As we announce to the world today that ThoughtSpot is now worth $4.2B, I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I am grateful to the customers who had the courage to challenge the status quo and give us a shot inside their companies. I am equally grateful to the entrepreneurs and investors who had the courage to join us and build a company that is changing what's possible with data. Often, people say it's hard to be courageous in the face of adversity. I say that’s conformist bullshit.
Today, we announced our Series F funding at ThoughtSpot, valuing the company at $4.2 billion. As the Co-founder and Executive Chair, it’d be customary to write a post that celebrates this milestone, shares lessons learned, and the usual. Those can come later. Instead, I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the people that have been a critical part of my journey as an entrepreneur, both at ThoughtSpot and Nutanix (now valued at $7B+).
At the end of 2019, I did something few senior leaders ever do: left my comfortable corporate job at a global, multi-billion dollar software organization to join a little known Series E analytics startup called ThoughtSpot.
Today, the world is moving faster than ever before. In an age where a single insight can be the difference between hitting your number and hitting a wall, it’s never been more important to have a finger on the pulse of your business. This means understanding everything that’s happening, as it’s happening, so you can take smarter actions for your business in the moment.
Much of my focus over the last couple of decades has been in analytics, big data, and AI, and Joe DosSantos and I discussed the progression of these fields over time in a recent Data Brilliant podcast episode. My subtitle for that episode might be, “The Promise and Perils of a Hot New Field,” as we addressed several aspects of how these popular concepts have evolved in the first fifth of the 21st century.
When we founded Snowflake, we set out to build an innovative platform. We had the opportunity to take into account what had worked well and what hadn’t in prior architectures and implementations. We saw how we could leverage the cloud to rethink the limits of what was possible.