- Windfall Data, a company that determines the net worth of global households, recently announced that it raised $9 million
Windfall Data — a company that determines the net worth of global households — recently announced it raised $9 million. This round of funding was led by Bullpen Capital with Bonfire Ventures, Industry Ventures, TenOneTen Ventures, and ValueStream Ventures participating. With this round of funding, Windfall will continue building a global source of consumer financial data that aspires to be more accurate and versatile than anything else available.
Currently, Windfall offers financial insights on 80 million U.S. households. And the company has grown 500% year-over-year and serves over 400 nonprofit and for-profit organizations. These organizations include 1stdibs, Funding Circle, University of Colorado, and Bungalow.
Founded by Arup Banerjee, Cory Tucker, and Daniel Stevens in 2016, Windfall is correcting the pervasive inaccuracies in consumer financial data. And as long-time developers of data products, the Windfall team knew that old school data brokers rely on misleading sources such as surveys and U.S. Census data, which are updated too infrequently. These sources also depend on zip codes, which often lead to false generalizations about households in areas with socioeconomic diversity.
Windfall differentiates itself from legacy brokers by leveraging deterministic household-level data like real estate transactions, court records, SEC filings, and other public-domain sources. And Windfall also partners with data vendors like BizEquity to fill gaps in the public record. Every week, Windfall reconstructs its entire database of household net worth using machine learning and proprietary data science techniques to ensure that clients have the most up-to-date and accurate profiles.
Plus Windfall provides contextual data about recent moves, births, weddings, IPOs, and other life events. And the quality and diversity of this financial data makes it use in sales, marketing, data science, donor relations, academic research, and several other fields.
“Having launched and sold successful data companies, I recognized that Windfall had turned an industry blindspot into a significant opportunity,” said SafeGraph CEO and Chief Historian Auren Hoffman — who is Windfall’s first investor. “Windfall’s success with nonprofits and enterprises shows just how much unmet demand there is for a better financial data source.”
Nonprofit clients utilize Windfall to understand their donors and to identify and engage high-potential philanthropists. And similarly, for-profit clients in financial services, luxury retail, hospitality, and travel use Windfall Data to identify and engage their ideal customers. The insights from Windfall help these companies share more relevant products and services with better timing and messaging.
“We invested in Windfall Data because they are tackling a problem that almost no one has touched in 40 years,” added Bullpen Capital general partner Paul Martino. “Other investors assume that anyone trying to challenge the kingpins of consumer financial data must be crazy. The difference is that the Windfall team has skills, experience, technology, and a strategy that should make the market leaders take notice.”
Windfall Data integrates with platforms like Salesforce, Shopify, and LiveRamp. And the company’s data engine enriches the donor, prospect, and customer records with net worth and more than 30 other attributes that help to segment audiences. There are more than 400 organizations using Windfall Data to identify and engage their most promising constituents.
“Our goal is to build consumer datasets that are actionable and trustworthy,” explained Banerjee. “We’ve found that conventional business intelligence and marketing datasets decay, leaving users with a wealth of pointless data. Windfall intends to be the first data company that keeps pace with a fast-changing world.”
