Our Big Bet on The Future of Data Management: Meet Pliable

THE FUTURE OF DATA MANAGEMENT

There will never be a day when the world decides we’re only going to send data in one particular format for the rest of time.

We’ve seen enough throughout our careers for this to feel like the safest bet either of us has made in a long time.

So who are we to make a prediction like that?

In short, we’re two people who’ve experienced the pain of useless data for too long. Long enough that we decided to do something about it.

MEET PLIABLE

From CEO Jason Raede:

In early 2022, I was a recovering CTO working as a technology consultant for companies in the financial services and commercial real estate industries. Again and again, I got fed up with the messy data I was finding at the start of a new project. Before I could move forward and actually implement solutions for clients, I had to clean up their data first. I was wasting so much time just getting that data into usable shape. So I started building an internal platform to help streamline data cleanup and get us to the implementation stage faster.

From COO Kait Rikkers:

I was actually a former client of Jason’s when he worked as a consultant. As an operator, I spent many years and multiple roles jumping through hoops to answer critical business questions with company data. Questions that should have been answerable, but felt just out of reach or took days for an analyst to wrangle into a report for me. Time I never had to spare. As an operator and recovering entrepreneur-in-residence, I couldn’t believe the potential of what I saw when Jason shared the internal platform he built.

That serendipitous moment ultimately morphed into our vision for Pliable:

A universal data protocol that allows anyone to curate, share and consume data.

And yes, we really do mean anyone.

WHY NOW?

Today, Data Management is the wild west. In fact, the landscape is only getting more complex and more frustrating. As it stands, so many critical business questions are unanswerable, and so many data initiatives are unachievable. One of the biggest reasons? Non-technical people don’t have the accurate, actionable data they need. Also, getting that data is way too complicated.

A select handful of household name companies have the resources and wherewithal to do data “well”. But the rest of us? As operators, we’re left without the tools we need to make sure our data is:

• Curated
• Organized
• Trustworthy
• Integrated

…. so it can actually be used to answer critical business questions and achieve our goals. Existing solutions are either too clunky, too basic, or require a team of expensive data engineers and architects in order to use. So time and time again we end up with a bunch of cobbled-together Excel spreadsheets and SQL databases that do just enough to justify their existence, and leave far too much to be desired.

We can stitch together all the powerful point solutions we want, but they’re only as powerful as the data that goes into them. No matter how much we invest into our tech stack, we’re still at stage zero until we have data that’s cleaned up and usable.

EARLY SUCCESSES + THE ROAD TO TODAY

We started with a platform that allowed Jason’s services clients to streamline data sourcing, clean-up, and organization — and get to the implementation stage faster.

Back then, one of our most sophisticated features was deduplication. We tested it with a client that had a contact list of 900 different companies from an insurance company partner of theirs. In a matter of seconds, our platform was able to go through the records, identify duplicates, and ultimately determine that the list only contained 20 original companies. Doing this manually would have taken the client days.

That client signed on as our first SaaS customer. Before we even had a platform we were ready to sell.

Since then, we’ve been heads-down, working on the customer-facing version of our platform. Our goal was to put this power of centralized, actionable data directly into customers’ hands. We could clearly see a world where anyone could curate, share and consume data to make intelligent business decisions.

As we showed Pliable to more and more of Jason’s services clients, the way it could transform how companies approach Data Management became even clearer. These companies could connect Pliable to their Snowflake database before leaving for the day and wake up in the morning to data that’s organized and ready to use — not just by technical teams, but actionable to everyone across the organization, all the way to sales and marketing.

With those early successes and a clear path for what’s ahead, we’re on a mission to centralize and transform your data so it works for you. Want to see it for yourself? Signup here.

– Jason Raede and Kait Rikkers, Pliable Co-founders