Valuation
$500M
2024 Revenue
$45.2M(Est.)
Customers
500
Funding
$132.3M
Avg ACV
$90.4K
Team
215
Founded
2016
data.world Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)
data.world is an Austin-based enterprise data catalog company founded in 2015 by Brett Hurt, Jon Loyens, and Bryon Jacob, among others. The company operates a dual-sided model: a free collaborative community for open datasets and a paid enterprise data catalog platform that competes primarily against Alation and Collibra. As of April 2023, data.world had raised a total of $132 million, including a $50 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs in 2022, and had grown to a team of approximately 150 people.
The company publicly launched on July 11, 2016, and did not generate its first dollar of revenue until 2018, having raised more than $50 million before that milestone. Its platform supports over 95 integrations with modern data tools including Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and Looker, and releases software more than 1,000 times per year. Ownership is split roughly 50/50 between investors and internal stakeholders.
Brett Hurt, who serves as CEO and Co-founder, previously co-founded Bazaar Voice, which reached over $100 million in ARR at its 2012 IPO on just $23 million raised, and Coremetrics, which was acquired by IBM for $300 million in 2010. Hurt and his wife operate Hurt Family Investments, which has invested in more than 130 startups and 40 venture capital funds over 12 years.
Last updated
data.world Revenue
data.world did not generate its first dollar of revenue until 2018, having raised more than $50 million in capital before that milestone. Brett Hurt declined to disclose current annual recurring revenue during the April 2023 interview, saying the figure would provide competitive intelligence.
| Year | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | data.world Hit $45.2m revenue in October 2024 | Estimated |
| 2023 | data.world Hit $23m revenue in April 2023 | |
| 2022 | data.world Hit $16m revenue in April 2022 | |
| 2021 | data.world Hit $11m revenue in November 2021 | |
| 2020 | data.world Hit $6m revenue in September 2020 | |
| 2018 | data.world Hit $500k revenue in September 2018 | |
| 2016 | Launched with $0 revenue |
The host noted that venture-backed companies at data.world's scale of 150 employees typically generate between $100,000 and $200,000 in revenue per employee, which would imply roughly $20 million in ARR, but Hurt neither confirmed nor denied that estimate. He also declined to project when the company would reach $100 million in revenue. A forward revenue estimate is not possible without a confirmed base figure; any projection would be a GetLatka estimate and is omitted here to avoid fabrication.
data.world releases software more than 1,000 times per year, or two to three times per day, which Hurt cited as a key competitive differentiator versus rivals that ship only a few releases annually.
data.world Valuation, Funding Rounds
data.world reached a $500M valuation in 2022, set during its Series C round.
data.world has raised $132.3M in total funding across 6 rounds, most recently a $50M Series C round in 2022.
| Year | Round | Amount | Valuation | % Sold | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Series C | $50M | $500M | 10% | |
| 2021 | Series B | $11M | - | - | |
| 2020 | Series B | $26M | - | - | |
| 2018 | Series A | $12M | - | - | |
| 2017 | Seed | $19.3M | - | - | |
| 2016 | Pre Seed | $14M | - | - |
Founder / CEO
Brett Hurt
CEO and Co-founder
Brett Hurt is the CEO and Co-founder of data.world. He is 51 years old as of the April 2023 interview and has been married for 27 years. He graduated from the Wharton School and has founded multiple companies across his career.
Hurt's fourth company, Coremetrics, launched in 1999 as one of the earliest multi-tenant SaaS businesses. He left Coremetrics in 2005 when the company had reached approximately $30 million in ARR. Coremetrics raised approximately $80 million in total capital and was acquired by IBM for approximately $300 million in 2010. Hurt remained on the Coremetrics board after his departure but was not the operating CEO at the time of the IBM acquisition.
Hurt co-founded Bazaar Voice in 2005 with Brandt Barden. Bazaar Voice launched the same year and popularized customer reviews for major retailers including Walmart, Home Depot, and Best Buy. By the time of its 2012 IPO, Bazaar Voice had surpassed $100 million in ARR, had only $13 million of cash used over its six-year life, and raised a total of $23 million in capital. The IPO valued the company at over $1 billion and was cited as one of the top five IPOs of 2012. The employee ESOP pool at IPO was approximately 20 percent, which Y Combinator described as one of the top five most capital-efficient SaaS businesses of all time. More than 60 companies have since been started by former Bazaar Voice employees. Bazaar Voice was taken private in 2018 by Marlin Equity. As of April 2023, Bazaar Voice serves customers in over 40 international languages.
