, it obviously won’t run as quickly.

“If you look at the history of databases, this is not a new concept, but it’s new to Hadoop,” said Singer. “The more you drill down in your query, the more effective Jethro becomes.”

The Israel-based startup closed a $4.5 million round led by Pitango Venture Capital in February 2013. The product is currently in closed beta; Singer forecasts a release in the beginning of next year. The company currently has 12 employees.

Hazelcast

Hazelcast, an in-memory data grid, began its life as an open-source project in 2008 and was later spun off into a company.

It’s designed to tackle one of the biggest problems for Java developers: preventing applications from drowning in data.

Above: Hazelcast’s Miko Matsumara

“Distributing caching and processing are very easy for us,” said Miko Matsumara, Hazelcast’s vice president of marketing. “Your distributed cache is embedded in the application, so it can scale elastically with the demand — and it keeps applications separate, so one traffic spike doesn’t present problems for the rest of the applications.”

In an era where everything comes as a service, Matsumara joked that Hazelcast offers caching-as-a-service.

Hazelcast remains open-source. Matsumara estimates it has “a few dozen” outside contributors. It’s already racked up some big supporters, including Apple, Firefox, AT&T, and Cisco.

Hazelcast raised $2.5 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital this September. The founders recently relocated to Palo Alto, CA, but the majority of the developers remained in Turkey.

Mevoked

Mevoked was the last startup we had the chance to talk to before a man with a bell shepherded everyone out of the area. It’s also the only consumer-facing platform on this list.

The San Francisco, Calif.-based company tracks children’s online behavior to provide parents insight into their mental state.

“We can look at early indicators of depression, obsession with violence, and risk of suicide based on online activity,” Mevoked founder and CEO Arun Ravi told VentureBeat. “We’re trying to intervene before that happens and empower parents to act.”

Above: Mevoked provides parents with daily updates on their child’s well-being.

Most children won’t take kindly to being monitored, of course, but in most cases the parents are the ones paying for their devices and web services, so Ravi thinks they have a right to know what their kids are up to online. But to mollify privacy concerns, Mevoked is working on a version of the platform that doesn’t show specific content.

Mevoked released its Chrome extension last week, which costs parents $5 a month to enable. Add-ons for Twitter and Facebook are coming shortly.

Ravi knows the service may be controversial — and he definitely knows that kids will hate it — but his motivations are pure: he wants to prevent mental illness in kids and teens.

“I had a friend who committed suicide when I was young, and I remember his parents saying, ‘I wish we knew, I wish we knew’,” said Ravi. “If we can reduce teen suicide by five percent, it’s worth it — because right now, everything people are throwing at it is not really working.”

Mevoked currently has four employees and is raising a seed round.