GeoSpock™ Limited Appoints Dr Jonathan Milner to its Board, Graduates From TechStars and Launches Series A Funding Round

CAMBRIDGE, England, February 23, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

UK geosearch and big data tech firm appoints internet life science pioneer to its Board of Directors and initiates funding round targeting at least £2.5 million off the back of demonstration to over 200 investors in London. 

GeoSpock Limited (GeoSpock) the UK tech firm who has developed breakthrough database technology enabling extreme-scale, real-time geo-spatial and multi-dimensional big data applications has today announced the appointment of Dr Jonathan Milner to its board. Dr Milner has been an investor in GeoSpock since its foundation and will work with the board and executive teams to deliver the next phase of growth.

Dr Milner brings with him a wealth of experience in the foundation, growth and scale-up of businesses the most notable of which, Abcam he founded in 1998 after gaining a doctorate in Molecular Genetics. He identified the potential market opportunity to use an innovative e-commerce engine to supply high quality antibodies to support research in areas such as genomics, proteomics and diagnostics. Abcam floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 valued at £57.5m and reached £1b in value in 2013 under his leadership. Dr Milner is an avid supporter of the UK start-up scene having invested in over 30 companies in recent years. His support of the life science sector led to him receiving the Outstanding Contribution accolade at the European Medical Science Awards in 2014.

GeoSpock also announces today that it has graduated from the TechStars accelerator following demonstration of its initial GeoSpock API product to over 200 investors and 700 attendees at the Genesis Theatre in London on Friday 20^th February. The audience gasped as over 100 million constantly moving locations around the globe were searched and found 4.5 seconds, 15X faster than the market leading geospatial database. The company later pitched to government officials, tech industry leaders and 40 Venture Capitalists at an event held at #10 Downing Street.

Based on progress made with industry partners in use cases and interest from investors the company has initiated a Series A funding round aimed at raising at least £2.5 million from angel, corporate and VC funding sources.

The funds will be used to: (a) market GeoSpock API to organisations requiring extreme-scale, real-time database storage and querying solutions; (b) implement projects with existing early adopters in the mapping, logistics, security and insurance sectors; and (c) further develop the core database technology to handle geo-tagged, multi-dimensional data for applications into the rapidly growing mobile data and Internet of Things market sectors.

The GeoSpock API is widely applicable and has stolen a march upon existing geospatial database technologies, which suffer from performance degradation and increased running costs as data sizes grow. Partners can now store and concurrently query all current and historical data efficiently while consistently maintaining sub-second response times regardless of how large the dataset grows.

GeoSpock technology is fundamentally enabling to anyone who wishes to store, track and query a network of rapidly updating location-tagged objects. This opens up broad applications in areas such as logistics, to maximise mobile fleet inventory via real-time link-up to other third-party networks such as retail vendors, as well as tracking concurrent objects of interest (e.g. people, vehicles); and to monitor behavioural patterns for risk assessment in both insurance and security applications.

Commenting on the board appointment Dr Jonathan Milner, Angel Investor and non-executive Director of GeoSpock said:

"I am thrilled to be joining the board of this exciting company and am looking forward to doing what I can to help it achieve its ambition of becoming a ubiquitous provider of Database-as-a-Service in the Big Data era. I believe the company's technology has applications in multiple fast-growing sectors including e-commerce, security and healthcare." 

Dr Darrin Disley, Chairman, lead investor and co-founder of GeoSpock commented:

"I am delighted to welcome Jonathan Milner to the board. His track record speaks for itself and having worked with him to successfully build Horizon Discovery Group plc from IP to IPO, I look forward to working with him and the executive team to deliver on the very promising start made by the company since its inception." 

Commenting on the initiation of fund-raising Steve Marsh, CEO and co-founder of GeoSpock said:

"We have big things planned for the future of GeoSpock, including applying our technology to address the multi-dimensional big data needs of facial recognition and genomics. This next round of funding will allow us to continue executing upon our vision of creating a disruptive company focused on tackling the big technology problems of our time.  

"We expect to complete fundraising by the end of Q2, enabling us to capitalise upon the increased interest generated by our entry into the Techstars programme as well as the positive responses we have received from our early adopter partners."