Jon Loyens is Co-founder, CDO, and CSO of data.world. Bryon Jacob is CTO and Co-founder. Hurt did not discuss their individual backgrounds in this interview.
Hurt and his wife operate Hurt Family Investments, a family office active for 12 years as of April 2023, with investments in more than 130 startups and 40 venture capital funds. One portfolio company Hurt highlighted is Zen Business, which closed a Series C at a $1.7 billion valuation. Hurt's net worth was not discussed in the interview.
Q&A
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What's your age? | 54 |
| Favorite online tool? | - |
| Favorite book? | - |
| Favorite CEO? | - |
| Advice for 20 year old self | - |
Customers
data.world operates a two-sided model. The free community side had more than 2.1 million members as of April 2023, up from a figure of more than 1.6 million cited in a 2022 TechCrunch article. Hurt confirmed the 2.1 million figure and clarified these are users contributing to the open data community, not paid seats.
On the paid enterprise side, Hurt declined to disclose total customer count or average selling price, citing competitive sensitivity. He described the pricing structure as a platform fee plus a per-user charge above that threshold, with upsells driven primarily by user expansion. One large unnamed global service firm has 31,000 paid users on data.world. That same firm had previously attempted to deploy Collibra and never exceeded 12 users before abandoning the effort. Hurt said data.world is becoming the most deployed data tool at its enterprise customers, though he did not provide a broader customer count to support that claim.
data.world serves 500 customers.
data.world Business Model
data.world charges enterprise customers on a platform basis with additional per-user fees above the platform tier. Upsell motion is driven by user expansion within existing accounts. The company does not disclose average selling price or average revenue per user.
The company has two distinct business units: a free open-data community and a paid enterprise data catalog. Hurt described the free side as a public-benefit utility and the paid side as a private data catalog for enterprise customers, with the two sides sharing the same underlying knowledge graph technology. Profitability was not discussed in the interview. Gross margin, churn, net revenue retention, CAC, LTV, and burn rate were not disclosed.
data.world Employees & Team Size
data.world had approximately 150 employees as of April 2023. Of that total, roughly one-third, or approximately 50 people, work in engineering. Hurt noted that generative AI is increasing engineering team efficiency and that the company is investing heavily in the technology both internally and as a product capability, given that data.world's knowledge graph architecture is well suited to large language model applications.
data.world employs approximately 215 people as of 2026, up from 150 in 2023, including 30 sales reps that carry a quota. It serves 500 customers that rely on its solutions.
| Year | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Reached 215 employees (October 2024) | |
| 2023 | Reached 150 employees (April 2023) | |
| 2022 | Reached 197 employees (November 2022) | |
| 2022 | Reached 197 employees (January 2022) | |
| 2021 | Reached 139 employees (November 2021) | |
| 2021 | Reached 139 employees (August 2021) | |
| 2020 | Reached 125 employees (November 2020) | |
| 2020 | Reached 125 employees (September 2020) |
Frequently Asked Questions about data.world
What is data.world's revenue?
data.world generates an estimated $45.2M in annual revenue.
Who founded data.world?
data.world was founded by Brett Hurt.
Who is the CEO of data.world?
The CEO of data.world is Brett Hurt.
How much funding does data.world have?
data.world raised $132.3M across 6 rounds.
How many employees does data.world have?
data.world has 215 employees.
Where is data.world headquarters?
data.world is headquartered in Austin, Texas, United States.
Compare data.world to the industry
data.world operates across multiple industries. Browse revenue, funding, and growth data for data.world in each sector below.
