Most people don’t know what happens to their data online. Data exchanges are secretive and complicated, controlled by a handful of companies who reap all the financial benefits. Today, consumer data startup Datacy is announcing that it secured $2.4 million in seed funding to insert transparency into data exchanges and give more power – and dollars – back to individuals.
Investors in the round include Redhawk VC, Trend Forward Capital, Truesight Ventures, Madrona Pioneer Fund, GFR Artists, Golden Seeds, APX, and the Female Founders Alliance. Several strategic angel investors also participated in the round, including Kat Orekhova (formerly of Facebook, Ironclad and CEO of Vareto) and Sarah Imbach (ex COO of PayPal, LinkedIn and 23andMe).
Founded by lawyer Paroma Indilo and software engineer Kaleb Wilson, Datacy is a marketplace that allows users to control and get paid for their anonymized online data, and provides businesses with better, more ethically sourced consumer insights.
Individual users are at the heart of Datacy’s marketplace. After installing Datacy’s browser extension, users select what type of data they are willing to share and who their data can be sold to. Datacy collects, anonymizes and aggregates the users’ data, and provides richer and more accurate insights to companies in accordance with the users’ wishes. Up to 85% of the proceeds from each data sale is paid back to the users. Datacy is currently in private beta. New users can request access by joining Datacy’s waitlist.
For business, user data is crucial to understanding customers, creating new products, and predicting trends. Despite this real need, most data on sale today is stale, incomplete and non-compliant with user privacy regulations. It costs businesses tens of millions of dollars to achieve data compliance. Datacy adds efficiency, trust and transparency to data purchasing. Granular user consent makes all of Datacy’s transactions regulatorily compliant with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, and its 360-degree view of a users’ journey on the web translates into unparalleled consumer insights.
Datacy will use the financing to open its beta to early users and business customers.
Mickey Millsap, General Partner at Redhawk VC comments: ‘We are thrilled to support Datacy as their investor and partner as they build trust, control and transparency into the murky world of big data’.
‘Datacy has been built from the ground up for data collection and sharing, by a team that can tackle the legal, ethical and technical challenges in the space,’ said Jörg Rheinboldt, Managing Director of APX.
‘Datacy is one of those rare companies that can change the world for the better, for everyone,’ said Leslie Feinzaig, CEO of Female Founders Alliance. ‘Paroma and Kaleb are outstanding founders, and the right ones to solve this problem.’
‘Data is increasingly becoming the currency that powers modern business practices,’ said Indilo. ‘Our aim is to give businesses clean, ethically collected data, and to allow individuals to share in the wealth that is created from their data.’
About Datacy
Datacy is a consumer insights data marketplace giving individuals financial ownership over their data by enabling them to be paid every time their data is used by a business. The company is a graduate of premier startup programs including TechCrunch’s Project Include and Startup Bootcamp’s FinTech program. Most recently, Datacy graduated from the Female Founders Alliance highly selective startup accelerator, Ready Set Raise. The company has raised a seed round of $2.4M. For more information, visit datacy.com.
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