New Orleans-Based Federated Sample Raises $2.8 Million To Improve Online Sampling

Federated Sample, a New Orleans-based market research technology firm, announced today that it has raised a $2.8 million series A round of financing. The investment was led by Sopris Capital and early-stage New Orleans VC firm, Voodoo Ventures. As part of the round, Sopris Capital Founder and Partner Jon Kaiden will be joining the startup’s board of directors.

So what is it that Federated Sample does? Put simply, the company focuses on bringing efficiency and automation to online sampling. Its flagship product, Fulcrum, is an enterprise-level sample management platform and white-label routing solution that aims to improve the survey-taking experience and reduce costs for businesses.

Thanks to the growing use of routing, Federated Sample offers its optimization engine to customers that want to use a proprietary panel to decrease dependence on third-party sample providers. Every complete generated by the panel eliminates the need for these businesses to buy outside samples, increasing the user’s margins and improving deliverability.

Fulcrum uses a set of proprietary APIs to connect to panel companies and data collection software to automate the sample delivery process. Of course, when a company is buying market research surveys, they want to know that respondents are who they say they are — one of the biggest challenges facing the industry as a whole. So, Federated Sample is developing realtime validation from public records without having to collect “Personally Identifiable Information”.

Voodoo Ventures Founder Chris Schultz says that he is excited by Federated Sample’s mission because, in creating an efficient market for the buying and selling of surveys, the startup is doing the same thing for market research that the big ad networks did for online advertising 10 years ago — bringing broad distribution and efficiency to the market.

What’s more, Federated Sample counts three of the top five market research firms as clients already, and is seeing strong adoption, with 3.5 million respondents available per month and revenue growing 200 percent year-over-year for this quarter.

It’s also a great example of the type of disruptive technology companies that are popping up in New Orleans. For more on Federated Sample, check them out at home here.

Federated Sample will use its new infusion of capital to roll out new features for its flagship product and ramp up hiring across all divisions.