ReadWriteStart

In some ways, the term "big data" belies the challenges that startups face in tackling the subject. That adjective "big" tends to get a lot of the attention, often at the expense of the noun "data." In other words, we spend a lot of time talking about issues of the quantity of data and less time addressing issues of quality.

Some of those issues were addressed today at Web 2.0 Expo when Factual CEO and founder Gil Elbaz gave a talk on the challenges of big data. The subtitle of his talk is key here: "Getting Some." It isn't simply a matter of storing data, but rather how companies, particularly startups, can access data.

The open database service Factual announced yesterday that it has secured $25 million in financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Factual was founded in 2007 by Gil Elbaz, whose last company Applied Semantics was acquired by Google in 2003, becoming one of the core components of AdSense. Investor Ben Horowitz describes Factual as "a key player in the emerging data-as-a-service market, with the potential to fundamentally impact how people and businesses use data to make decisions."