‘Data is power’ – taking this sentiment one step further is Simon Data, the first-ever enterprise customer data platform (CDP) with a fully integrated marketing cloud. Recently, Simon Data recently raised $20M in a funding round led by Polaris Partners. President and Cofounder, Joshua Neckes believes that product-market fit, big customers, and great technology are what made raising this funding so much more straightforward.

The startup hopes to use this capital to build an ‘arsenal of solutions’ for marketers and grow its product and engineering team – with a specific focus on data science. The deal also included adding Dave Barrett, of Polaris Partners into Simon Data’s board of directors.

Source: Company Website

Filling the need-gap

Since its start in 2013, Simon Data has raised a total of $32M and still holds on to the mantle of being the only customer data platform of its kind. The SaaS company has channelized this money into building a machine learning-backed product. This solution makes it possible for marketers to create, deploy and track powerful marketing campaigns – without constantly badgering the engineering or analytics team for inputs.

Thus, the data and analytics teams are not only growing in importance but even being considered revenue generating functions. Yet, until recently, the incumbent marketing clouds have been unable to offer enough support. Marketers were still struggling to efficiently consolidate data from different teams, and link all the data sources to give a rich, unified customer view.

Source: Company website

Simon Data delivers just that and more. By treating data as the atomic unit of marketing, it enables cross-channel personalization via its customer data platform and personalization of marketing campaigns on any end marketing channel.

“In 2018, leading-edge companies will prioritize understanding AI by partnering with smart and transparent technology vendors,” said Neckes, President and Cofounder .

This is why, Simon Data works with high-growth and enterprise companies such as Airbnb, Blue Apron Holdings (NYSE: APRN) and TRUECar. These companies use the technology to create customer segments and run effective acquisition, life-cycle, and retention marketing campaigns.

A Forbes Insights/Treasure Data survey maintains that 78% of organizations either have or are developing a customer data platform. CDPs are facilitating a massive advancement in the speed and accuracy of marketing personalization as compared to existing marketing clouds.

The Customer Data Platform Market

According to an update released by the CDP Institute, Customer Data Platform Industry is to Reach $1B by 2019. It has also noted that the industry facilitated a 76% rise in employment over the past year. The Customer data platform industry is thus growing rapidly and is becoming more common.

But 2018 is expected to be all about weeding out the inefficient products built on false promises and redundant technologies. Before this day of reckoning, the fresh funds received by Simon Data could be the boost needed to solidify its position in the marketplace.

Neckes looks at a future where companies make every single effort to build a platform that is able to accommodate data of any scale, size, source, speed, or structure. Its new board of advisors and new talent that they hope to hire show early promise of turbocharging the startup’s high growth.