San Diego’s Analytics Cluster Adds Algebraix, a Texas Transplant

As I noted in a recent post about ParAccel, there seems to be a recent proliferation of startups that are combining database management systems with sophisticated analytical capabilities.

Another one has just come to my attention: Algebraix Data Corp. is a business intelligence software company that moved its headquarters to San Diego from Austin, TX, three months ago. The startup, which was founded in 2004 as Xsprada, changed its name to Algebraix at the same time and also named its chairman, San Diegan Charlie Silver, as CEO.

“Business intelligence and analytics is probably the largest growth area in IT today,” Silver says. “It’s a very hot space. But no one can do what we do.”

I know Silver from his years as the CEO and co-founder of RealAge, a San Diego “healthy lifestyle” Internet company that uses an online questionnaire (e.g. Do you smoke?) to help consumers calculate their “real age.” Subscribers who fill out the questionnaire get a personalized plan to help them look younger and advertising-supported e-mails that provide diet and fitness tips. Hearst Magazines acquired RealAge about two years ago to strengthen the physique of Hearst’s online health and fitness offerings. While terms of the buyout were not disclosed, The New York Times estimated the deal at just under $100 million, based on RealAge’s revenue at that time of $20 million a year and 2007 Web traffic of 2.1 million unique visitors a month.

Silver says that Algebraix established its headquarters in San Diego when he took over, but the privately held company has only 12 employees, and is maintaining an office in Austin. While San Diego has a thriving cluster of analytics companies, it looks to me that it’s just more convenient for Silver.

“I am essentially the lead investor,” Silver says. “The guys pitched

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.