People skilled at making sense of data look awfully cool these days. They make businesses run more efficiently, they drive innovation, and they’re in demand. Data geeks have never been sexier.
They still might want to ditch the spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets have been with us as a necessary evil, but they’re tedious to fill out and demand effort to extract the insights that fuel business actions. They require additional tools to talk about the info contained within them. And they don’t play nicely at all on small screens.
If any startup can make spreadsheets go away – or put them in their place – it may well be Chartcube.
Chartcube is an app (currently available on the iPad) that turns business data into an interactive, collaborative cube. Sounds fancy, but how it works is really simple.
Chartcube imports data from the likes of Dropbox, and an algorithm converts data into charts. This cube of charts pivots with a swipe of the finger across the tablet screen to display different relationships. A simple tap drills down for exploring details further.
Charts can be shared and commented on within the app, which eliminates the need for email chains. Instead of spending time preparing information for a power point presentation, Chartcube does this labor intensive work automatically. No staring at endless cells, no formatting. Party.
At a high point during a great explainer video, a team member explains: “Now I can share this cube with the tap of a button, right in the app – no copy, paste, no email attachments. Those are for weaker, lesser people.”
Hard to blame the crew behind Chartcube if spirits are running high. Shasta Ventures and angel investors have already invested over $4 million in the Burlingame, California-based company.
As they see it, they’ve come up with a new way to use and share data. The cube of charts is far better suited for the small screen than spreadsheets (and catering to the needs of a mobile workforce is a smart bet). Charts do the work of telling the stories within data, while communicating in app makes for speedier, more convenient conversation.
Download Chartcube from the App Store if you’re itching to ditch the weaker, lesser crowd. Let us know what you think about this data visualization tool. Our guess is that it’ll soon be hip to be cubed.
