Cinchy provides a Data Collaboration Platform that makes data integration obsolete. Organizations ‘change how they deliver change’ using Cinchy to make things simpler by liberating and productizing their data with secure real-time integration-free collaboration. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Cinchy co-founder and CEO Dan DeMers to learn more.
Background Of Dan DeMers
DeMers qualifies as an accidental entrepreneur as there is nothing in his background to suggest he would one day launch a disruptive tech startup. And DeMers said:
“I didn’t start out being obsessed with technology, and I never had any plans to found a company. But here we are…”
“I was actually bored with computer science in high school. But in 10th grade, I took a class in programming, and it changed everything. When my friends were surfing online, I was writing code. Eventually, my job search led me to a consulting firm, and one of its clients was a financial services multinational. I did some work at its office in Singapore, and that’s when things really started to come together. I had no particular expertise or even interest in fintech, while this company had a very sophisticated global infrastructure. But something clicked: They brought me on full-time, and it turbocharged my career in building and designing complex systems. And because of the way my mind works, I am always inventing ways to do things more efficiently. I was integrating legacy systems, delivering new capabilities and, crucially, reusing code written for other projects.”
“Meanwhile, my brother was launching ventures to sell his artistic creations. I wondered why he had a head for business while I was working for these big corporations, and over time, I got the entrepreneurial bug too.”
Formation Of Cinchy
How did the idea for Cinchy come together?
“I wish I could describe it as a eureka moment, but it’s more realistic than that.”
“While working for these giant banking conglomerates in different capacities, my colleagues and I would often try to assemble efficient solutions, but it was always a piecemeal approach—many ingredients, but never the full recipe. It took a while, but my colleague Karanjot Jaswal and I—we’d worked together on many different teams—eventually realized that the only way we could get the kind of solution we wanted was to build it ourselves.”
“That was the easy part. We had hundreds of ideas, all related to the problems we were facing, and we spent many days and nights trying to zero in on the best of those. Of course, we chose the hardest one—it helped to solve all the others.”
“Now, ever since I was a child, I’ve been oddly obsessed with efficiency. How do I reuse a good solution for a different problem? That basic belief came up hard against my professional environment—here was a massive financial service conglomerate with thousands of smart people, yet every new and complicated project required me to do the same thing over and over again. I realized that the complexity of building tech systems is ultimately all about the data. Every app is a data platform with a thin experience on top. With every new project, I was moving data from the left pocket to the right pocket—basically, from one silo to another.”
“This wasn’t just happening at my employers, it happens everywhere and with almost every function. And that was true of every organization on the planet. There’s always overlap between the apps, and looking at it you realize that—spoiler alert—the apps are not that special. The value is in the data, not the apps.”
“This made me realize that, in order to derive the full value of the data, we need to separate it from the applications. This is simultaneously simple and revolutionary—and it’s how we got to what is now Cinchy.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges DeMers faced in building the company? DeMers acknowledged:
“Inspiration doesn’t alone lead to success—there’s a lot of work involved. It’s one thing to have this macro idea of completely reinventing data-driven best practices, and another thing entirely to develop a viable solution that real business professionals can use. This was a challenge for sure, but it’s one we embraced.”
“My partner Karanjot and I decided to do this back in 2014. This was back when we both had full-time jobs and families to support. That meant working every evening, well into the night, and all weekend. I turned a closet into an office and immersed myself in the painful details of data integration. Sometimes I’d work all night, then take a shower and go to my real job. This went on for a long time—Cinchy didn’t become a full-time job for me until almost 2018. I thought often that there were good reasons why no others had gone down this road. It was fun, frustrating and fulfilling, all at once.”
“Today, it’s a different kind of challenge—we ask established companies in different fields to break with long-held best practices, and that can be a tough sell. We show how there have been rapid advances in data generation, dissemination, and storage, but most functions around integration remain stuck in the past. That’s why this area can drain up to half the IT budget. But that’s the case with every disruptive technology, and we’re privileged to have our technology—and our overall approach—find a home in many leading enterprises.”
Core Products
What are Cinchy’s core products and features? DeMers explained:
“The Cinchy Data Collaboration Platform liberates data from applications and allows organizations to manage and control data as products, eliminating the need for future data integration. This leads to a truly agile data ecosystem: Enterprises can accelerate the development of unlimited new applications, real-time systems, analytics, and automation with a data-centric approach.”
“The core capabilities connect enterprise data in a network and make it available for real-time collaboration without the need for integration. This can modernize legacy IT systems with upgraded data, and even extend the capabilities of modern SaaS apps, as well as empower teams throughout the organization and supply chain with secure, self-serve access to operational data.”