Full Interview Transcripts
How Investors Bought 50% of Data.World with 2.1m free users, accounts at 31k paid seatsApr 27, 2023
[00:00] Guys, Brett Hurt, his fourth company, Coremetrics launched in 1999. He left in 2005 after the company broke $30,000,000 in revenue. And in 2010, the company sold for $300,000,000 to IBM. That was his first sort of big cash day, but he left actually earlier in 2005 and launched with his one of his friends, Brandt, Bizarre Voice, which ended up growing to a $100,000,000 in revenue, spending just $13,000,000 to get there and a billion dollar IPO, very capital [00:24] efficient. Obviously, Bizarre Boy is taken private in 2018 by Marlin and other stuff has happened since then. But now Brett's focus is data dot world. Competing with Calibre, really a large scale, widespreading data platform, very opposite of the capital efficiency of his earlier companies. He had to spend, well not spend, but raise over $53,000,000 of capital before his first dollar of revenue at Data World, but now scaling team of 150, 50 engineers focused on efficiency and [00:49] scaling in a good way. He's written about his success and his book, The Entrepreneur's Essentials, which I encourage all of you guys to check out. Hey, folks, my guest today is Brett Hurt. He's the CEO of data. World, the enterprise data catalog for the modern data stack. He's also the co founder of Hurt Family Investments. Brett has co founded and led Bizarre Voice through an IPO as well as Coremetrics, which was acquired by IBM. He is [01:12] a Henry Clown Fellow and his book is called The Entrepreneur's Essentials. Alright, Brett, you ready to take us to the top? [01:17] >> Yeah, let's go for So [01:19] take us back to Bizarre Voice first. People always go, man, you know, oh, he started his first company. It does well. He IPOs it, but you've got, you know, [01:27] >> do you have any stories before that where things crash and burn? Well, Bizarre Voice was actually my fifth company. It was definitely the best outcome to date, but I think data. World is much more ambitious and it's incredibly exciting, the path we're on with this company. But Bazaar Voice really popularized customer reviews all over the world. It really brought that voice of the customer into websites, Walmart and the Home Depot and Best Buy, and many others [01:54] >> all over the world used it. As of today, it's in over 20,000 customers, rather, in over 40 international languages. And it's run by a really good friend of mine, Keith Neelan. And it's it's amazingly scaled company at this point. But, yeah, that was an incredible journey. We were actually rated the number one company to work for in Austin when we were small, then medium, then large. A lot of the insights in my book come from Bizarre [02:22] >> Voice, and we've applied them to data. World. By the way, all proceeds to The Entrepreneurs Essentials go to supporting female entrepreneurs, I don't make a dime on this. And also gave away the book for free online at the entrepreneursessentials.com. So Hey, guys, if you're driving, [02:39] if you're driving and listening, the cover is a green cover, if you're looking it up on Amazon, the Entrepreneur's Essentials, can look up and we'll certainly link to that in the show notes and promote this and we send it Brett, that's great. Give us the give us the on Bizarre Voice, just give us some of the snippets real quick. So like what year did you launch the business? [02:56] >> So Bizarre Voice, I launched it with Brandt Barden in 2005. And to put that in a historical context, there were only three retailers who had customer reviews at the time in the entire United States. And we [03:14] >> launched, I think, two years before the iPhone. Facebook was closed to the public. There was no such thing as Snapchat or Instagram or TikTok. So there's this entire social wave that was about to come, and that really accelerated the business at Bizarre Voice because Facebook came along and said to all the brands and all the retailers, you need to be social. You need to be social. You need to be social. And, of course, they had invented [03:39] >> the world's best ad targeting engine up until when Apple changed their roles and and really broke that that engine pretty profoundly. But here we were in the right time, right place. And I always say that entrepreneurship is a combination of a lot of grit and a lot of luck. And anybody that says there's no luck in it, they're absolutely wrong. There's a tremendous amount of luck needed to become a successful entrepreneur. [04:04] I mean, I was hoping you had mentioned that Salesforce IPO ed in 2006. So you could also argue where you were one of the original sort of SaaS models and eventually one of the original enterprise SaaS models. Would you agree [04:13] >> with that? I would actually I would actually go back to core metrics, my fourth business for that. I got to see Mark Benioff present when Salesforce was 80 people. When I was raising money for core metrics, this is back in 1999, the term SaaS didn't exist. [04:28] You launched in 