With a strong foothold in data movement technologies, Fivetran can now position itself as an end-to-end data migration platform. The company recently announced the acquisition of Census, a strategic shift for Fivetran.
Fivetran is a platform that specializes in moving data from various sources to cloud databases. Census works in the opposite direction: it takes data from the cloud and delivers it to operational systems — for marketing, customer service, sales, etc. (reverse ETL).
Census was founded in 2018 and has attracted more than $80 million in investment from major funds such as Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Tiger Global. Its latest valuation is $630 million (2022). The terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, but the entire Census team will move to Fivetran, and the brand will eventually be integrated into the Fivetran system.
Synergy became a priority
Fivetran co-founder and CEO George Fraser says that the company has been asking customers for a reverse ETL solution for years. They considered building the technology themselves, but found it more resource-efficient to buy a startup that was already well-established in the field.
- “Fivetran and Census share the same philosophy. Their customers are often the same. That made it an ideal combination,” says Fraser.
The friendship between Census founders Boris Jabes and Anton Weinstock and Fivetran founders also played a role in the deal. They attended Y Combinator together in 2013 and have been in touch ever since. The idea for Census was even discussed before it became a startup.
A new phase in end-to-end data movement
With this deal, Fivetran not only expanded its service offering, but also brought together two key areas of data infrastructure — ETL and reverse ETL — into a single ecosystem. Now, customers can stream data from source to database, and from database to operational systems, all through a single platform.
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