CrunchBase (www.crunchbase.com)
is a free database of technology companies, people, and investors. It currently
contains records for nearly 80,000 companies, over 100,000 people, and 7,000
financial organizations. CrunchBase is operated by TechCrunch (http://techcrunch.com), a popular technology
news company founded in June 2005, which describes itself (on CrunchBase) as
"a network of technology-oriented blogs and other web properties," and
was acquired by AOL a year ago.
In the fast-moving world of technology start-ups, acquisitions,
and partnering, it is no wonder that this database is largely crowdsourced, but
contributions are also moderated and don't go live until a staff editor has
passed them--usually within 24-48 hours of submission.
A Company
Entry
CrunchBase is the ideal place to go to find out about
a new company--for example, one you may read about in Cyber. Last month before I read the Media SpecScan, I knew nothing
about the product Float and little about the company Scribd. So I went to
CrunchBase, entered Float in the prominent
search box at the top of the page, and got a few results, but nothing that
looked as though it were a news product. Entering Scribd,
on the other hand, lead me to a results list with Scribd company at the top. When
I clicked the company name, I got a 133-word description of the company that
not only told me what it does, but also highlighted 16 of its customers and
partners. What a goldmine! I figured that this was probably Scribd-generated
content even though it was written in the third person--it seemed objective.
Other content is available on the profile page.
General Information indicates the Scribd website, blog, Twitter handle, and
email address; tells me that it is classified as "Consumer Web" and
described as a "Social Reading Service"; and says it was founded in
March 2007 and has 40 employees. A
street address is given, and you can click through
to a Google map showing nearby companies. Scribd is in San
Francisco, so I didn't take the time to check out the nearly 50
other companies within a three or four block radius--though I probably would do
that if I were looking for a job or making a business trip to California. Six "People" were
listed as associated with Scribd (co-founders and board members) as well as
three "Former People"--all giving useful ways of tracking innovation.
All these names are clickable; while they may not be the total group of
important people for the company, they are all in the database and it is
possible to find out where else they have been or are now. Funding sources,
amounts, and dates are also given and lead to more entries in CrunchBase; and
somehow several competitors have been identified and linked to their CrunchBase
entry. Tags also accompany some records, which may facilitate finding entries
when you do not know the name.
That's all in the left column of the page. Underneath
the center-column company description are Milestones: two-line indications of
personnel announcements or funding events, with an indication of the date they
were posted (usually by an outside source), plus a link to the story at the
source. The Scribd entry also presented two video clips, one from CNN Money and
the second, an August 10, 2011 clip from Beet.TV with CTO and founder Jared
Friedman describing the release of its Float product.
Also available on the right and bottom of the page are
notifications and links to recent job announcements at Scribd, posts from
TechCrunch and TechMeme, a link to an external review of Scribd, and multiple
links to further sources of information.
Homepage
Back on the homepage, CrunchBase shows what's Hot on
CrunchBase under tabs labeled Trending Now, Popular Pages , and In the News.
When I first looked at Trending Now, it ranked and gave links to the following:
Efficient Frontier
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Accel
Partners
Spotify
Tagged
Groupon
When I looked the next morning, some had been replaced
by Mark Cuban, Amazon, YouTube, Mark Zuckerberg, and SCVNGR. Investigating a
few, simply by clicking the name, let me explore pages for people (Mark Cuban),
financial organizations (Accel Partners), and products (SCVNGR, though SCVNGR is
in the company category, it describes itself as "part game, part game
platform." Additional types of information populated these pages as
appropriate: education, investments, screenshots, and traffic analytics. I didn't
see any surprises in the Most Popular listing after I figured out that some were
Russian-language social networks. In the News gives headlines and links to articles
recently written by TechCrunch. A Funding Activity section lets you quickly see
financial transactions under tabs for Newly Funded and Biggest Rounds. Presumably
reflecting diversified investor interest, a surprising number of financial transfers
went to companies outside the IT sector--biotech, pharmaceutical, and
alternative energies.
Beyond
Browsing
As mentioned before, my initial search on Float did
not get me to the company that produced this product. However, when I re-did
the search and looked further, I discovered at least 12 other pages of results.
Since results are presented in no identified order, it's good that there is an
Advanced Search link right next to the search box. The link clicks through to
the Advanced Companies Search page (www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies)
and will automatically carry your query if you have left something in the
simple search box. There are separate advanced search pages for financial organizations
(www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/financial-organizations),
people (www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/people),
and locations (www.crunchbase.com/maps),
though a link to the location search page seems to be a sometime thing.
Advanced search options are impressive. For companies,
you can fill in "as little or as much information as you like" in the
following fields: keywords, location (and specify within a number of miles of the location), category
(a drop-down list of 18), founding date range, and minimum/maximum number of
employees. You can specify acquisitions within a date and value range, and
funding within date and size ranges, and limit funding rounds to Seed, Angel,
Series A, B, C, D, E, or F, Grant, Debt,
Unattributed, Any, or All.
The Advanced Financial Organizations Search page has
the same general company search options, but additional investment options are
offered as a range of investment dates (month and year) and a minimum/maximum
number of investments. Advanced People Search offers searching on age range and
keywords; allows limiting by web activity (blog or Twitter); and provides checkboxes
to indicate an investor (with minimum/maximum numbers of investments) and Work
Experience (having worked for a funded company, an acquired company, or
multiple companies). None of these factors is defined, so it may be necessary
to experiment a little to figure out the parameters. Location search presents a
Google map, inviting you to select a location and specify a mileage range,
which will then become populated with pushpins and the names of companies
within range--there are 119 offices within 100 miles of Vermont.
Keeping Up
When you find companies or people you want to keep
tabs on, you can follow them. To initiate that, however, you need to be logged
in, and for that you need to register. This may or may not be simple: you can
register with Facebook Connect or start a new login. I am wary of connecting
everything with Facebook, so I started a new login. It took me three attempts!
Even though CrunchBase sends a very clear message telling you what things need
to be corrected to make your registration valid, I resisted its message telling
me that my email address was already taken. I finally had to gave in, of
course, but I was relieved that I won't need to go to a separate email address
to retrieve my CrunchBase alerts--I just need to go to my own page on
CrunchBase. Registration also allows you
to create and edit company and personal information.
So here we are, back to the issue that this database
is created by the world at large. The last answer in the FAQ page (www.crunchbase.com/help/faq)
provides guidelines on how to enter data in CrunchBase (I love the "Avoid
marketing language" admonition). I wonder how many people get to the end
of the FAQ before they write? Data is moderated by a staff editor before it
goes live, and I'll bet that some hyperbole is toned down. Judging from some of
the entries I saw, though, there is a lot of latitude in the type of companies
that are accepted, which is probably not a bad thing.
Right below the Edit This Page link on a company,
people, or financial organization page is a Revision History link. You can see
who has edited a piece and when, and you can go to that revision. I could see no
indication, however, of what the edits consist of.
CrunchBase is definitely worth checking whenever you
have an unknown name in technology or financing, and essential for competitive
intelligence in technology fields.
Susanne
Bjørner provides editorial services to publishers, librarians, authors, and
researchers from a base in Spain.
Contact her at bjorner@earthlink.net
or www.bjorner.info.
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