1999? [04:30] >> Yes. Wow. That was Coremetrics. And the term SaaS didn't exist. The term ASP, application service provider, didn't exist. I saw Benioff speaking at Stanford talking about the end of software, and I thought he was brilliant. And I was out there trying to raise money for core metrics, talking to VCs about clients and mainframes and dumb terminals and clients and servers and anything to get them to kind of grok what a centralized multi tenant SaaS model would [05:02] >> be. But those terms, again, didn't exist back then. And I was like, look, I'm going be able to upgrade it for our customers all the time. And they were like, but there's already two public companies that one's worth 1,000,000,000, one's worth 2,000,000,000, and they're on prem and it seems like everybody's going to want their data on prem. And I was like, but I'm going to be able to release software so much faster than them. And I've [05:24] >> talked with almost all of their customers and they're all hating on them. Most of them haven't deployed, the ones that have told me that it took twelve to eighteen months. You're gonna be able to deploy this in weeks. And the rest is history. I mean, Coremetrics just blew past those companies, really disrupted them and [05:42] and was one We can we can quantify this, though, too. I mean, I love the story, but we can put real numbers behind this. It's funny. I mean, I'm looking here at your profile. I mean, you you launched this series a or you closed series a in 1999, not to date you at all, but 1999. [05:54] >> That's right. That's [05:55] right. You're also one of the early uses that I see. I haven't seen many earlier than this of debt financing to fund a SaaS company so you can preserve your equity as you go into a series b and onwards. You ended up, I think, raising what was the total raised at Coremetrics? [06:09] >> Oh, gosh. I would need to think about that. I I think it was I think it was close to 80,000,000. [06:15] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [06:38] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [07:03] get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [07:25] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [07:50] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but [08:12] if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into [08:38] the interview. And are you able to share back in o eight? This is crazy timing, right? Remember, guys, when I was in 2008, the financial markets, I think you closed your Series E then it was for 60,000,000. Do you remember what that valuation was? [08:50] >> No, that that's actually incorrect. Okay. That that was I was already at Bizarre Voice at the time. So I got Coremetrics to a point where I felt very, very confident that it was going to be successful. And then I just felt like the timing for Bizarre Voice was too compelling, and I wanted to move on to my next project. [09:10] What year was that, Brett? [09:12] >> That was 2005. So I remained on board of Coremetrics for a period of time and loved the company, loved the people there. And then it exited to IBM for around $300,000,000 in 2010. And that was my first significant exit, but it was two years before Bizarre Voice went public. And Bizarre Voice was over a billion dollar IPO and one of the top five IPOs of 2012. So it was a it was it was it was good [09:44] >> liquidity from Coremetrics, but then Bizarre Voice was really the entrepreneurial dream come true. [09:49] This is incredible. So do you remember, you said you left in Coremetrics quote when you felt it was comfortable. Quantify that in terms of revenue. Do you remember ARR in 2005? [09:57] >> I think it was around 30,000,000 ARR at that point. [10:02] And do remember what it scaled to five years later in 2010 before the acquisition? [10:06] >> I don't. No. I don't. [10:08] Okay. So you basically, I'd also that takes a lot of discipline. I mean, this thing, you it's growing and it's 30,000,000 ARR. You go, man. I'm just feeling so compelled by this bizarre voice thing. Did you have trusted lieutenants at Coremetrics, maybe co founders, then that sort of gave you extra, you know, comfort to leave? [10:23] >> Yeah. Actually, I left with Brandt Barden, who became my cofounder. And it was it was a little bit of an awkward scenario because Brandt approached me at Coremetrics and said, hey. I'm gonna go start another company at some point, and I'm wondering if you'd be on my board of directors. And Brandt was absolutely amazing on our client services team. He led really one of the most difficult parts of the SaaS model, which is to make sure [10:50] >> that you're doing a great job of servicing your customers. I always say you have to constantly be re earning their trust as a SaaS company because it's a recurring revenue business. So you've got to stress that last S, software as a service, and really make sure you're providing great service. So anyways, I was fascinated with how great Brent was at his job. And when he first said this to me, I thought, well, gee, I don't want [11:15] >> to lose him. But