CHICAGO—Megalytics™, a new data analysis platform for the commercial real estate world, has just completed a three-month boot camp at ElmSpring, an accelerator for tech firms that focus on real estate and part of 1871 in Chicago's Merchandise Mart. And in the coming weeks the one-year old firm will complete its second round of funding and roll out its platform to additional clients.

Megalytics was one of five tech start-ups that went through this boot-camp, the second held by ElmSpring. Companies selected for the program are guided through a fast-tracked series of educational and networking opportunities led by founders Thomas Bretz and Adam Freeman. After completing the program, companies participate in an investor “pitch day” where opportunities for another round of funding begin.

Donna Salvatore, Megalytics' chief executive officer, tells GlobeSt.com that her firm has created a tool that replaces the human labor that owners typically use to perform due diligence when looking at possible acquisitions, or making leasing, property management and other financial decisions.

“There is a lot of risk involved in these transactions,” she says. “But we have built a proprietary scoring model tailored to real estate and standardized the process.”

Megalytics goes far beyond examining the financial statements of potential or existing tenants. For example, the firm shows the big picture by analyzing the long-term prospects of a tenant's industry, and whether its revenue is declining or increasing faster than the industry average. The idea is to help landlords avoid renting space to the next Blockbuster, that is, a tenant likely to crash and burn before its lease term expires.

The platform also goes down to a granule level by showing the startup and failure rate for businesses similar to a tenant in the same region or neighborhood. “There is a lot of information out there that people are not taking into account,” she says. “We help clients make sense of the vast pools of data available.”

Perhaps most important, “all of our data feeds are in real-time,” allowing clients to note changes, such as credit scores, which can occur day-to-day. One company that Megalytics is tracking, for example, just announced that a top official has cancer and will step down, bringing a measure of uncertainty to its future.

It's those types of developments that companies might miss if they use in-house analysts to just do manual checks. And by automating the process, Megalytics helps its clients avoid the possibility that those in-house analysts are either overworked or perhaps biased in a particular company's favor. “Sometimes they will say, 'oh, I know this company really well so I'll just do a quick check,' but then miss something significant because they are only looking at what they want to look at.”

“We're able to turn what has been a very subjective process into one that is objective, verifiable and produces relevant, actionable results – quickly.”

Salvatore's company is already well-established. A graduate of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, she has decades of experience in data analysis, and secured seed funding for the new venture last year. Megalytics' roughly 15 employees and advisors currently serve 10 to 15 clients, including institutional owners with between 25 million and 150 million square feet of space.

“What I love about Megalytics,” ElmSpring's Bretz says, “is the depth of leadership and experience, which is really indispensable to bringing this type of product to market. We're not talking about a widget, but rethinking the process of analysis underpinning huge investment decisions.”

Megalytics has spent most of its short history in offices on the North Side of Chicago. It currently occupies space on Irving Park Rd. in the North Center neighborhood. “I had offices in the Loop for many years, but I love it up here.” Still, “we're growing so we need more space.”