Vantage Analytics Raises $1.1M To Make Analytics Data More Usable For Small Businesses

Canadian startup Vantage Analytics is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in its first round of funding.

Co-founder and President Aran Hamilton told me that the company currently integrates with Shopify’s e-commerce platform, aiming to help Shopify businesses understand and act on their data.

For example, he said the product could tell an online T-shirt store in Canada not only how many shoppers become repeat customers, but also how their numbers compare to other T-shirt stores and to other sellers in Canada. And it could help them reconnect with past customers who never came back.

None of these capabilities are exactly unprecedented, but Hamilton said Vantage Analytics is making them accessible to smaller businesses, namely those with less than $50 million in annual revenue.

He added that the company is combating “this lie that data is valuable. Data is not valuable until data can be turned into insight and then action. Quite frankly, that’s hard, it’s beyond what small and medium-sized companies can really manage.”

Vantage launched its first product five months ago, he said. The new funding should help to integrate with e-commerce platforms beyond Shopify, such as Magento, Volusion, and BigCommerce. Eventually, Hamilton said Vantage could go beyond analytics to become “the main operating system or dashboard for a company.”

The round was led by Real Ventures, which contributed $500,000, with participation from angel investors including PBX Innovations, CertaPay co-founder Brad Badeau, and Greg Wolfond, founder of 724 Solutions and SecurePay.