Manzama, a startup with cloud-based software that helps law firms stay on top of key information about their clients, is expanding into consulting and financial services markets, thanks to some fresh money. The startup announced today a $1.3 million round of new funding. The money shows investors believe lots of companies ought to have tools that can let people easily tracking critical developments, rather than open- or closed source text-analysis tools that require extensive tinkering in order to use. That’s part of the appeal of social-focused Radian6, which Salesforce.com acquired, as well as analytics-rich social media firehose providers like DataSift and Gnip, which Twitter bought. But Manzama’s software is more diverse than those services. It mines social media messages, newspaper articles, blog posts, and other sources of text for important tidbits. It also allows companies to bring in other information sources that Manzama can then analyze alongside other sources.
Manzama started with a simple mission: Help attorneys deal with information overload. And now the Bend, Oregon startup — founded four years ago by entrepreneurs Peter Ozolin, Mark Hinkle and Randall Smith — is looking to build on that initial concept after scoring $1.3 million in series A funding. The 32-person company plans to use some of the new funds to expand its so-called “listening platform” into other professional services such as accounting and financial services. Ozolin admits that there’s a lot of “noise out there” when it comes to information flow — making it harder for professionals to stay on top of the news that’s most relevant to their jobs. “We give them a framework so they can more easily track what’s happening with their clients or industries of interest,” he said. “The best way I describe Manzama is that it is like The Wall Street Journal, (but) imagine when you open it up that every article applies to you.” That means lawyers who work specifically in practices such as mergers & acquisitions, patents or litigation could get tailored content designed just for them. You can think about it as personalized Google alerts on steroids. “The challenge is how do I find content that is relevant to me without going through the process of creating a bunch of elaborate searches and queries,” he said. “We all know that time is money and that not many professionals are willing to undertake that sort of an effort.” Ozolin says they use different triggers to find information, personalizing the information for each individual and his or her interests. So, for example, a corporate lawyer for drug maker Pfizer could get specialized content set up for them.
