For many technology companies, effectively and efficiently managing customer data with integrity is a major key to success. If user information is mishandled, there can be serious ramifications.
That’s where Integris.io wants to help. The Seattle startup came out of stealth mode today, announcing a $3 million funding round from investors like Madrona Venture Group, Amplify Partners, Ignition Partners, and others.
Co-founder and CEO Kristina Bergman told GeekWire that over past 15 years working as a manager at Microsoft and principal at Ignition Partners, she’s gained a wealth of experience with products that let companies glean powerful insights from their data.
Along the way, she realized that with great power comes great responsibility in regard to how companies manage customer data. This has become increasingly important as more and more data is generated, whether it be from fitness trackers or kitchen appliances, while regulators keep close tabs on how companies protect consumer rights and privacy.
After identifying a need in the market, Bergman co-founded Integris with long-time tech executive Uma Raghavan and veteran entrepreneur Frank Martinez and the team built out what it describes as a “data risk intelligence solution” that operates both on premise and in the cloud. It utilizes a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, data mining, and much more to help companies automate how they manage customer data.
“Any company that relies on their customers’ data to make better products and services, to better market to them, or even to provide basic customer support, now needs to be able to prove they are operating with integrity for how they use customer data,” Bergman explained. “We’re helping companies gain visibility into how data is used, assess the risk associated, and ultimately prove they are operating with integrity.”
Integris, which employs four, isn’t revealing its customers, but Bergman labeled them as “Fortune 1000 companies.”
“As we build the product, we are partnering with four Fortune 500 companies in the telecommunications, pharmaceutical and e-commerce markets to design and build the product,” Bergman added. “These customers feel the pain of an overwhelming amount of data and are aware that current solutions don’t provide the visibility or control they require.”
As a result of the funding, Madrona’s Julie Sandler and Amplify’s Mike Dauber are joining Integris’ board. Sandler wrote a blog post detailing Madrona’s decision to invest in Integris:
From our first conversations with Kristina, her vision resonated strongly and immediately with us. The ability to collect, store and analyze huge amounts of data from customers is immeasurably important to companies across every industry, but is being met with a wave of new (and frequently changing) regulations. The legal, customer-privacy, financial, and reputational risk of failing to meet this set of ever-evolving and complex regulations are dire, and companies experience significant challenges (and spend a lot of time, money, and resources) trying to keep up. It’s early days for Integris, but the team is building a powerful data risk intelligence solution that uniquely addresses this precise challenge for big companies in a proactive, automated, and continuous way.
