Netflix Founder Joins BI Firm Looker

Santa Cruz, CA-based Looker Data Sciences has appointed Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph as a Board member. The firm has also hired former Greenplum/EMC exec Frank Bien as President.

Looker Data Sciences launched its business intelligence software platform, itself called Looker, in March with $2m in funding. As well as asking questions and analyzing the response, Looker can be used to browse, graph and export data into an SQL database, to make cross-functional data accessible to an entire organization.

Randolph joins Looker's Board after founding online movie service Netflix in 1997 and serving as the firm's CEO until 2004. Prior to this, he co-founded several other tech start-ups including IntegrityQA, Visioneer, Microwarehouse and MacUser Magazine. He is currently an active investor, executive mentor and consultant for numerous early stage tech companies, and sits on several other company Boards.

Bien joins with more than twenty years' experience of business intelligence, big data analytics and data storage. Most recently, he worked at Virsto Software (acquired by VMware) as SVP; prior to which he was a Consultant for The Capitola Group, where he helped early stage software firms with BI, analytics, and big data issues. Earlier, he was VP of Business Development at big data analytics specialist Greenplum (acquired by EMC).

Lloyd Tabb, Looker CEO and co-founder, comments: 'Looker is architected perfectly to help companies find actionable insights in their corporate data sets and realize the promise of big data. We couldn't ask for a better person to lead the charge than Frank. And Marc Randolph is one of the tech world's true visionaries. By leveraging both Marc's guidance and Frank's leadership, Looker is on a fantastic trajectory to revolutionize the way organizations make decisions.'

Web site: www.looker.com .