Future Unicorn🦄 #178: OtterTune

Optimizing the $80B database market

Late issue for yesterday !

The Quild Future Unicorn highlights one future of work early-stage startup with statistically significant signals of becoming a unicorn.

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OtterTune provides automated performance tuning solutions for data-intensive applications. It learns how the database behaves and continually tunes runtime knobs to improve the system’s performance. It discovers and reveals new approaches to optimization that most human DBAs can't detect. Spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2020.

Founders: Andy, Bohan, Dana (Dana and Bohan were students of Andy)

Signals:

1. Venture-backed experience

   • Bohan was an engineer at Striim (1+ yrs), which raised from Summit Partners and Intel Capital

2. Top company/institution alumni

   • Andy teaches at CMU and is on the advisory board of exciting data startups like Voltron Data, Splice Machines, and Fauna

   • Bohan was a researcher at CMU (4+ yrs)

   • Dana was a researcher at CMU (6+ yrs)

3. Top university alumni

   • Andy graduated from Brown University (MS, PhD)

   • Bohan graduated from CMU (MS) and Peking University (BS)

   • Dana graduated from University of Washingon (BS) and CMU (PhD)

4. Fast team growth

   • Grew 2x YoY to 20 employees

   • And hiring more

5. Midas list investor

   • Accel led seed

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