on election night the last time a democratic candidate won the presidency, dan wagner was in the room celebrating with the campaign. mr. wagner, who ran the 2012 campaign<u+2019>s data-analytics team, was savoring barack obama <u+2019>s re-election victory when a technology executive close to the campaign asked him whether he wanted to start a business. that executive was eric schmidt, chairman of google, and the two struck up a friendship that culminated in forming a data-science consulting startup called civis analytics. <u+201c>i knew i wanted to keep my team together so we created a plan,<u+201d> said mr. wagner. he recalled that mr. schmidt, in addition to acting as his personal mentor, became an angel investor in civis with a <u+201c>medium- to small-sized<u+201d> seed funding to found the company in 2013. on wednesday, civis announced that mr. schmidt is investing once again, this time in a $22 million round led by drive capital. verizon ventures and wpp are participating in the series a. mr. schmidt wasn<u+2019>t available to comment. about half of chicago-based civis<u+2019>s staff is data scientists and engineers who help enterprises, nonprofits and public agencies glean insights from large data sets that can be turned into business actions. the company said it didn<u+2019>t work <u+201c>directly<u+201d> on hillary clinton <u+2019>s campaign this year but helped some political action committees. after starting out primarily as a data-consulting provider, civis has been moving into building a suite of software-as-a-service subscription tools for its clients, mr. wagner said. one customer, media company discovery communications , said it has used the platform to enhance its media buying decisions, targeting the audience with greater precision and promoting content more effectively. <u+201c>they want to empower their data-science teams, but they also want to know what<u+2019>s possible because they<u+2019>ve never done it before,<u+201d> he said of customers using civis consulting and software. although he declined to reveal revenue figures, mr. wagner pointed out that civis managed to grow to a staff of 135 in three years by <u+201c>bootstrapping<u+201d> solely on its early client roster and seed funding. it charges a subscription a seat that starts at $5,000 a month for smaller organizations. the company intends to use its new capital to hire 50 more people <u+201c>as soon as possible,<u+201d> mr. wagner said. venture investors bet more than $12 billion last year on startups in the business-support services category, with $6.4 billion invested through the third quarter this year, according to dow jones venturesource. software companies hauled in more than $11 billion in capital last year and $6.3 billion the first nine months of 2016. mr. wagner acknowledged many analytics companies are rushing into the field, one growing ever larger because of enterprises<u+2019>s huge interest in harnessing the power of data science. finding analytics experts who also can apply their craft to a business setting is challenging for companies, he said. he considered moving the company to the west coast but said he stayed in chicago to tap into the talent coming out of the region<u+2019>s top universities like university of michigan and university of chicago. <u+201c>also there aren<u+2019>t a lot of companies like us here, and there are a lot of companies that are looking for the kind of work that we do,<u+201d> wagner said. civis withheld specifics about the valuation of the funding round. drive capital<u+2019>s chris olsen is joining the civis board. its other directors are mr. wagner, mr. schmidt and the technology publisher tim o<u+2019>reilly. write to alexander davis at alec.davis@wsj.com
data cruncher civis analytics grabs series a backed by google<u+2019>s schmidt - wsj
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