I have recently noticed a number of startups such as Betterworks and Square making use of data visualizations as a form of business intelligence. These visualizations also make for compelling eye candy; I’m sure the press and investors eat this stuff up.I look forward to seeing if more startups adopt such techniques. Conveying narrative is a key job of startups and the above is a fantastic improvement over simply showing raw Excel data.
Note: Here is a great write-up of Square’s visualizations by Brian Roemmele on Quora.