[ad_1]
TL;DR: We raised $50M led by Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia, and Perception with participation from current buyers, valuing us at $450M.
At this time’s announcement is surreal.
At Atlan, we started as an information crew ourselves and have been pissed off by how troublesome it was to handle our work. It felt like an uphill climb to share information, doc information, monitor modifications, save work, and extra. We have been envious of our gross sales, advertising and marketing, and engineering groups, who labored in fashionable instruments like Salesforce, Hubspot, and GitHub whereas we toggled between a dozen disconnected, siloed instruments on daily basis.
Again in 2017, we wrote an inner memo titled “Salesforce for Information Groups”. This memo is when the concept for Atlan began taking form, and it’s what makes immediately’s fundraise announcement with the Salesforce Ventures crew all of the extra particular. ❤️
In our first pitch deck, we shared a daring imaginative and prescient. Salesforce is the house for gross sales groups, GitHub is the house for engineering groups, and Figma is the house for design groups. At Atlan, we needed to be the House for Information Groups.
Up to now 18 months, we couldn’t be extra grateful to the wonderful information groups who’ve trusted us and given us the chance to turn into their house. My private favourite second of the 12 months was in a check-in with Larisa Gorokhova, the Senior Director of BI at CSE Insurance coverage, when she mentioned to me, “Atlan isn’t just an information catalog. It’s actually a house for information folks to collaborate, to debate issues, to hitch collectively. It’s a house on your information crew.”
We’re thrilled that we’ve constructed a house the place information groups like to stay and work on daily basis, however we all know that’s simply step one.
At this time we’re so excited to announce that we’ve closed our Sequence B, a $50 million spherical of funding led by Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia, and Perception. A number of founders within the fashionable information stack additionally participated within the spherical, together with Taylor Brown from Fivetran and Ajeet Singh from ThoughtSpot, in addition to current buyers Waterbridge Ventures.
Fundraise bulletins are sometimes boring, so immediately we need to share what this fundraise actually means to us and what’s subsequent in our journey to maneuver the needle for information groups all over the world.
Supercharging each device and expertise within the fashionable information stack
Whereas the info stack has solved some essential issues, it’s turn into more and more chaotic and siloed. The expertise of working with these instruments immediately is essentially damaged. Benn Stancil wrote about this and made an open name for the “Fashionable Information Expertise”.
Whereas we don’t absolutely know what the way forward for the fashionable information stack holds, we all know that metadata will likely be key to sewing collectively the perfect information expertise.
Metadata was all the trend final 12 months. But all of the hype and debates centered on metadata architectures, push vs pull, information discovery vs information catalogs, and so on. We imagine these are the unsuitable issues to be specializing in.
We imagine that the following leap ahead within the metadata area won’t come from perfecting the structure. As an alternative, it would come from serving to information groups get actual worth from the gold mine of metadata that’s generated immediately.
We’ve got nonetheless barely scratched the floor of what metadata can do. Metadata holds the important thing to fixing dozens of issues in our area — allocating compute sources dynamically primarily based on utilization metadata, scoring information well being and insights, purging stale information belongings, and even dynamic pipeline optimization.
For instance, think about a world the place these conditions are the norm:
- When an information high quality situation is detected in a supply desk, the system robotically stops the downstream pipelines to make sure that incorrect information doesn’t make its method to the dashboard.
- The system leverages previous utilization logs to robotically tune information pipelines and optimize compute efficiency by shifting masses in the direction of regularly used information belongings and optimizing the schedules of information pipeline runs.
We imagine that the answer to that is transferring from immediately’s passive, siloed methods to actually activating metadata. Consider a Phase or Zapier-like expertise the place metadata can create concord throughout instruments and energy good experiences throughout the info stack.
To make this future occur, we have to open up metadata and transfer from augmented information catalogs to “metadata wherever” orchestration methods. For the previous 12 months, we’ve been quietly working in the direction of making this new world of energetic metadata a actuality, and we are able to’t wait to point out you our progress. Keep tuned for some thrilling updates within the close to future. 😉
Constructing the sort of firm that we wished we may have partnered with
In our early days at Atlan, we wrote an inner manifesto about what it could take to be the sort of firm that we wished we may companion with once we have been an information crew ourselves. These ideas have pushed virtually all our product and enterprise selections since Day Zero. One in all these ideas is, “Be a companion, not a vendor.”
In a chat with Venkat Gopalan, the Chief Information Officer at Belcorp, we requested, “What shocked you about Atlan?” He replied, “Past the product, it was the crew dedication. I see this as a partner-partner relationship, not a client-vendor relationship. I believe you’re genuinely all in favour of investing within the success of a corporation.”
In the identical spirit, Larisa mentioned, “I hope you received’t lose that spirit and dedication to your clients as you develop. I’ve seen that occur loads… I hope you received’t lose that spark.”
We’ve lately heard this sentiment from lots of our clients — they don’t simply worth our product, but in addition the individuals who include it.
