A couple of MIT PhDs have created an amazing new kind of database called Veritable.
Prior Knowledge, a startup, launched Veritable on Tuesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, and while it only made it to the finals at the show, it was the real winner for us.
Veritable doesn't just store information and spit it back out at you. It uses complicated math to predict things based on the data.
"We're aware of a company called Oracle," CEO Eric Jonas said. "But their products only tell us what you already know."
A key feature of Veritable is that it doesn't require special knowledge to use, as some new database alternatives do. It is geared toward the millions of programmers, business analysts, and other users who use SQL, a specialized programming language used to tap into databases.
To give some perspective on that, Jonas said he looked up Yahoo on LinkedIn and found there were 2,500 employees at that company who know SQL. (Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was on stage as a judge.)
Veritable wouldn't replace existing databases from Oracle and the like. Rather, it would run alongside them, much as data-warehouse software does, and generate insights.
Companies could use Veritable to discover hidden relationships in data they already have. For instance, it can sift through a medical database to predict a public-health threat. Dating sites could predict the perfect love match.
Prior Knowledge, which launched in January, last month raised $1.4 million in seed money from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.
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