Trifacta, a San Francisco big data company co-founded by incoming University of Washington computer science professor Jeffrey Heer and University of California-Berkeley computer scientist Joe Hellerstein, emerged from stealth mode today with $4.3 million in funding from Accel Partners.

All Things D reports on the funding, noting that Trifacta is trying to help close the “analysis gap by making data science more efficient.” Meanwhile, VentureBeat says the company is trying to “democratize data analysis,” creating productivity platforms that make data analysts more productive.”

That’s something that Seattle startup Context Relevant, backed by Madrona and led by data scientist Stephen Purpura, also is tackling in its own way. Context Relevant’s cloud-based application allows enterprise analysts and statisticians to function as big data scientists. In other cases, Purpura told GeekWire earlier this year that it can help eliminate “data analysis paralysis” where companies “get stuck” capturing massive amounts of data, but aren’t quite sure what to do with it.

GigaOm also notes parallels to Tableau Software, though reporter Derrick Harris said that the data visualization tools “aren’t of any use if they simply can’t make sense of the data they’re being asked to analyze or visualize.”

Other investors in Trifacta include X/Seed Capita and Data Collective. Angel investors Dave Goldberg, Venky Harinarayan, and Anand Rajaraman also participated, according to VentureBeat. Advisers include advisers include Michael Bostock of The New York Times, Cloudera co-founder and chief scientist Jeff Hammerbacher, Greylock Ventures data scientist DJ Patil and Tim O’Reilly.

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