then I thought, I'm a real hypocrite if I don't meet with him about this. And then when I met with him, he said, hey, would you like to brainstorm with me too? I could really use a brainstorming partner. And we brainstormed and we came up with Bizarre Boys. And then I realized or I really felt deep in my bones that the market timing for that was so compelling and that it was such [11:39] >> a big vision and it could be a bigger company than Coremetrics that I thought to myself, I've gotta do this. But I I trust me, I would not have left Coremetrics had it not been in a good state. And the reason I say that is Coremetrics had gone through a lot of trauma. We launched in 1999. You know what happened next. We had 100.com customers. We were ringing the bell all the time, winning new customers, [12:06] >> and ninety seven of our customers went out of business in the.comcrash. And so I had a huge amount of scar tissue. We had to let go two thirds of the people. I I lived in San Francisco at the time, we're in Austin now, and I would tell my wife, I literally feel like I'm being punched in the gut. But ultimately, I got the company back on a good track alongside a great team. And we've signed [12:32] >> Walmart and built back up into a big company. We became rated the number one in the industry by Forrester Research, who was the most important research firm in that particular industry for retail. And that was back in the days of Kate Delhaagen and a bunch of other amazing people that worked there. And so once it got to a point where I was like, okay, there's just it's undeniably going to be successful. Now I will tell you [12:57] >> that I wish that the CEO that took it forward didn't sell it so early, but it had gone through some trauma. I mean, honestly, it could have been an IPO just a couple of years later, but I guess that he and the board felt like that was a compelling offer. But they kind of missed the hockey stick that was coming in SaaS just a couple of years later. So the multiple wasn't as great as it could [13:24] >> have been. And really changed IBM. I mean, it became IBM's core analytics stack, but it could have been so much more. [13:33] Yep. Hey, I wanna move forward here. I have another minute on Bazaar Voice and then spend the rest of time on your new company, Data World, which we're all excited about. On Bazaar Voice, though, you so, Brent and you are getting together. One question I always get from listeners is, Nathan, I've got a great co founder, but we haven't had the tough equity conversation. They And always end up just saying fiftyfifty, which I go, man, was [13:51] it really lazy? They just didn't wanna have the tough conversations. So they said fiftyfifty. How did you guys do that? Did you and Brett just split it fiftyfifty? Or how'd you have that conversation? You and Brent, sorry. Did you just split it? Or how'd you do that? [14:01] >> Yeah. So we that was the toughest conversation we ever had, actually. Because there's a lot of romance in starting a company together. And, you know, I I truly love Brent today. He's one of my best friends. But I would not do a fiftyfifty deal. I knew what kind of value I had to the business. And I served on the board of directors of shop.org. I had a tremendous network out there, and I had tremendous know how. [14:30] >> I mean, Fortmetrics was my fourth business, and it was a successful business. And so I negotiated with them. I won't tell you where we ended up, but we did not end up at fiftyfifty, but I ended up with a much bigger equity stake. But at the end of the day, Brent did incredibly well financially, and it was also a dream come true for him. And one thing I'm particularly proud of is by the time Bazaar Voice [14:54] >> went public, like two things. One is we had only raised 23,000,000, and we had over 100,000,000 run rate with 13,000,000 left in the bank. Y Combinator said it was one of the top five most capital efficient SaaS businesses of all time. [15:07] So just to be clear, you were at north of $100,000,000 in ARR in 2012 when you IPO ed? [15:11] >> Yes. [15:12] Wow. That's I mean, it's incredible. [15:13] >> With only 13,000,000 of capital use over a [15:15] six year period. That's incredible. [15:17] >> It was a good burn multiple. Yeah, that was a good burn multiple. And then the second thing is that we you know, you know, those firms that gauge how you're doing on giving equity and kind of how generous you are? We were the second most generous SaaS company by that time, twenty twelve, out of all SaaS companies that had gone public before in terms of how generous we were with equity to all of our employees. And [15:44] >> so How big was [15:45] the ESOP pool at IPO? [15:46] >> Yeah, we had [15:47] >> a big one. And and the thing that I love about that is that [15:51] How big though, Brett, was it? [15:53] >> I think it was like 20 ish percent given to employees. And and the thing that's amazing about that is that it led to over 60 companies started by former Bizarre Boys people. That's how big of an exit it was and how much wealth