4 ms·

It seems every day I come across a new billion dollar tech company I've never heard of before. Their sites always have a ton of well known companies under their

It seems every day I come across a new billion dollar tech company I've never heard of before. Their sites always have a ton of well known companies under their "Trusted By These companies" banner too, and always seem to include NASA.

linspace 4y ago
Engineers are frequently not entirely honest in their CVs, I wouldn't expect too much from the marketing department of a company.
- laingc 4y ago
  Fivetran is absolutely in the category of product that might be in use at NASA. They are a very well-known technology in the data engineering world.
- higeorge13 4y ago
  Marketing will use zapier, fivetran is for data engineers.
jerglingu 4y ago
Fivetran has been diligent the three years I was tucked away in FAANG analytics. When I emerged earlier this year back into the world of normal companies, I realized there was a sort of holy trinity of companies that has completely dominated the analytics SaaS market: Fivetran, Snowflake, and dbt. I had only heard of Snowflake before.
- adammarples 4y ago
  Dbt is actually fishtown analytics, and I would add databricks to that list
  - rorymalcolm 4y ago
    https://technical.ly/startups/dbt-labs-series-c/ https://technical.ly/startups/dbt-labs-series-c/ They changed their name semi-recently to dbt Labs
  - mastazi 4y ago
    tangentially related: if I'm already using Fivetran, DBT and Snowflake, where does Databricks fit in? From reading their marketing material, it would seem that Databricks is a full featured solution that replaces all of the above and offers everything from ingestion to ETL and even analytics. However I keep hearing of companies using Databricks alongside those other products and I don't understand how does it fit into that type of data pipeline.
    - hulahoof 4y ago
      A lot of people use databricks for the analytical and ML workloads (leveraging it as a sort of extended spark environment)
    - kthejoker2 4y ago
      Disclaimer: I work at Databricks. Databricks is more of a platform than "just" a tool. So yes we offer first-party "end to end" solutions, and we're happy to show their value to you and convince you to pay for them, but we play nice with others, and we have a ton of great partners who can connect into our platform and help you ingest, transform, analyze, and consume your data. So you can use our native ingestion tools, or partners like Fivetran; our native ETL/ELT tools, or dbt; our native SQL/BI/warehousing capabilities, or Snowflake. The metaphor Andy Kofoid our VP of Ops uses is XBox or Steam. They're a platform others can build things on, but they also sell their own games and offer value-added services on top of the things others are selling. And like those platforms, we have the same ultimate twin goals of attracting customers and partners.
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  Its a great stack and works well together. Ingest with Fivetran, transform with DBT and store in Snowflake. Simple, serverless, consumption based pricing etc. definetly better than the old ETL world!
- ckdarby 4y ago
  What about Palantir?
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
I remember when Fivetran came out years ago and it was a big improvement over the competition at the time. It made a particular kind of work easier, so you would hopefully know about it if that’s what you did for a living. I’m in a somewhat different speciality now so no idea how things have developed since then.
xnorswap 4y ago
Huge enterprises are often made up of thousands of sub-domains with relative freedom to choose different technology. It's actually useful to remember if you're a start-up chasing a contract with an enterprise. You might bend over backward accommodating BigCo to get their name on your books thinking you'll make it huge once "they" start using your technology only to find it never actually gets further than 2 people in Sub-Department-Offshoot, and while you might get to use that fancy logo on your marketing material, you'll wonder if the concessions and vastly undercharged overwork was really worth it because the payday of actually having BigCo use your tech throughout their stack never materialised (because it never really does, but it'll be endlessly dangled in front of you to get you to agree to put in a bunch of features for free).
- groundthrower 4y ago
  So much this
- ra120271 4y ago
  I agree. For many BigCos this is not an active intent of malice. Often the 2 people do hope their vision will change the company. However, the company is often filled with these groups of "2 people" all trying to move the needle also, leading to a single vision not being effective. My advice is have an honest and frank conversation with BigCo. Let them know it is in no one's interests for your start up to go out of business, and when they are doing at things at scale you (startup owner) can discuss passing on those economies of scale in terms of dedicated work, discounts, etc.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  In my experience, there's actually gold to be dug from that relationship. The people who spend money in these BigCo don't spend their own money and their motives are structured way differently than what would be in a small business. The BigCo can actually pay you big if you can improve the career and boost the ego of those who will make the decisions. To do this, you need to give people something that they can present to their own managers in a very positive light so they can present it to their own managers. That's how you can build a momentum of people who can push for purchase of your product. From what I'se seen, making the life easier of some technical employees is not good. Think putting something trendy in it that the managers would love to boost about it. Could be a trendy tech(big data, AI etc.), could be social proof(Apple and Nvidia are also buying from this company). Just try to structure your marketing(which roughly means finding your customers, not to be confused with advertising) in a way that matches the incentives of people who don't spend their own money but try to work their way up in structured relationship. Of course, your product should also accomplish something so you can have a long term business. So it's not a fraud, it just needs right kind of engagement.

