Cortera is a data business built by leaders in the data industry. Cortera’s primary focus has been building the largest contributory database of business credit data in the industry. Now with an industry leading data network, Cortera is bringing greater transparency to credit decisions, better visibility into underwriting analysis, and better insights into many other marketing, trading, and commercial transactions.
- Data, Analytics & Automation
Cortera provides business-to-business payment and purchase behavior data and insights on public and private companies.
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ABOUT
BACKGROUND
Cortera was founded in 2005 by Jim Swift through the acquisition of eCredit. At the time, eCredit was a credit decisioning software company with an emerging contributory database of business credit data. Jim, in collaboration with Fidelity Ventures (the predecessor firm to Volition Capital), acquired eCredit and launched the effort to build the largest business credit bureau in the country.
Today, Cortera’s contributory database now has over $1.45 trillion in annual business spend and payment history as well as over 20 million business locations. Cortera has thousands of companies across many industries (transportation, building supplies, food and beverage, manufacturing, etc.) contributing system-of-record credit data. Cortera packages this data for insight into many different use cases including credit decisioning, insurance underwriting, marketing and trading.
WHY WE INVESTED IN CORTERA
The team at Volition fundamentally believed that there was an opportunity to build a business credit bureau that would rival, if not exceed, the quality of data, scale, and value of the major consumer credit bureaus. Despite business-to-business transactions being a core driver of the economy, the visibility into the actual credit and payment histories of most businesses is very opaque.
Our goal was to pair an all-star data executive in Jim Swift, with an emerging data network business, and aggressively pursue building an industry leader in business data.
“When you’re choosing an investment partner, it’s important to remember you quickly tap out of people’s connections, their network and their past knowledge.” said Jim Swift, Founder and CEO of Cortera. If you’re doing something that no one has done before, you are dealing with new things. That’s why you want smart people who are going to be able to problem solve with you, not apply some formula.”
Larry Cheng’s take: “Great people going after huge problems is what we’re all about. Jim is one of the finest leaders in the data industry, and he’s going after the ambitious vision of building the largest business data network on the planet. We believe in his vision and are privileged to be partners helping to make that vision a reality.”
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