Traverse City Record Eagle August 3, 2017 By Dan Nielsen
Local investment group Boomerang-Catapult LLC is investing $500,000 in Traverse City-based Naveego, a cloud-based data management company.
Naveego, incorporated in 2014, creates technology that monitors and compares multiple data sources within an organization to ensure it is consistent. Data that doesn’t mesh can be identified and corrected.
“It (Naveego’s software) sits the the middle of all the data and sifts through it,” said Naveego co-founder and CEO Derek Smith. “We have a merge process that has a precedence order to determine which data to use.”
The company now has five employees. Smith is principal programmer. The investment will be used to expand sales, marketing and other departments. Boomerang-Catapult’s cash injection is substantial for Naveego.
“It is affecting the value of the company quite a bit. Tremendously, in fact,” Smith said. “It’s a big piece. It’s helping us grow.”
Boomerang-Catapult focuses on strategic investments in Traverse City companies. It is involved with drone company Interactive Aerial, laboratory data automation company Sample Serve, satellite communications company Atlas Space Operations and local event ticketing company GeoTix.
The principals behind Boomerang-Catapult are U.S. Robotics co-founder Casey Cowell and Lowell Gruman, former senior executive with Citicorp, H.J. Heinz and Oaktree Capital Management. The group’s mission, as stated on its website, is “Investing in Traverse City companies that create high value through intellectually intensive effort and export it to the world.”
How did Naveego connect with Boomerang-Catapult?
“Through the TC New Tech group,” Smith said. “We started to talk to Casey and it went from there.”
Smith said demand for data quality tools is expanding rapidly as many industries accumulate large amounts of information. Naveego’s cloud-based products are relatively low cost and simple compared to many competing legacy products that must be installed locally and regularly updated on site.
The company gained 30 percent quarter-over-quarter growth with customers in the oil and gas and manufacturing sectors. Naveego’s oil and gas clients collect, store and use huge amounts of data related to reserves, production and sales.
“It’s concentrated primarily out in Texas,” Smith said of Naveego’s oil and gas marketplace. “And Colorado, Oklahoma and a little in Pennsylvania.”
The company recently expanded its customer base in telecommunications.
“We’re trying to diversify into other verticals,” said Smith.
Naveego contributes to an “intellectually and culturally vibrant community of engaged citizens” in Traverse City, Cowell said in a release. The investment will allow the company to capitalize on the growing data quality market focused on eliminating inaccurate or faulty data, he said.
More information is available at www.naveego.com or (231) 346-4144.
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