Fivetran

The story of Fivetran is a classic Silicon Valley tale of a pivot leading to immense success, a journey that began with two childhood friends, George Fraser and Taylor Brown. The pair, who first met as kids at lakeside cabins in Wisconsin, founded Fivetran in 2012 after being accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator program. Their initial concept was not the data movement powerhouse it is today, but rather a vertically integrated data analysis tool designed for scientists. While working on this full-stack solution through 2013, they built an internal component to connect their BI tool to data sources like Amazon Redshift. This behind-the-scenes software would prove to be their 'eureka' moment.

In 2014, a pivotal customer interaction changed their trajectory forever. A client, more interested in the data connection plumbing than the main BI tool, asked if Fivetran could build them a connector to move data from Salesforce to Redshift. Fraser and Brown realized they had stumbled upon a more significant, underserved problem in the market: the complex and brittle nature of data integration. They shifted their focus entirely to building automated, reliable data connectors. This decision to focus on one thing and do it exceptionally well—moving data—laid the groundwork for the modern data stack. The company established its headquarters in Oakland and began its rapid ascent. A series of successful funding rounds, including a Series D in 2021 that valued the company at $5.6 billion, provided the capital for aggressive expansion. Strategic acquisitions of HVR and Teleport Data in 2021 broadened their capabilities, allowing them to serve any company of any size. Today, Fivetran is a global leader in automated data movement, serving over 5,000 customers, from startups to Fortune 500 giants, and fulfilling its mission to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity.