Startup Spotlight: HeatSync Helps You Keep Track of the Competition

Startup: HeatSync

What they do: Provide a platform that website owners can use to track their own website against their competition, with data points collected from dozens of the top analytics sources.

Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA

CEO: Jack Shenonheatsync_logo_blackbg_med54K

Founded: 2013

Funding: Currently bootstrapped with $500K of funding.

What I like about them: HeatSync brings together various website and social media analytics tools into one unified platform.

According to founder and CEO Jack Shenon, the company was born out of frustration. “For years, I personally went to Alexa, Compete, Facebook, Twitter, and other services that allow someone to track their site or their competition, but strangely there was no single place where this data would be compiled and presented. This was an inefficient process that took hours,” he said.

HeatSync allows you to track any website, whether it is your own or your competition, in one place. Data is collected from top data sources, but Shenon argues that HeatSync is not just an aggregator of data. “We have built an easy-to-use service to allow a novice or the most seasoned marking professional access to as little or as much data as they need.

The company emerged from beta earlier this month and claims to have more than 50,000 users already.

Unique service features: In addition to access of the trending data, HeatSync has features that enable Big-Data-type insights into previously opaque areas. “Our comparison system allows you to compare any website and analytic to any other, across multiple analytics platforms. For example, if you would like to correlate the Alexa Rank of TechCrunch, Twitter Followers for TechCrunch, and the Compete Page views of Engadget; you can do that all in real-time with our Comparison system,” Shenon said.

What gives me pause: Two things. A lack of VC funding is always a cause for concern with startups, and I’d like to see them invest in professional PR. I have my qualms with PR (plenty of them), but good PR is instrumental as startups try to expand in a cluttered market.

Competitive Landscape: The main competitor would be Trackmaven, but HeatSync CEO Jack Shenon notes that Trackmaven is more focused on enterprise customers, and their pricing starts at $1k per month. “We are looking for the small to medium-sized business that are comfortable spending about $100-$500 per month,” he said.

With that pricing level, HeatSync will also compete with freemium (and outright free) services, especially all of the Google tools (Analytics, Wildfire), and the analytics available on Hootsuite, Nimble, Facebook, etc.