Whether you’re fundraising, selling to startups or looking to acquire a company, Crunchbase is the go-to spot for entrepreneurial intelligence. But as a wiki, it lacks an interface for broader questions like the following: Who has recently invested in mobile companies’ seed rounds? Which investors have the best track record? Which companies recently raised at least $10M? Founders and salespeople spend hours gathering this information on Crunchbase because it’s the lifeblood of their companies.

We are very proud to introduce the Crunchinator: a free and open source tool to interactively slice, filter and research Crunchbase data. The Crunchinator started life as an idea inside Cloudspace to help us research the startup community. Over time, we realized it could be a valuable tool for startups, investors, and other members of the startup ecosystem. Soon, the project became a lab for Cloudspace to push the limits of emerging technologies, hone our development processes & systems, and share our work with everyone — the Crunchinator is 100% open-source and developed in public on Github.

In early December, new Cloudspace Partner Eric Marcoullier realized the need for a service like the Crunchinator while conducting research into a number of startups on Crunchbase. While the data on Crunchbase is fantastic, it is structured around sharing information for an individual company or investor. Eric realized that a new tool was needed to slice and filter the data to use for discovery and research purposes. Thanks to Crunchbase’s Mashery-powered API (which Cloudspace helped build in 2006) we were able to aggregate and reformat the data for research and discovery.

Throughout development we tested out several new processes, including a new concept we refer to as “split stack.” This involves two groups of engineers working exclusively on front-end and backend development. This enables Cloudspace to create completely API-driven applications that can rapidly be expanded to additional platforms, such as mobile, Smart TVs and watches.

Here is a short video to demonstrate what the Crunchinator can do:

Want to learn how we built the Crunchinator? Check out: A Technical Introduction to the Crunchinator