Co-founded by Professor William Fitzgerald and David Excell, Featurespace has developed two innovative software solutions for fraud detection and marketing analytics, based on world-leading research carried out at Cambridge University.
Its commercial successes in securing big name customers such as Betfair, one of the world’s largest international online sports betting providers, and IG Group, a world leader in financial derivatives trading, has led to Featurespace earning a wide range of plaudits, including being dubbed a ‘Global Game Changer’ for 2012 by Business Weekly Magazine.
Featurespace’s technology processes live streams of data, building and constantly updating predictive models in real time, which are used to identify and influence change in customer behaviour. The marketing analytics product monitors online customer activity and uses sophisticated algorithmic modelling to predict every individual customer’s future behaviour. This can enable marketers to spot – for example – indications of an increased propensity to churn, allowing them to deploy tailored customer retention activities with pinpoint precision.
The fraud detection software product provides customers with greater accuracy in identifying genuine risks to their business, a significant reduction in the number of false positive alerts, and the ability to allow a greater proportion of business to be accepted safely.
Featurespace’s products have the potential to be adopted widely across the $10bn business intelligence market which (according to Gartner in 2010) is growing at 13.4% p.a. and the fraud detection market worth $270m annually and growing steadily.
The growth opportunities have encouraged existing investors NESTA, Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Capital Group, and founder and former-CEO of Autonomy, Mike Lynch, to also invest in this round.
Susan Searle, Chief Executive Officer, Imperial Innovations Group, said: “This is our second investment in a Cambridge technology company and is an exciting opportunity to back Professor Bill Fitzgerald, a proven expert in this field. The strength of the investment syndicate for Featurespace is a great endorsement of Featurespace’s solutions and the strength of the management team.”
David Excell, Chief Executive Officer, Featurespace, said: “We are already gaining good customer traction with our products, and this investment enables us to further build our team and sales capability to support our growing business through the next stage of our development.”
Jon Edington, Director of Technology Ventures at Imperial Innovations Group, will join the board of Featurespace.
For more information about Featurespace, visit www.featurespace.co.uk
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Enquiries
Featurespace Limited 01223 345940
Jeremy Jones, VP Marketing
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