87% more funding for US start-ups
A major challenge for companies implementing Advanced Analytics is the shortage of qualified Data Scientists. These individuals have a rare combination of skills ranging from statistics to programming, and the ability to identify and articulate complex business and commercial issues. As a growing number of organisations look to adopt Big Data Analytics, the shortage of these skills is becoming more acute, with too few data scientists available to meet the growing demand. A number of innovative European companies are addressing this challenge. The German analytics vendor RapidMiner recently moved its headquarters to Boston and announced the closing of a 5m USD Series A round led by Earlybird Venture Capital and Open Ocean, the investment firm backed by the founders of MySQL. Another German Data analytics startup making waves is ParStream, which recently closed an 8m USD Series B round led by Khosla Ventures. Parstream now has offices in Palo Alto as well as Cologne. Big Data Analytics remains one of the hottest sectors globally for Venture Capital investment. A report published by GP Bullhound in November 2013 identified 1.4bn USD of funding in the previous twelve months period, which represented an increase of 217% increase in capital invested over the previous period. Digging into the data reveals that US start-ups are typically much better funded than their European counterparts at every stage other than the seed round. Examining the total amount raised from seed to E rounds reveals that US start-ups are able to secure an average of 87% more funding than their European counterparts. It is therefore no surprise that a number of European firms are relocating their headquarters to the US.
