Factual Hires Yahoo's Location Guru and Grabs A Googler

Factual, the Los Angeles-based start-up I like to describe as a data mercenary, has just announced two key hires who will open up an engineering office in Silicon Valley.

The first is Tyler Bell, the former head of Yahoo’s Geo Technology Group that was responsible for launching Yahoo’s location data services like Placemaker and Geoplanet. He’s joining Factual as Director of Product, and is a former archeologist, but I’ve yet to find a picture of him wearing a Fedora a la Indiana Jones. Update: Such a picture does exist! It has been added below!

The other hire is Artem Boytsov, who was one of two engineers who created Google Trends and also worked on the engineering teams for Google Images and AdWords.

Factual, you’ll recall, is the latest venture founded by Gil Elbaz, who sold his first company, Applied Semantics, to Google in 2003, where it evolved into AdSense.

I use the phrase “data mercenary” as sort of a loose way of describing what Factual does. If you’re developing an application or a Web service, you need lots of data. Where to get it? That’s a big problem. Factual is building several databases, and the first out of the gate is built around location data, but more for other industry verticals are on the way.

Late last year Elbaz raised raised $25 million in venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, SV Angel, and former Disney president Michael Ovitz. Now we see what he’s going to do with some of that money: Hire lots of engineers!

And here it is: Former Archeologist, and new Factual director of product Tyler Bell doing his best Indiana Jones imitation!