linspace 4y ago

Engineers are frequently not entirely honest in their CVs, I wouldn't expect too much from the marketing department of a company.

laingc 4y ago
Fivetran is absolutely in the category of product that might be in use at NASA. They are a very well-known technology in the data engineering world.
higeorge13 4y ago
Marketing will use zapier, fivetran is for data engineers.

jerglingu 4y ago

Fivetran has been diligent the three years I was tucked away in FAANG analytics. When I emerged earlier this year back into the world of normal companies, I realized there was a sort of holy trinity of companies that has completely dominated the analytics SaaS market: Fivetran, Snowflake, and dbt. I had only heard of Snowflake before.

adammarples 4y ago
Dbt is actually fishtown analytics, and I would add databricks to that list
- rorymalcolm 4y ago
  https://technical.ly/startups/dbt-labs-series-c/ https://technical.ly/startups/dbt-labs-series-c/ They changed their name semi-recently to dbt Labs
- mastazi 4y ago
  tangentially related: if I'm already using Fivetran, DBT and Snowflake, where does Databricks fit in? From reading their marketing material, it would seem that Databricks is a full featured solution that replaces all of the above and offers everything from ingestion to ETL and even analytics. However I keep hearing of companies using Databricks alongside those other products and I don't understand how does it fit into that type of data pipeline.
  - hulahoof 4y ago
    A lot of people use databricks for the analytical and ML workloads (leveraging it as a sort of extended spark environment)
  - kthejoker2 4y ago
    Disclaimer: I work at Databricks. Databricks is more of a platform than "just" a tool. So yes we offer first-party "end to end" solutions, and we're happy to show their value to you and convince you to pay for them, but we play nice with others, and we have a ton of great partners who can connect into our platform and help you ingest, transform, analyze, and consume your data. So you can use our native ingestion tools, or partners like Fivetran; our native ETL/ELT tools, or dbt; our native SQL/BI/warehousing capabilities, or Snowflake. The metaphor Andy Kofoid our VP of Ops uses is XBox or Steam. They're a platform others can build things on, but they also sell their own games and offer value-added services on top of the things others are selling. And like those platforms, we have the same ultimate twin goals of attracting customers and partners.
benjaminwootton 4y ago
Its a great stack and works well together. Ingest with Fivetran, transform with DBT and store in Snowflake. Simple, serverless, consumption based pricing etc. definetly better than the old ETL world!
ckdarby 4y ago
What about Palantir?

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago

I remember when Fivetran came out years ago and it was a big improvement over the competition at the time. It made a particular kind of work easier, so you would hopefully know about it if that’s what you did for a living. I’m in a somewhat different speciality now so no idea how things have developed since then.

xnorswap 4y ago

Huge enterprises are often made up of thousands of sub-domains with relative freedom to choose different technology. It's actually useful to remember if you're a start-up chasing a contract with an enterprise. You might bend over backward accommodating BigCo to get their name on your books thinking you'll make it huge once "they" start using your technology only to find it never actually gets further than 2 people in Sub-Department-Offshoot, and while you might get to use that fancy logo on your marketing material, you'll wonder if the concessions and vastly undercharged overwork was really worth it because the payday of actually having BigCo use your tech throughout their stack never materialised (because it never really does, but it'll be endlessly dangled in front of you to get you to agree to put in a bunch of features for free).

groundthrower 4y ago
So much this
ra120271 4y ago
I agree. For many BigCos this is not an active intent of malice. Often the 2 people do hope their vision will change the company. However, the company is often filled with these groups of "2 people" all trying to move the needle also, leading to a single vision not being effective. My advice is have an honest and frank conversation with BigCo. Let them know it is in no one's interests for your start up to go out of business, and when they are doing at things at scale you (startup owner) can discuss passing on those economies of scale in terms of dedicated work, discounts, etc.
mrtksn 4y ago
In my experience, there's actually gold to be dug from that relationship. The people who spend money in these BigCo don't spend their own money and their motives are structured way differently than what would be in a small business. The BigCo can actually pay you big if you can improve the career and boost the ego of those who will make the decisions. To do this, you need to give people something that they can present to their own managers in a very positive light so they can present it to their own managers. That's how you can build a momentum of people who can push for purchase of your product. From what I'se seen, making the life easier of some technical employees is not good. Think putting something trendy in it that the managers would love to boost about it. Could be a trendy tech(big data, AI etc.), could be social proof(Apple and Nvidia are also buying from this company). Just try to structure your marketing(which roughly means finding your customers, not to be confused with advertising) in a way that matches the incentives of people who don't spend their own money but try to work their way up in structured relationship. Of course, your product should also accomplish something so you can have a long term business. So it's not a fraud, it just needs right kind of engagement.