Exclusive – I first learned about hosted business intelligence software startup RJMetrics a few weeks ago, when Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg wrote how he made creative use of their software suite for his latest fundraising round; in fact he said he liked it so much he asked to invest in the company.
Fast forward to today: RJMetrics has landed $1.2 million in seed financing from Goldberg, early-stage VCs including SoftTech VC, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel and Zelkova Ventures, and other angel investors such as Wharton Professor Kartik Hosanagar and DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg.
In addition, Jason Goldberg has joined the Philadelphia startup’s board of directors.
Founded in January 2009 by Robert J. Moore (the ‘R’) and Jake Stein (the ‘J’), RJMetrics was bootstrapped to date and managed to get to profitability by selling subscriptions for its hosted business intelligence software to organizations that operate database-driven websites (mostly e-commerce companies, SaaS vendors, social media organizations and online content providers).
Basically, RJMetrics provides tools for database analysis, enabling its customers to extract data from their business and transform it into a more suitable format for analysis and providing them with the means to turn it into beautiful, actionable charts.
Moore and Stein were both formerly employed by venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners, so they knew that they’d be better off waiting as long as possible before raising outside capital, and only agreed to take on investors when they were absolutely sure that it would “generate positive returns”.
For one, they say, almost 100 percent of this seed funding round came from firms or individuals who have used RJMetrics’ product extensively, which is always a big plus.