Bitvore nabs $4.5M to be your ‘data mining for dummies’

If this startup delivers on its promise, big data might just become a little more digestible and friendly-looking.

Data-mining and business intelligence software Bitvore just scooped up $4.5 million is its first institutional round, including $1 million from crowdfunding sources. Southern California tech investor Yuri Pikover led the round.

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Bitvore’s software is like IFTTT (If This Then That, the real-time command recipe service) on steroids. Its data-mining system scours a wide variety of public and private sources including websites, blogs, email, and social media which can then be customized into recipes (data plus action) and even further fine-tuned at the dashboard level.

Its differentiators and advantages over other similar companies are its “near real-time” monitoring and delivery as well as the simplicity of use, according to the company.

“Our goal with Bitvore was not to create another big data analytics technology that requires months of development and specialized work … to get up and running,” said Bitvore chief executive Jeff Curie.

“Rather, we wanted to build a tool with the smarts of a team of researchers that could delve deep into the web for specific information but be simple enough that even someone with no experience could make it productive within minutes,” he added.

Interestingly, almost one quarter of this round’s money came from crowdfunding. Bitvore used Fundable’s crownfuding service to raise money from accredited investors and other interested supporters. Curie found this to be additional validation of Bitvore’s mission and service.

Fundable itself became possible thanks to the JOBS Act, which President Obama signed into legislation on April 5, 2012. The company launched the following month.

Bitvore is based in Irvine, California and already counts several investment houses and Wall Street firms as customers.