KPCB and Jafco pour $15M into Zephyr Health

The company analyzes big data for life sciences companies

Big data analytics is the hot new kid on the playground, but the companies I’ve seen have all been focused on sales and marketing. Enter Zephyr Health: a big data analytics company for an industry that pretty much is big data: health.

The company announced Wednesday that it has raised $15 million in a rouns co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Jafco Ventures. Kleiner Perkins General Partner Brook Byers and Jafco Ventures’ Joe Horowitz will join Zephyr Health’s board of directors.

Founded in 2011, the San Francisco-based company utilizes NoSQL databases, machine-based algorithms, and visualization to connect the huge amounts of free-floating data points and improve R&D efforts for life sciences companies. Indeed, Zephyr’s platform is specifically designed to improve R&D and speed up the time it takes to get a new treatment or drug into the hands of physicians.

Currently it can take up to 10 years and $4 billion to get a new drug to market. Zephyr is already working with five of the world’s largest pharmeceutical and device companies to speed up and reduce the cost of that process.

Zephyr’s platform takes data from public and private sources, such as clinical trials, patient demographics, sales, interactions, medical publications and even the news to find connections that otherwise wouldn’t be seen.

“In life sciences, there's a massive amount of data that remains largely disconnected. Data that should be talking, isn't,” said CEO William King. “Pharmaceutical companies are spending too much time and money trying to find ways to make the data work without impactful results.”

“Having worked with over 100 innovative pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies for decades, Zephyr Health offers the most compelling business solutions that I have seen,” said Brook Byers, in a statement. “The insights they afford are nothing short of remarkable and can be of great benefit to everyone from the CEO on down throughout the organization. We look forward to leveraging our extensive industry network to help Zephyr accelerate customer adoption and realize its enormous value.”

King says that the company plans to use the new capital to hire more engineers and grow the company’s database. Additionally, it plans to expand its sales team, which currently consists of one person, to reach more customers.

“Zephyr Health is committed to creating a solution that helps life science companies make better overall decisions about their business and products, and we will be highly focused on product development,” said King.