Heap, a company looking to battle the likes of Google and KissMetrics in the analytics space, has raised a seed round of $2M from some of the bigger names in the Valley.
As I’ve written before, Heap’s approach to analytics is somewhat backwards from what many web developers might be used to. Rather than having to be told what data to capture, Heap just captures every action a user does on your site. Every click, every page view, every interaction that their Javascript snippet can capture (though they avoid capturing things that would be directly detrimental to a user’s privacy — they don’t record what a user types into a form, for example, just that they typed something.)
The idea there is that if you need to analyze how well something on your site is working, you don’t have to add any new code or set up a test and wait a few days for the data to come in — you already have that data. Want to check if your users are incorrectly clicking an image expecting it to take them somewhere? Just open up Heap and check the historical data for mouse clicks on that image.
Still not getting it? Here’s their demo video:
Capturing everything means capturing a ton of data — especially on bigger, more complex sites with larger user bases — and that much data means scaling challenges. In a chat with Heap founder Matin Movassate, he suggested that scaling and hiring engineers to help them scale are two of the biggest reasons they’re raising a round in the first place.
I did a deeper look at Heap here. Since that post, they’ve introduced a new facet to their offerings: native iOS support. In addition to being able to capture every click and scroll on the web, it can now also capture every tap and swipe users make in a Heap-enabled iOS app.
The investors in this round are: Y-Combinator (Heap is part of the Winter 2013 class), SV Angel, Redpoint, Sam Altman, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Harj Taggar, Ram Shriram, Pejman Nozad, Joshua Reeves, Salesforce, William Morris Endeavor, Netprice, and RTA Capital. It’s a pretty interesting mix of mammoth groups (SV Angel, Salesforce) and individuals, and a mix of investors known mostly for their investments (like Pejman Nozad) and those known for their own startups (like Alexis Ohanian with reddit, and Sam Altman with Loopt). Heap seems to have their bases pretty well covered here.