CircleUp And Nielsen Collaboration Fuels Growth Of Early-Stage Consumer Products

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CircleUp announced that it has joined the Nielsen Connected Partner program. Through this partner program, CircleUp will connect into Nielsen's rich data to continue its work building Helio, its proprietary machine learning platform that evaluates early-stage CPG brands by analyzing the market and predicting future business success.  

This strategic collaboration provides CircleUp with the opportunity to integrate expansive Nielsen data into Helio, which evaluates 1.3 million companies across relative strength of brand, distribution, product quality, team and financial performance. The ability to access, license and combine Nielsen data is a critical step in CircleUp's broader assembly of data sources for Helio, which is comprised of many public, partner and practitioner data sources.

"CircleUp's mission is to help consumer industry entrepreneurs thrive with the capital and resources they need. We deliver this through our internally managed funds, our investment marketplace, and our credit program?all of which are powered by Helio," said Jon Scherr, Head of Strategic Partnerships, CircleUp. "The addition of Nielsen data is a huge step forward in building the complex mosaic of data sources and algorithms that make up Helio. With Nielsen's partnership, Helio is now able to uncover promising brands earlier and earlier, so we can reward these brands with capital quickly with conviction from the data-driven insights."

"Over the last decade, emerging brands have increasingly become the leaders of change and innovation in the FMCG marketplace," said Amanda Welsh, SVP of Digital Enablement at Nielsen. "It's a top priority for Nielsen to help fuel this growth by providing insights that are tailored uniquely to emerging brands. CircleUp is the ideal collaborator for this, given their deep roots in early-stage consumer investing, and their data-driven approach to understanding the industry."

The Nielsen Connected Partner Program partners with the retail and CPG industry to provide Nielsen data directly, removing the most common and burdensome barriers to connecting applications and data sets at scale. With Nielsen's data as the DNA of this program, Nielsen partners harness more efficient and accurate analytics that drive better industry results from all angles.

For more information about CircleUp and Nielsen's Connected Partner Program, please visit: http://sites.nielsen.com/connectedpartner/partner/circleup/.

About CircleUp

CircleUp is the investment platform providing capital and resources to innovative, early-stage consumer brands. CircleUp is comprised of internally funded funds, an investment marketplace and credit division, which are all powered by Helio, its proprietary machine learning platform that evaluates 1.3 million consumer businesses to predict future business success. Founded in 2012, CircleUp is backed by Union Square Ventures, Collaborative Fund, GV, Canaan Partners, QED Advisors, and former leaders of Goldman Sachs, Capital One and Stanford Endowment. Learn more at www.circleup.com.

About Nielsen

Nielsen Holdings plc is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers watch and buy. Nielsen's Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services for all devices on which content ? video, audio and text ? is consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry's only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen also provides its clients with analytics that help improve performance.  Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries, covering more than 90% of the world's population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

SOURCE CircleUp