Ditto is a distributed data platform company that syncs data from edge to cloud even without connectivity. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Ditto CEO and co-founder Adam Fish to learn more about the company.
Adam Fish’s Background
Fish has built companies and developed data infrastructure software that has defined his professional career. And Fish said:
“Before Ditto, I was a co-founder of Roobiq, a mobile-only CRM app – which was designed to work offline via a data sync engine. This experience led to joining Realm as VP of Product, a very popular mobile database and cloud data sync platform, which was acquired by MongoDB.”
Formation Of Ditto
How did the idea for Ditto come together? Fish shared:
“I co-founded Ditto in 2018 with our Chief Product Officer, Max Alexander. As app developers ourselves, we experienced the challenge of building complex data infrastructure that powers best-in-class software firsthand. Together, we developed the first version of Ditto and our edge sync technology allowing applications to process and communicate data where it is generated, circumventing the necessity of a central server and providing resiliency and low-latency capabilities.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Ditto so far? Fish reflected:
“Seeing the impact of our technology. Starting a company is very hard and full of risk – you are creating something new that didn’t exist. I still remember the first time a potential customer said “Ditto” to me – which seems trivial but it was evidence that even in a small way we were changing the world. Now we get to look up at the sky and know that at any point there are planes overhead running Ditto in them – this is incredibly motivating!’
Core Products
What are the Ditto’s core products and features? Fish explained:
“Ditto is an edge sync platform that empowers enterprises to build robust, real-time applications. We enable apps to be cloud-optional – meaning they can communicate with each other regardless of internet connectivity. Apps can continue to operate in offline situations and all data changes – such as orders made at a restaurant, at a retail store, or on an airplane – are stored locally and sync instantly when other local devices or the cloud are discovered.”
“Building apps with Ditto makes it easy to store and sync data seamlessly across mobile and edge devices, ensure data consistency, and improve app performance while reducing infrastructure costs, in both online and offline environments. Ditto’s unique ability to function without an internet connection ensures that applications continue to work anytime, anywhere, reducing the risk of downtime and potential loss of revenue.”
Evolution Of Ditto’s Technology
How has Ditto’s technology evolved since launching? Fish noted:
“We took a unique approach to pursuing government and military opportunities early in our founding alongside commercial use-cases. This includes a current contract worth up to $950M with the US Air Force. While the government/military sector continues to remain a priority, we’ve since entered into more verticals, including aviation, cruise ships, point-of-sales, events, and education.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Ditto’s most significant milestones? Fish cited:
— 2018 – Company was founded
— November 2021 – Closes $9 million Seed funding round
— April 2023 – Closes $45 million Series A funding round
— March 2022 – MUS Air Force awards Ditto a $950 million contract
— August 2023 – Chick-fil-A uses Ditto to complete its personalized, in-house POS rebuild
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking Fish about customer success stories, he replied:
“A common use-case for our technology is front-line teams, such as flight attendants or restaurant workers. Earlier this month, we announced that we partnered with Chick-fil-A to modernize their Point-of-Sale (POS) system in their restaurants across the U.S.”
“Chick-fil-A chose Ditto’s platform to enable devices across its commerce ecosystem to be cloud-optional. The next-generation POS system will operate independently of an internet connection, providing more resilience to outages, enhanced speed, and flexible control to deliver a reliable end-user experience. By relying on Ditto’s easy-to-use platform, the Chick-fil-A engineering team shortened their POS development timeline by months.”
“Below is a quote from me from the press release announcing the Chick-fil-A press release. It gives a good overview of the challenges companies are facing and how Ditto’s cloud-optional technology can help solve them.”
“Before Ditto, legacy retail systems tried to fight the brittle nature of cloud-only architectures by introducing on-site servers which only introduced more problems like managing additional custom hardware and unbelievable amounts of glue code. This was no doubt expensive and incredibly difficult to maintain. The shift to the cloud over the past ten years has made innovation smoother and cheaper, but restaurants face serious reliability and architectural challenges. Ditto’s cloud-optional platform brings true computational power to the edge – providing the best of both worlds. What Chick-fil-A has been able to accomplish with Ditto is truly amazing.”
Funding
After asking Fish about funding and revenue metrics, he revealed:
“We’ve raised a total of $54 million. In April 2023, we announced our $45 million in a Series A funding round led by Acrew Capital, with participation from U.S. Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), True Ventures, and Amity Ventures. This was on top of the $9 million in seed funding raised in 2021.”
“Ditto is already generating substantial revenue, thanks to demand from the defense sector and major enterprise customers, including Alaska Airlines, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, Hugo, Chick-fil-A, and the U.S. Air Force.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Ditto pursuing? Fish assessed:
“Ditto’s edge sync platform fits into both the edge computing and database markets which totals close to $100 billion in market size currently.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Ditto from its competition? Fish affirmed:
“There is no name-branded competitor to Ditto at the moment, so right now, our two biggest competitors are ‘do nothing’ (stick with only cloud or on-premise technology) or ‘build it yourself.’”
“It is a lot of work for development teams to create a reliable peer-to-peer database that syncs data in a partially connected mesh. Organizations either can’t hire the talent to complete the job or don’t see the financial benefit of investing in building it themselves. Ditto streamlines this process by providing a unified platform for these tasks, reducing the need for complex cloud-based microservices and databases. Ditto’s unique ability to function without an internet connection ensures that applications continue to work anytime, anywhere, reducing the risk of downtime and potential loss of revenue.”
“But even if an enterprise doesn’t struggle with connectivity issues, building an app with Ditto reduces the time, effort, and resources required to create and launch new applications. We simplify complex code with query-based synchronization, making it possible to sync more data faster and more efficiently by only subscribing to the data you or your specific teams want to see. Where traditional applications may bog down networks and devices with gigabytes of non-relevant data, Ditto ensures that teams always have the data they need to be successful.”
Future Goals
What are some of the Ditto’s future company goals? Fish concluded:
“The history of computing can be explained as a series of waves between centralized and decentralized architectures. Initial mainframe systems were actually a lot like cloud computing today – you rented time at the centralized and powerful computing system. Personal computers shifted this towards decentralized computing where software was installed and run locally. Cloud computing shifted this back towards centralized computing because early mobile devices were underpowered. However, today that balance is not true anymore. For most people their mobile phone is the most powerful computing device they own. New and exciting applications that leverage this hardware will continue to be built and we intend to have Ditto be the default platform for developers to build them.”
