Opendatasoft is a powerful all-in-one SaaS platform that enables everyone to rapidly create and share compelling data experiences across their internal and external ecosystems. This allows customers to accelerate digital transformation and development, positively transform operations, and establish more transparent relationships with their stakeholders. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Opendatasoft co-founder and Chief Sales Officer Franck Carassus to learn more.
Franck Carassus’ Background
Carassus spent almost all his 20-year career in the technology industry focused on serving the public sector, providing software and services to state, federal, and local government agencies worldwide.
Formation Of Opendatasoft
How did the idea for Opendatasoft come together? “My co-founders and I worked on the launch of the French national open data portal, one of the first of its kind in the world,” said Carassus. “The company we then worked for provided one piece of the technology jigsaw that made up the platform. We saw the opportunity to create an all-in-one solution that covered everything that an organization needed to build an open data portal. From that, we created Opendatasoft and its dedicated cloud-based data-sharing platform.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Opendatasoft so far? “We have been going over a decade now, so there are lots of good memories. I think my favorite was quite early when we had our first inbound lead from a US public sector organization based in North Carolina,” Carassus reflected. “Up until that point, we’d focused on Europe, but this convinced me that there was a big market for our software in the United States. We’ve focused heavily on North America since then – and have four customers in North Carolina alone!”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges you face in building the company? “We serve the public sector, particularly local government agencies, all around the world, from Australia to Sweden. While they all have the same focus on serving their citizens, there are a lot of differences in how they do this,” Carassus acknowledged. “So we have to cater for multiple languages and different processes, adapting our approach and our platform to stay agile and responsive.”
Core Products
What are Opendatasoft’s core products and features? “We provide an all-in-one SaaS platform that allows all teams to quickly create compelling digital experiences with their data and share them across their internal and external ecosystems. This covers the whole process – collecting, preparing, publishing, visualizing, and sharing data so that it is available to everyone, whatever their level of technical knowledge,” Carassus pointed out.
Evolution Of Opendatasoft’s Technology
How has Opendatasoft’s technology evolved since launching? “We’ve worked on over 2,000 data projects around the world over the last ten years. Our platform initially focused on the needs of the public sector, but we’re seeing increasing interest from businesses in sharing their data internally and externally,” Carassus explained. “So that’s meant our platform has evolved considerably to cover all the integrations and data sources required. Equally, there’s more data out there for customers in the public sector to access and integrate into their systems – for example, we created a connector to integrate the platform with US census data to make accessing this seamless and intuitive.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Opendatasoft’s most significant milestones? “As I mentioned, we celebrated our 10th birthday in 2021 and have grown to have over 100 staff and customers in 25 countries around the world,” Carassus pointed out. “These were all significant milestones for us, as was our $25 million Series B funding round in January 2022. As Chief Sales Officer getting our first customer that spends over half a million dollars a year with us was a personal highlight too!”
Customer Success Stories
When I asked Carassus about customer success stories, he cited the following:
We’ve got 350 customers, but I’ll focus on three to show the range of use cases and types of organizations we serve in North America.
The North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) is responsible for providing objective information and analysis to ensure a balanced state budget and effective stewardship of public resources. It works with 20 different state departments to bring together and share their data through its Opendatasoft-powered LINC portal. This covers areas as diverse as population (including census data), labor force, education, and agriculture. Working with OSBM we replaced their existing legacy system from the 1970s, providing an expanding system that meets the needs of a wide range of users, from schoolkids to politicians.
The City of Long Beach in California has won multiple awards for technology leadership and uses our platform for its open data portal. The aim is to increase transparency and efficiency, and they’ve really focused on making their data inviting to the local community. So, they’ve introduced dashboards and visualizations for every dataset, from mapping 311 service requests to giving insight into the work of their Animal Shelter. The aim is to engage visitors and it is really paying off – they had over 175,000 API calls in the last year alone.
Finally, Cary in North Carolina shows how you can use data to connect communities, become smarter, and increase transparency. Users of its open data portal can download datasets, create maps and data experiences, and even suggest new data sources to add. Cary has launched a range of innovative smart city projects, starting by analyzing wastewater for traces of opioids. This not only provided a more detailed picture of the issue of opioid addiction in the town but also helped target actions to where they would deliver the best results. It is keeping citizens informed by sharing data from its self-driving smart shuttle pilot, showcasing its innovation.
Funding / Revenue
The company sells its solutions through a subscription-based SaaS model and has raised over $36 million to date.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Opendatasoft from its competition? “Not only does our platform contain everything organizations need to build their own data portal, but we’ve designed it to be as easy as possible to use. We have a large customer success team to support and share best practices, but most of our customers are able to use the platform independently from pretty early in their programs. Customers really value this autonomy and the fact that they can easily adapt the platform to their specific needs to get up and running quickly,” Carassus shared.
Future Company Goals
What are some of Opendatasoft’s future company goals? “Data is becoming central to how every organization operates, whatever market sector they are in. That’s really exciting for us, and we’re looking to expand outside the public sector in North America into other industries to meet this growing need. We’ve already seen this process happen in Europe, where companies in the energy, transport, and banking sectors use our platform both externally and internally to share data with employees. Linked to this, we’re continually evolving our platform, with the aim of providing the same slick experience as you’d get on an e-commerce site,” Carassus concluded. “While we’ve come a long way since 2011, our goals remain the same – help our customers to effectively share data in compelling and engaging ways with all of their audiences.”
