Mark Hay and Ethan Ding are on a mission to revolutionize corporate decision-making. But don’t underestimate them: these two engineers, who met during the pandemic, are nothing short of ambitious and optimistic.
Hay and Ding are the co-founders of TextQL, a groundbreaking platform that connects a company’s data stack to powerful language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4. Their goal is to empower business teams to ask questions and make data-driven decisions, using technology that truly understands their unique needs and language.
“Data leaders have been promised solutions for years, but many are still struggling to truly harness the power of their data. Our platform is the missing piece that connects their teams to their data in a meaningful way,” says Hay, CTO of TextQL, in an email interview with TechCrunch.
According to Hay, many chief data officers in Fortune 500 companies are wary of the term “self-service” due to past disappointments. In fact, their data scientists often spend more than 40% of their time fulfilling one-off requests, while their business teams struggle to make sense of data that is represented differently in various databases. This results in months of wasted productivity and endless debates over numbers.
But Hay, who previously worked on Facebook’s machine learning team, and Ding, a former member of Bessemer Venture Partners’ data team (who also happens to have a talent for gardening metaphors), believed there was a better solution.
In 2022, they launched TextQL, a platform that uses a unique data model to connect a company’s database to the “nouns” that represent their business in plain language. For example, words like “order,” “item,” “dealer,” “SKU,” and “inventory” can be easily understood and queried using TextQL.
Not only does TextQL connect to popular business intelligence tools, but it also links users to relevant dashboards when a question has already been answered. It can even reference documentation from data catalogs and notes from platforms like Confluence and Google Drive.
Users can simply ask a chatbot questions like “Can you show me a list of orders that were very late?” or “Calculate the distribution centers with the highest concentration?” And beyond just providing answers, TextQL’s automation component can even take actions, such as sending emails to managers with specified data.
“In today’s economy, where everyone is trying to do more with less, we are giving enterprise operators superpowers through our platform,” says Hay.
TextQL is already gaining traction in various industries, with clients in healthcare, biotech, financial services, manufacturing, and media. Hay reports that their annual recurring revenue is in the six figures and they have enough runway for several years of growth.
Despite the economic slowdown, Hay explains that they have actually seen more interest from companies, as their software can help them do more with smaller teams. And with a team made up of experienced and successful founders, they have been able to navigate the challenges of the current environment.
As for funding, TextQL has already raised $4.1 million through pre-seed and seed rounds, led by Neo and DCM, with additional support from Unshackled Ventures, Worklife Ventures, PageOne Ventures, FirstHand Ventures, and Indicator Fund.
Hay sees TextQL in direct competition with other vendors such as Palantir and C3.ai, but they are confident in their unique approach and the value they can bring to businesses. With their team of veterans and experienced investors, TextQL is poised to continue revolutionizing corporate decision-making in the years to come.
