SOFTWARE firm ScraperWiki has secured funding from the North West Fund for Venture Capital as it bids to continue its growth at home and overseas.
The company, based at Liverpool Science Park, has created technology that makes it easier to find, store and process data from various sources on the web.
Its latest investment, the value of which is not being disclosed, means it has now pulled together more than $1m (£633,000) in funding since it was founded in 2009.
ScraperWiki’s website allows software programmers from around the world to collaborate on research projects using “scrapers” – software which pulls data from websites and brings it together in a usable format.
It can be used by journalists, businesses and government bodies.
Francis Irving, chief executive of ScraperWiki, said: “The market for business data will be fully disrupted over the next decade and we will be using this investment to drive up data accessibility and drive down the cost and effort involved in accessing the data.”
Doug Stellman, investment director for the fund, said: “Usage of ScraperWiki has reached an inflexion point and is set to take off as awareness of the platform spreads.
“In addition to the corporate and government customers, ScraperWiki has a growing community of independent IT professionals who are using it to provide data analysis services to their customers.
“There have already been some fascinating examples of novel collaborations.”
ScraperWiki was created by Julian Todd and Aidan McGuire and went live in 2010. That year, it won funding from Channel 4’s innovation fund, 4iP.
It promoted the site through a series of “Hacks and Hackers Hack Days” where journalists and programmers met to see how they could help each other.
Last May, ScraperWiki joined the Government’s Alpha.gov.uk project to create an online one-stop-shop for UK government information.
Also last year, it was awarded $280,000 in the Knight News Challenge, organised by Florida’s Knight Foundation, to help it expand its work into the US. It is now holding a series of workshops across the country, including one in New York last weekend.
ScraperWiki has also appointed Jane Silber as its chairwoman.
Ms Silber is chief executive of Canonical, which created the Ubuntu open-source software that is widely used in cloud computing.