it created. And I'm a capitalist, and that ripple effect, [16:15] >> capitalist impact is very real in terms of what happens with nonprofits, what happens with people starting their own businesses, the type of know how they get to create great cultures. You know, as I mentioned, Bazaar Voice was the top rated company. Data. World is rated in the top three companies to work for in Austin. [16:31] Let's get into that, Brett. Data World, you launched, I believe, what, 2015? [16:37] >> Yeah, we launched in well, we founded in 2015, and we launched data. World. It's data. World, by the way. I always pronounce the dot. But we launched on 07/11/2016 on Slurpee Day, which we didn't really expect it was gonna be on 07/11, but that turns out that was Slurpee Day. But that a great launch, and we've now become the world's largest collaborative data community for open datasets. And then we have a for profit division of the [17:09] >> company, which is focused on the data catalog industry, and we've been a great disruptor there in a very similar way, by the way, to core metrics. If you [17:16] go all the way back [17:17] >> to '99, because we're con we're competing here primarily against Alation and Calibre, which are both primarily on prem. Most of the revenue comes from on prem, and they come out with a couple of releases a year. We come out with over 1,000 product releases a year, literally release software two to three times a day. That's the pace of innovation here at data. World. [17:41] That's incredible. Tell me how many years it took you to break a million dollar run rate at Data World. [17:46] >> At data dot world, we didn't even make a dollar of revenue until we had raised over $50,000,000. And we didn't break a dollar of revenue until 2018. And the reason why is it's a very different business than Bazaar Voice. It's a very wide surface area. If you understand the data catalog space, it's basically a library for all of your internal data assets. So it sits on top of Snowflake and Databricks and Oracle and Netizen and other [18:17] >> systems, both modern and old. And it sits on top of Microsoft Power BI and Tableau and Looker and Google Data Studio and a bunch of others, Domo and a bunch of other older BI systems. So we have over 95 integrations. And the surface area of what we're doing is really wide, and we also have to be incredibly secure. Like you can imagine the CISO process that we go through with customers. We have a lot of cybersecurity [18:44] >> customers on our platform, a lot of companies you would have heard of that are truly big. And we're in every market vertical now. We're in universities, government agencies, local, state. We're in a lot of corporations, from technology companies to financial services to healthcare, to travel and retail and on and on and on. [19:07] So Brett, just to pull this forward, one of the themes I want get for our here is they're all trying to manage dilution, right, as they scale. They wanna go hit a home run, but they also don't wanna dilute. You did a great job, obviously. You already talked about it at prior companies. This one's a little bit different in terms of the broad reach, but help help me understand your series b was a 26,000,000 series b, [19:22] I believe, in 2020. Most folks in this Series B, they're selling 10% of the company. Were you sort of in that same range? [19:29] >> So we're about fiftyfifty owned right now between investors and internally. And we've raised over 132,000,000 to date. The last round we raised was from Goldman Sachs. That was a $50,000,000 round. They put in 40,000,000 of that 50,000,000, and we were oversubscribed on the remaining 10. What was [19:49] the post money on that? Are you comfortable sharing? [19:51] >> Yeah. I can't share that on a podcast. Okay. So Interwire and all the others try to get that all the time. [19:57] Yeah, most folks, I mean, look, if you can sort of predict, mean, most folks are doing Series C, especially in early twenty twenty two. I mean, you're selling somewhere between five and you know, 1015% of the company, is it can you say you're sort of in that same range? [20:08] >> Well, we closed on our Series C in 2022. Yep. So we did it after the crazy multiples, which turned out to be a huge blessing, because there's a lot of companies that raised at like 100x AR multiples, and that's a crushingly high multiple to live up to. And so a lot of those companies are getting recapped. We're not in a recap situation. [20:31] So you're more like 20x, 30x, something in that range? [20:34] >> I don't feel comfortable disclosing. But but we were we were we were in a very normal type of range. [20:40] Well, Brett, you got to teach my audience because they don't know the normal range, I also want to respect your privacy. Can you give a range you're comfortable with? So there's a concrete takeaway for the audience, but what still protects what you're trying [20:48] >> to protect? We were we were way, way, way south of 100x AR. [20:53] Okay, ways. Okay, that's great. So moving forward to today, just help me understand