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Knowledge Base: Analyzing Software Companies

There are 35+ public companies – and countless more large privates – that build highly technical products. What do they actually do? What makes one database different from the next?

Analytics and AI

Companies that help organizations analyze and build models with their data

The larger your organization is, the more valuable data you probably have to work with. Companies in this section help organizations get the most out of their data. Historically, analytics has referred more to the ongoing analysis of data by data teams, while ML and AI is more about building models that can operate as products.

Public

Public

  • Snowflake ($SNOW) sells a powerful cloud data warehouse for analytics and data science teams.
  • Alteryx ($AYX) is a group of tools that helps business teams get insights out of their data, without needing to write any code.
Private (Established)

Private (Established)

  • Databricks sells a data science and analytics platform built on top of an open source package called Apache Spark.
  • OpenAI is the most popular provider of generative AI models.
Private (Emerging)

Private (Emerging)

  • dbt Labs makes dbt, an open source tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
  • Segment helps teams track their product and marketing data and send it to whichever tools it needs to go to.
  • 🔜 Anthropic builds AI models and products that won't teach you how to do bad things.

Communication and Automation

Companies that help organizations automate plus communicate with their customers

This is sort of a catch-all category, but the unifying theme is automation. Companies in this category help organizations automate their work, from building integrations to sending email and SMS.

Public

Public

  • Twilio ($TWLO) makes a suite of products that helps you communicate with your customers via SMS, video, calls, and more.
  • UIPath ($PATH) helps people automate rote manual tasks like updating spreadsheets and creating documents.
Private (Emerging)

Private (Emerging)

  • Zapier helps business people make custom integrations between their favorite tools, without needing to write any code.

Data Stores

Companies that sell places to store your data

There are at least 300+ databases out there, and they all do something slightly different. From Postgres to Elastic to Cassandra, there are virtually unlimited ways to store and query your data; and most companies will use several of them in tandem. Companies in this category sell databases, for everything from production applications to data warehouses and log search.

Public

Public

  • Elastic ($ESTC) is a popular open source database for storing and searching unstructured data.
  • MongoDB ($MDB) is a highly popular unstructured, NoSQL document database for powering your applications.
  • Apache Kafka is a framework for streaming real time data, and Confluent ($CFLT) offers Kafka as a managed service.
Private (Emerging)

Private (Emerging)

  • Algolia provides a set of tools that helps engineers build search functionality into their apps.

DevOps

Companies that help developers deploy their software

Building software is only part of the battle - you need to distribute it to your customers, and it needs to work for them, all the time. DevOps has as many definitions as letters, but the main gist is the process of getting software out there so your customers can use it. Companies in this section help developers do that, from API management to containers and artifacts.

Public

Public

  • JFrog ($FROG) provides a bunch of products and services around DevOps, i.e. taking your software and deploying it to the world.
  • Gitlab ($GTLB) is a giant tool for literally anything you'd want to do relating to building and deploying software.
Private (Established)

Private (Established)

  • Hashicorp ($HCP) sells software that helps developers manage their cloud infrastructure via code-based configuration.
  • Docker helps developers isolate their code and infrastructure in containers so things always run smoothly.
Private (Emerging)

Private (Emerging)

  • Postman is a suite of tools that helps developers build, test, and use internal and external API endpoints.

Fintech

Companies that help developers move money around

The banking system is obscure enough to make software engineering look easy. Companies in this section help developers move money around: accepting payments, creating subscriptions, and connecting to bank accounts.

Private (Established)

Private (Established)

  • Plaid acts as an intermediary between apps (like Venmo) and your bank so that you can log in and share data securely.
  • Stripe sells payments infrastructure for internet businesses: primarily, they help you bill your customers, process payments, and work with your payment data.

Infrastructure and Cloud

Companies that help developers build and run applications

Back in the day, most companies built and ran their own data centers. Today, almost everything happens in the cloud. Companies in this section help developers run and manage the infrastructure they need to build their apps, from clouds to frontend-as-a-service.

Public

Public

  • AWS ($AMZN) is the premier cloud provider - they sell the infrastructure building blocks to build modern apps.
  • DigitalOcean is an independent infrastructure as a service provider; you can think of them as AWS or GCP, but for the people.
  • Cloudflare ($NET) provides networking tools that help companies distribute their apps globally and securely.
Private (Established)

Private (Established)

  • Heroku was and is one of the first cloud platforms as a service (PaaS).
Private (Emerging)

Private (Emerging)

  • Vercel builds a frontend-as-a-service product – they make it easy for engineers to deploy and run the user facing parts of their applications.

Monitoring and Observability

Companies that help developers monitor and improve their applications

The saying goes that you can't improve what you can't measure. And for developers, this is certainly the case: monitoring your infrastructure and apps helps you make them faster and more reliable. Companies in this section give developers visibility into their apps, from APM to logs.

Public

Public

  • Datadog ($DDOG) is monitoring software - developers use it to get operational visibility into their servers and applications.
  • Splunk ($SPLK) is a tool for storing and searching logs, specifically focused on security.
  • New Relic ($NEWR) is observability software: teams use it to monitor the performance of their apps and infrastructure.
Private (Emerging)

Private (Emerging)

  • Sentry ($PRIVATE) helps developers diagnose and fix issues in their code.

Security

Companies that help developers make their apps more secure

It has never been more important to lock down your code and your apps: vulnerabilities abound and security incidents cost organizations billions every year. Companies in this section help developers secure their apps, from the code they write to their authentication infrastructure.

Public

Public

  • Okta ($OKTA) is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions.
Private (Established)

Private (Established)

  • Snyk ($PRIVATE) helps developers make sure that the code they're writing is secure.