(Caption: Moving from app-centric to data centric with Cinchy)
Evolution Of Cinchy’s Technology
How has Cinchy’s technology evolved since launching? DeMers noted:
“No good technology is ever static. Since launching, the platform has evolved to enable organizations to run it anywhere (e.g., on-prem, cloud, hybrid) and added a ton of capabilities, making it easier for organizations to liberate, federate, and collaborate on data across the enterprise. Today, any organization looking to buy or build a data fabric and/or a data mesh will find that Cinchy is an ‘out of the box’ solution that accelerates their shift toward managing data ‘as a product’ while simultaneously eliminating the integration bottleneck that has throttled business innovation for decades.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Cinchy’s most significant milestones? DeMers highlighted:
“Cinchy’s goal is nothing less than to change the way the world works with data—and within the enterprises that have deployed the Cinchy Data Collaboration Platform, that’s exactly what is happening.”
“Among industry observers, we’ve been honored to receive a lot of recognition. These plaudits include:
— Being recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Data Management
— Being named a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Company to Watch
— Receiving “Top Pick” at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt conference
— And being honored as a Top Growing Canadian Company by The Globe and Mail two years in a row”
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking DeMers about customer success stories, he commented:
“For a relatively young company seeking to fundamentally upend long-held best practices, we’ve recorded many successes already. As just one example, Wyth Financial leveraged the Cinchy Data Collaboration Platform to deliver a critical COVID-19 relief loan program to thousands of businesses in only five days. The core technology and data-centric approach helped the financial services provider drastically reduce the burden of IT integration, allowing for the rapid development of solutions and creating a faster path to business intelligence across the organization. Other noteworthy customers include National Bank, TD Ameritrade, and Colliers International, and there are many more customer success stories here.”
Funding
In terms of funding:
— In 2020, Cinchy secured $10 million in a Series A financing round led by Information Venture Partners (IVP), with additional funds from BDC, ScaleUp Ventures, Techstars, and Manulife Investment Management.
— In the fall of 2022, Cinchy received $14.5 million Series B funding, led by Forgepoint Capital, to accelerate market outreach and expand its technology capabilities.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Cinchy from its competition? DeMers affirmed:
“Most companies are still mostly enamored by applications. Many of their customers believe they’re in a data-centric environment—they swear allegiance to data only because there’s an app for everything, generating more and more data. There’s no question that many apps deliver value. However, when there’s an app for everything, there’s a database for just about every app, leading to dozens of data silos undergoing hundreds of integrations, exponentially increasing fragmentation, complexity, and costs.”
“Cinchy stands apart by freeing the data from the application. As a result, the data exists outside of any systems or apps, separate from the technologies used to create, store, and protect it. When the data is decoupled this way, it enables better control and governance, aids in the creation of metadata (data about data), and helps business professionals and IT specialists alike better understand the enterprise. We all talk about how data is the crown jewel of corporate assets. With Cinchy, that adage finally comes true for the first time.”
Opinion About Data Mesh Architecture And How It Falls Short
Where does the data mesh architecture today fall short and how can data collaboration help? DeMers elaborated:
“Data mesh is another milestone in this endless journey toward data nirvana. It has significant value in that it focuses on the data itself, rather than the myriad resources used to store or move it (think data lakes and pipelines). However, the Cinchy Data Collaboration Platform is uniquely positioned to bring the vision of data mesh to life.”
“First, the concept features domain-based ownership: Instead of a central authority zealously hoarding the data, it is assigned to constituencies that need it and are qualified to use it. Cinchy supports the ability to organize data along business boundaries—it no longer belongs to particular technologies or technologists.”
“Second, data is a product: Cinchy lets organizations avoid monolithic storage and manage discrete products that are separately owned and deployed—and again, under the management of a business domain. This eases the creation of new data products that support not only analytics but also operations, even transactions.”
“Third, it’s a self-serving data platform. Cinchy has a dynamic, metadata-driven data browser that business and IT users can use to collaborate extensively. This includes access, use and even creation, all without new silos.”
“Finally, there’s federated computational governance. Cinchy moves governance policies from administrators and technologies to the data itself. As a result, no matter how the data is being experienced, all permissions remain consistent.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Cinchy’s future company goals? DeMers concluded:
“Cinchy is out to change the way the world works with data. We’ve made inroads into companies and verticals that are open to change, even with complications around compliance; we want to penetrate deeper into other industries where we believe this message will resonate even more strongly.”