pricing model. What's the average customer paying you per year for this data platform you've built? [21:03] >> So I don't discuss average selling price. That would give a lot of good competitive intel. But I can tell you the way we charge is we charge on a platform basis, and then we charge users above that. So when we upsell customers, we're typically upselling on the number of users, and we're actually becoming the most deployed data tool of all time at our customers. [21:25] How do you measure that? [21:27] >> Well, one of the largest service firms in the world has 85% of their employees using data. World. There's nothing that's ever taken off like that for them. You know, another company [21:41] which is Do you know if they've tried others, though? I mean, that's sort of a I mean, saying you have 85% penetration in one of your customers. Well, yeah. But what if I mean, what about someone who tested Calibra and tested you? Yeah. So that was one [21:52] >> where they failed with Calibra and they never got [21:54] Okay. [21:54] There we go. [21:55] >> They never got over 12 users. And with us, they're at 31,000 users. [22:02] Okay, that makes more sense. Talk to me about your supporting on this from an infrastructure perspective as we wrap up here last two minutes. What's your total team size today? And how much engineering power do you have there? [22:10] >> Yeah. So we're about a 150 people today. And our engineering team is getting a lot more efficient right now because of generative AI, like all engineering teams are. So we're all in on that. And we're also all in on it from a product standpoint because our platform is built on what's called a knowledge graph, and that three-dimensionalizes data. Google search is actually built on a knowledge graph, and Facebook social engine is built on a knowledge graph, [22:38] >> and a large part of Amazon. So we've got the perfect technology base actually for generative AI, but we're also using it very heavily internally. And, you know, a lot of our team is engineering at this point. [22:53] Like how many of the one fifty? [22:55] >> Yeah, it's it's a it's it's around a third. [22:57] Okay. That's right. [22:59] And when you say you have like 31,000 members at that one company, I just want to make sure these are not like free, you're just giving away. That's easy. These are they're paying for these seats. [23:08] >> This is paid. Yeah. [23:09] So when you say in the press, have 1,600,000 members. These are not just free users floating around. These are paid seats on the platform. [23:15] >> Okay. So there's two two sides of it. It's not 1,600,000. What I said earlier is it's 2,100,000 down the free side. And then we don't disclose how many are on the paid side. But we have two parts of the business. We're a B corporation. One part is a free utility to leverage open data sets from all over the web and collaborate on those for free and contribute to the public body of knowledge about cancer and climate [23:41] >> change and poverty and nutrition and all of these important things. That part of the business is trained, the paid part, which is the data catalog business. And the way you can think about it is that the the first part of the business is essentially like a like a free data catalog for open data. And the second part of the business is a data catalog just for a company, just for their private data. [24:04] And that's where [24:05] >> all of those integrations and everything else come into play. [24:07] Yeah. Sorry. Just to be clear, on 04/05/2022, used old TechCrunch quote. He claims the data. World now has more than 1,600,000 members across customers, including the associated price and Penguin Random House. That's where I got that number from. My question is I wanna make sure when we're saying members, are these paid seats? Are these people contributing to your learning model that might be free? [24:23] >> Those are people contributing to the learning model. Yeah, that's just dated because that's an old TechCrunch article. But yeah, that's that's now over 2,100,000. [24:30] Oh, wow, impressive. Okay, cool. So they're all contributing to your learning model. And then you've got companies like this one with 31,000 seats, where they're all paying for each each of those seats. [24:40] >> That's [24:40] You've taken companies to 100,000,000 in revenue a couple of times, you're not going to share this, but my best estimate on your revenue to say with 150 employees, most VC backed do between 100 and $200,000 in revenue per employee, which would put you at like $20,000,000 ish in ARR. How many years do you think it'll take you to break $100,000,000 in revenue with this idea? [24:58] >> Yeah, that's not something I'm gonna disclose. You're like a VC. This is like, if you're if you're gonna write me a 100,000,000 check, then I'll disclose [25:05] some of these things. Well, look, there's a lot of founders that want to learn from you. And no one [25:09] >> can understand that I get. [25:10] So I'm always gonna ask the question. Right. And so so I guess, I mean, what it can