There is no shortage of services for finding competitive intelligence on the web, but most come with some sort of drawback. Google is second to none at running generic queries yet falls short when it comes to fetching niche data like regulatory filings, while many business-oriented search tools are limited to a specific type of information such as social media profiles or news. Mattermark Inc. hopes to carve out a niche for itself in the middle with the help of a newly announced $7.3 million investment from serial entrepreneur Jon Hallet and a group of institutional backers.

The cash will be spent on augmenting the capabilities of its namesake search engine, which aggregates all the different kinds of data that the startup believes could benefit an organization’s competitive research efforts. Mattermark scans leading industry publications for new information about companies and executives, pulls financial statements from the SEC’s website and adds commercial market intelligence on top. Its algorithms then organize the results for each player into a neat profile that is packed with various visualizations to ease viewing.

The startup told TechCrunch on occasion of the funding announcement that there are currently over a million and a half organizations in its publicly-facing databases, about 50 percent more than last year. Mattermark boasts that the massive breadth of its information troves enables its search engine to support a wide range of different use cases: A server maker, for instance, could have its marketing team use the service to look for potential customers while tasking their peers over in the business intelligence department to monitor what the competition is up to.

Mattermark’s appeal also cuts across market segments, with more than 500 organizations having subscribed to the commercial edition of its offering so far, including some 50 publicly traded companies.  The functionality that will be developed using the new funding should enable the startup to broaden the appeal of the search engine even further in the coming months. And for added measure,  chief executive Danielle Morrill said that she plans on hiring more salespeople in conjunction to boost customer acquisition efforts.

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