After 2020, Dbt Labs’ data analytics tool was a side project at a small Philadelphia-based consulting shop, but it had negligible revenue at the time. Five years and one pivot later, it became a core component of a fast-growing enterprise that now serves over 5,000 paying customers and generates more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue (IRR 3x+). CEO Tristan Handy said, “ Dbt Labs has really changed how businesses handle data, making cleaning, transforming, and integrating data into systems far more efficient and reliable than we thought.”
Handy founded Fishtown Analytics, known more formally as Dbt Labs, just a decade ago. He started the company after years of frustration as a data analyst, dealing with clunky software and transformations that often broke the system. Cloud-based data tools like Amazon Redshift and Fivetran had become popular, but developers lacked expertise in leveraging them for data engineering. Realizing the opportunity to empower businesses to improve data quality, Hardy launched Dbt Core, a no-frills tool that streamlines the process of converting and integrating data formats by treating it as software. It made tasks like data transformation and testing more akin to small-scale engineering, improving software reliability and efficiency.
Handy rebranded the company as Dbt Labs because it bridges the gap between data and engineering, offering tools that help businesses sift through messy datasets, spot patterns, and drive data-driven decisions. The company achieved its的目标 in 2020 when it scaled to 50,000 teams, with revenue growing 80% over the past two years. Companies like Conde Nast, Nasdaq, and Siemens rely on Dbt Labs’ products to simplify data management and generate insights.
The company’s success was uneven, however, and the CEOigos in the Forbes narrative noted that Fishtown was rapidly evolving, becoming a scalable company at the same time. In 2020, Fishtown raised $30 million in Series B, including investments from notable players like Sequoiafinally, a50+ million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and others.
The company has since become a leader in enterprise data management, with over 5,000 teams using its tools daily. Miller, a partner at Sequoia, noted that the company now has a $4.2 billion valuation. With increasing cloud adoption and the rise of AI, Dbt Labs’ success has grown. Handies emphasized that core data is the most critical piece of work for these efforts, and Dbt Labs showed it by clarifying that its tools helped enable more efficient AI-driven solutions for businesses.
Today, Fishtown Labs operates Dbt Core, its core product, which now supports enterprise-scale data transformation.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
