hen Jason Goldberg set out to raise a new round of funding for his flash sales site Fab.com, he dispensed with the usual PowerPoint presentations and instead gave potential investors a look at the crown jewels: the "dashboard" of real-time analytics that can instantly spot trends and enable the site to tweak its offerings on the fly.

The company soon closed a $40 million round of funding from blue-chip venture capitalists including Andreessen Horowitz.

Such is the allure of big data.