The Rolodex for Wall Street’s elite has gained several new big backers.
Relationship Science, a start-up that aims to connect the 1 percent, has raised $30 million from a group that includes David Komansky, the former chairman of Merrill Lynch; Stephen Luczo, the chief executive of Seagate; Reuben Jeffery III, a former Bush administration official; the real estate developer William Rudin; and Salesforce.com.
In a sign of how much the business of networking is worth, the new investors join an already burnished list of Wall Street heavyweights like Henry R. Kravis, Ronald O. Perelman, Stanley Druckenmiller and Joseph Perella.
Since formally kicking off in January with $60 million in financing, Relationship Science (RelSci to its aficionados) has sought to become a sort of high-end social network of sorts for the elite. It compiles information on more than 2 million executives across corporate America and Wall Street â€" but unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, the service requires no manual input from those it profiles.
Relationship Science instead puts together its dossiers by scraping the Web, allowing customers to figure out how they’re connected to these individuals, as well as how strong those ties are.
Its founder is Neal Goldman, who created the financial database Capital IQ before selling that company to McGraw Hill in 2004.
Many deal makers and wealth managers already use the Relationship Science service to bolster their pitches. The company currently has more than 150 clients, including investment banks, private equity firms, law firms and hedge funds.
The latest round of financing is meant to help finance Relationship Science’s expansion, including a broadening of its core database and developing new applications.
“Our product clearly resonates with people,†Mr. Goldman said in a statement. “Deal makers, sales professionals, fund-raisers, investors â€" they are all looking to leverage their individual and organization-wide relationships in more powerful and productive ways.â€
