About Us

Factual is a platform where anyone can share and mash open data on any subject. For example, you might find a directory of US restaurants, a database of endocrinologists, or a list of video game cheat codes. We provide smart tools to help the community build and maintain a trusted source of structured data. And this data can be used through widgets and APIs to help application developers and content publishers be more innovative and productive. Often, data is difficult to find and access, inaccurate, and sometimes expensive. Information seekers are often overwhelmed with too many, often contradictory sources or frustrated by too few. Today, access to clean and reliable structured data is still a headache. Factual was founded to provide open access to better structured data. And that means developers can build more innovative apps, publishers can access high-quality content, and ultimately, everyone, can make better decisions. More specifically, we offer:

• An open data repository. We think a good route to low or zero cost and high quality data is the open data model. By making data open to access (read) so that developers can create valuable new applications, and by making the data open for opinion, comment, and debate (write) - we hope to catalyze support for certain data verticals.
• Collaborative tools. We help communities collaborate real-time on open data projects, whether by manually adding a single value or uploading an entire dataset.
• Data accountability. For each fact, we store user inputs, sources, citations -- basically a fully documented (and computable) history.
• Data sourcing and improvement. Our methods include capturing existing non-proprietary data, user and community contributions, content partnerships, and sophisticated data improvement tools that algorithmically discover, mine, and merge data.

Who Are We?

Factual was founded in 2007 by Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics (AdSense), which was acquired by Google in 2003. Gil has had a lifelong passion for organizing and structuring information, and building smart tools which can make better sense of data. Along with founding engineers, Tim Chklovski and Myron Ahn, he built Factual on the idea that it would be a better world if more decisions were data-driven. So we set out to develop an open data platform and community in an effort to maximize data accuracy, transparency, and availability. Other fellow data lovers who are helping to guide this ambitious project are Eva Ho, an ex-Googler and ASI-er and Bill Michels, former GM of Yahoo BOSS.

See full list of Factual people:

We are also very excited to have an extremely impressive group of early stage investors join us in our mission:

• Andreessen Horowitz - Founders, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz
• Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf
• Aydin Senkut, Founder and President of Felicis Ventures
• Bill Gross - Founder/Chairman, Idealab
• Danny Rimer - Index Ventures
• Esther Dyson - Founder, EDventure Holdings
• Founder Collective
• Gunderson Dettmer
• Lee and June Stein
• Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL
• Miramar Venture Partners
• Richard Rosenblatt - CEO, Demand Media, Inc.
• Scott Kurnit, Founder of About.com
• Thomas Lehrman - Founder, Gerson Lehrman Group
• Tom Unterman - Founder, Rustic Canyon Ventures

Jobs

Internally we strive to build a company based on a culture of innovation, impact, and transparency, and we aim for our products to promote these ideals externally as well. If you want to join us to help with our ambitious goals, please see our Jobs page.

Feedback

If you have any feedback as you use Factual, please submit it here.