When information groups convey on Atlan, they’re usually going by way of a important transformation. Our champions face the problem of serving to their groups transfer from a reactive “information service” mindset to a proactive “information product” mindset. Whereas expertise is a crucial a part of this transition, the way in which {that a} information crew evolves its tradition and rituals is simply as essential.
In our common espresso chats with our buyer champions, we realized that we regularly have been going past speaking about our product and have requests (although that got here up too! 😉). As an alternative, they began asking us about their inner challenges, cultural rituals, and greatest practices round setting the proper processes. We realized that we have been in a position so as to add a ton of worth by simply sharing experiments and learnings from different information groups that we work with.
We’ve consciously chosen to be extra than simply the supplier of a product and make investments closely into serving to our clients with tradition enablement. For us, this implies treating our clients’ targets as our personal. It means going above and past, and doing no matter we are able to to assist them succeed.
Final 12 months, we began with a small group area for our clients to share frameworks and greatest practices. Within the coming 12 months, you will notice us make investments closely in doing extra to assist drive the info tradition stack ahead — for our clients, but in addition for any information crew trying to work collectively higher.
Giving again to the info group
Our mission at Atlan is to assist information groups do their lives’ greatest work, collectively. The primary and most impactful method to obtain this was by constructing a terrific product. However the product was all the time simply purported to be one a part of the mission.
All of us within the fashionable information stack have been working collectively to construct one thing higher and enhance information groups’ each day work. Within the early days, the easiest way for us to do that was to be clear about sharing our personal learnings as an information crew. Since then, we’ve realized a lot from our clients and associates within the information world as they tackle this journey, and we’ve been working to make this data brazenly accessible for groups in all places, whether or not they use Atlan or not.
At this time this funding permits us to develop our efforts to offer again to the group that has been so supportive of our work.
Within the coming 12 months, we’ll work to share this info brazenly and transparently. We’ll proceed to put money into academic content material and sources, sponsor meetups and communities, and contribute again to the essential open-source initiatives and tasks that we’re enthusiastic about.
Constructing an incredible crew of Atlanians all over the world
Whereas the final 12 months has been a whirlwind of numbers and wins, what we’re most happy with is the wonderful crew we’ve constructed.
We’re now a crew of over 100 Atlanians unfold throughout 12 international locations and 40 cities. Our go-to-market crew stretches throughout the globe, with properties in San Francisco, New York, Guadalajara, London, Manila, Istanbul and Chennai. Our finance and operations crew is in New Delhi and Toronto, whereas our safety crew is in Singapore and Pune. Our product and engineering crew is unfold throughout Bangalore, Windfall, Lagos, and past.
Our crew begins off each assembly with “Good morning, afternoon, and night!” and robotically is aware of what time it’s in Los Angeles and New Delhi proper now. It’s a bit odd, we admit, however we adore it.
We did this as a result of certainly one of our core values is “One Group”. It doesn’t matter whether or not somebody is from San Francisco or Sao Paulo, whether or not they went to Harvard or a school we’ve by no means heard of, whether or not they’re 18 or 81, whether or not their gender id is male, feminine, or non-binary… We don’t care about any of this.
At Atlan, all we care about is somebody’s work, as a result of it speaks in a approach that phrases by no means can. We love individuals who take pleasure of their work and do the proper factor even when nobody is watching. This give attention to letting anybody, wherever, be a part of our mission signifies that we’ve been capable of democratize alternative and construct a crew of really wonderful Atlanians in each nook of the globe.
This crew retains us all going, even when our nights get longer and our challenges get more durable. That’s why we’ve chosen to announce our fundraise not with a video from our buyers or clients, however with the sincere reactions from our crew once we introduced it internally. It was certainly one of our favourite moments to date, and we’re so excited to share a glimpse of what this announcement really means to us all.
Try our inner Group Handbook to study extra in regards to the values, ideas, and practices that energy our dream crew.
Dreaming with our eyes vast open
The subsequent decade is the last decade of data-driven groups and firms — ones that don’t simply use information, however combine it into each side of their each day work. Nonetheless, these groups will solely achieve success in the event that they discover a method to collaborate successfully throughout immediately’s chaotic information silos and information gaps. When the varied “people of information” lastly turn into an actual crew.
At Atlan, our dream is to be the place the place these wonderful groups stay and work collectively higher — the place their tech empowers them to do greater than they ever imagined, reasonably than holding them again from their targets.
When a brand new Atlanian joins the crew, they jot down their goals for the longer term in a ritual that we name the “Dream Wall”. Whereas a few of our goals are foolish like our hope for a seashore retreat, most of our goals are in regards to the wonderful groups that we need to empower — the info groups that will likely be behind revolutionary human achievements within the subsequent decade like self-driving vehicles, folks on Mars, a treatment for most cancers, and rather more.
Whereas there’s an extended method to go, we get up each morning with the conclusion and pleasure that we’ve an actual shot. An sincere, actual shot at making these goals a actuality. And we’re giving it our all.
—Prukalpa & Varun
We’re all the time searching for dreamers who imagine within the energy of data-driven groups. If this sounds such as you, take a look at our open positions.
[ad_2]