you share anything about how you take an idea from where you are to north of a $100,000,000 since you've done this [25:20] >> so many times? It's it's all in my book, The Entrepreneur's Essentials. I I talk about specifically how to build the sales team, how to do it in a capital efficient way, how to structure your culture, how to hire, how to ultimately come up with the right business model. So everything about that is in our book. [25:39] Are there numbers in the book? [25:41] >> There are numbers in the book for companies that have either sold or gone public. Yeah. [25:45] You're speaking my language, Brett. On that note, let's wrap with a famous five. Number one, your [25:48] >> favorite book besides your own. I love Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, because it's so data driven and really makes you optimistic for the future and takes chapter by chapter issues like inequality or food or energy or anything you're worried about and shows you the no BS data throughout human history to show you that the world is actually progressing in a really beautiful way overall versus the fear mongering that goes on pretty constantly out there. [26:17] And under the radar CEO or Founder that really impresses you that you're following? [26:23] >> I think Ross Burghorf is incredible. We're investors in his company. They recently closed around at 1,700,000,000, and they're disrupting LegalZoom. And he's he it's an interesting story because it's his first time in the COC [26:38] You have to say the company, Brett. We it's Zen Business. Zen Business. [26:41] >> Zen Business. Yeah. [26:44] I cut you off. [26:44] >> Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you know, he he's it's his first time in the CEO seat. He was the CTO of Homeway before. It's been a real joy to mentor him and really just awesome to see how well that company is doing. And they're also a proud B Corp. When we became a B Corp in Austin, there were six companies that followed us and made that move. And I know they did because I [27:05] >> talked with their CEOs about it when we made that move and they asked me, why are we doing this? And I I really believe that's the next stage of capitalism, capitalism2.o. [27:15] And guys, if you wanna learn from Ross, you can find his interview he did on the show, which a lot of good data. 2019, he shared they broke 4,000,000 revenue 2020, he shared they broke fifteen twenty twenty one, they grew to over $45,000,000 in revenue as they're displacing large folks like LegalZoom doing in a capital efficient way. Their Series B was a $56,000,000 round on two fifty six post, which he shared about. And then the one [27:36] that that Brett just mentioned was a Series C 200,000,000 at 1.7 post money, really, really great story there from Ross. Brett, number three, number three, what's your favorite online tool for building data world besides besides your own or one you own equity in? [27:53] >> I I've gotta say that it is becoming very quickly GitHub Copilot just because, you know, the way it leverages OpenAI's codex and the way it's lifting all of our productivity on the engineering side, which is, as you know, a very high cost part of any business. And it's turning our engineers into super superpower. So I love that technology. [28:17] Number four, how many hours of sleep are [28:18] you getting every night? [28:19] >> I get seven to eight. [28:20] That's great. And situation married single kids? [28:23] >> Married for [28:24] >> twenty seven years. And my wife is my investing partner. We've invested in over 130 startups in the past twelve years. We're in 40 VC funds as well. So we have our own family office, as you mentioned at at the top. And we have two kids. Our daughter is 18, and she's going off to Tulane University in the fall. That was her dream school. And our son is 13. We have his Bar Mitzvah in Israel this year [28:51] >> in June, which we can't wait for. [28:53] Oh, that's awesome. Very cool, Brian. How old are you? [28:56] >> I'm 51. [28:57] Last question, take us home here. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [29:01] >> Oh, gosh. Well, I'll stick with the kid theme for a second. I took this path of being an entrepreneur. And when I graduated from the Wharton School, I made $0 for a long time. And it took a long time to gain wealth on the entrepreneurial path, but I knew it was what I was going to do. My wife and I talked a lot about it before we got married. And because of that, we waited for a [29:29] >> long time to have kids. We didn't have our first child until we didn't get pregnant until we were 32. [29:35] And I would [29:36] >> have gotten started earlier, all things considered. And they say that you live with no regrets in life, or some people say that I think that's BS. I think there's lots of regrets in life. And that's one where I would have just said to myself, hey, believe in yourself more. Believe in your ability to become successful. Don't worry as much about the financial security for having kids,...
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