Heeii

The company was founded in 2006 by Edwin Kuipers and is headquartered in Groningen, Netherlands. Elkoog initially received approximately $750,000 in angel funding from business associates and personal contacts.

Early development and funding

By early 2007, the company's concept had demonstrated its feasibility. As Heeii was designed to operate at scale, remain continuously available, and provide rapid responses, the company required additional investment in its technical infrastructure. Elkoog subsequently secured a second round of funding from angel investors, the venture capital fund The Knowledge Conversion Fund, and the ir. G. J. Smid Fund Foundation. This funding round totalled approximately $1.6 million.

By early 2009, the company had raised an additional $2.6 million for marketing activities in the Netherlands and internationally.

TARGET collaboration

In early 2009, Heeii became a member of the expertise centre TARGET, a collaborative initiative focused on the development of intelligent sensor-network information systems and technologies for the management of large-scale data. The initiative brought together scientific research groups and private-sector organisations to develop scalable systems for data processing, archiving, and analysis, with the aim of translating research into commercial applications.

TARGET was a collaboration between:

National Astronomical Datacenter OmegaCEN

University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG)

Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)

Heeii's technology combines elements of human–computer interaction research and software engineering to analyse patterns of user behaviour on the web. The system uses implicit behavioural data to infer users' interests and recommend content based on patterns observed among users with similar browsing behaviour.

The company's approach has been associated with concepts discussed in works such as The Long Tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Emergence, particularly those concerning collective behaviour and emergent patterns.