Daasity is a rapidly growing retail- and CPG-focused data architecture and analytics company. Daasity’s CEO and co-founder Dan LeBlanc is an analytics, customer experience, and business technology expert who has a passion for helping consumer brands achieve their goals through more informed insights. Prior to founding Daasity, he held senior executive roles with companies such as Provide Commerce, Encore Capital Group, and Groundswell Equity. In his spare time, you can find LeBlanc outdoors enjoying the San Diego weather or visiting one of the city’s many great craft breweries. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Daasity CEO and co-founder Dan LeBlanc to learn more.
Dan LeBlanc’s Background
LeBlanc’s educational background is in aerospace engineering, but like many engineers he never practiced it. “I started in financial services but ended up working in e-commerce for Provide-Commerce, which owned ProFlowers. So, if you ever bought flowers for your mom on Mother’s Day, there’s a good chance you used us,” said LeBlanc.
Formation Of Daasity
How did the idea for Daasity come together? “Several people I worked with at ProFlowers left and went to other companies that, at the time, were start-ups on Shopify. The analytics were terrible, and I helped build our data warehouse at ProFlowers, so they asked me if I could do the same. After helping MVMT, Rothys, and Kopari, I started getting introduced to other brands, and I scaled this work into solving problems for consumer brands across the board. That solution was Daasity,” LeBlanc reflected.
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Daasity so far? “My favorite and scariest was hiring our first employee. Before then, it was just the two of us working in some space we rented from one of our customers. It was both a realization that this was a real company (we had an employee and had to figure out payroll, taxes, etc.) and that we had to make payroll. It’s something I will never forget,” LeBlanc replied.
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges LeBlanc faced in building the company and has the current macroeconomic climate had any effect on the company? “There have been many challenges, and all of them are different. We started as a San Diego-based company, and then COVID hit. I didn’t know if we could work remotely, and today over 50% of our workforce is still remote. Then came the big digital explosion, and we found ourselves constrained by a talent shortage, lots of customers, and trying to scale our team. Supply chain and iOS 14 hit many of our customers in the last 18 months, and as they have struggled, it has made them more uncertain, which for us means that sales take longer to close. Fortunately, long-term, it makes our platform and product more important, and I like to think of these circumstances as speed bumps we’ve hit. I think every company is feeling uncertain today because no matter who you sell to, there is a sense of uncertainty,” LeBlanc acknowledged.
Core Products
What are Daasity’s core products and features? “We are, at heart, a modular data platform. On the enterprise side, we have ELT (extract, load, transform), plus data orchestration, reverse ETL, and connectivity to BI tools. Brands can use some or all of this functionality, hence the modularity. This offering makes it easier for brands to become data-driven and reduces the TCO (total cost of ownership) of having analytics. We also have an out-of-box solution for smaller, earlier-stage brands that provide the bulk of analytics they will need,” LeBlanc explained.
Evolution Of Daasity’s Technology
How has Daasity’s technology evolved since launching? “We started mid-market as a full-service analytics company with a platform and staff. As we grew, we added the out-of-box product to support emerging brands. In the last 12 months, we have added enterprise features that allow merchants to manage the platform themselves and use internal resources to build their analytics using our modular ELT platform,” LeBlanc highlighted.
Most Significant Milestones
What have been some of Daasity’s most significant milestones? LeBlanc cited the following from a partnership and recognition perspective:
— 2019 Looker Partner of the Year
— 2019 Shopify Certified Partner
— 2022 Snowflake Strategic Partner
And from a venture perspective:
— 2019 Pre-Seed Series
— 2020 Seed Series
— 2021 Series A
Customer Success Stories
When I asked LeBlanc about a customer success story, he answered that MANSCAPED is one of their power users. “Their data team has leveraged Daasity’s architecture and customizable transform code to build a real source of truth around their data and analytics. The team has connected over 140 data sources into Daasity and runs sophisticated omnichannel analytics using our platform,” LeBlanc pointed out.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Daasity pursuing? “Any consumer brand that sells Omnichannel, i.e., digital, marketplace, retail, and wholesale. We believe there are more than 500,000 brands that could benefit from our platform,” LeBlanc assessed.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Daasity from its competition? “We are the only extract, load, and transform (ELT) platform that is purpose-built for consumer brands and includes extraction, transformation, and visualization in one platform for this vertical. Other platforms only do a component of what we do, and they do not specialize in omnichannel commerce,” LeBlanc revealed.
Future Company Goals
What are some of Daasity’s future company goals? “We want to continue expanding the sales channels we support, as this is critical to our merchants—channels like Walmart.com, Target.com, and others continue to make life easier for our merchants. A big recent push for us has been helping merchants migrate the transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) from Universal Analytics,” LeBlanc concluded.
