London’s Signal has raised $1.8m to accelerate the development of its content analysis platform and add more data scientists to its team.
The company uses text analysis, natural language processing and machine learning to analyse millions of online news site, blogs and social networks in order to help companies with real-time media monitoring.
Bloomberg’s former global head of product management Russel Levi has joined the team to lead on product, sales and content strategies. Signal is challenging huge legacy players like Gorkana and Kantar, but Russel Levi says these companies haven’t kept pace.
“The advent of social media has resulted in exponential growth in content creation and distribution. With billions of pieces of content produced everyday, companies are finding it increasingly hard to cut through the noise to find the information that will give them a competitive edge.”
Wesley Hall, who’s worked as an exec at Gumtree, Fab and eBay, has joined the company as CTO.
Signal was cofounded by Dr Miguel Martinez, a computer science PhD and expert in text mining, who leads the research team. The company also collaborated with Glasgow University, the University of Twente, Essex University and UCL to develop the product.
Frontline Ventures led the round, joined by Samos Investments and Reed Ventures, along with a host of angel investors. They include Robin Klein of Index Ventures, Rahul Powar, who created Shazam’s iPhone app, and Andy Phillipps, former chairman of Toptable.com.