Handy: Building in-house is often faster than M&A for data infrastructure
Tristan Handy · Future of The Modern Analytics Stack | Tristan Handy, CEO of dbt · Feb 22, 2024 · at 22:20
Tristan Handy, CEO of dbt Labs, explains why M&A is rare among modern data stack companies due to platform integration friction.
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“Had to build, you know, there's like the iceberg, which is 10% above the water and you can see it. And then there's 90% below the water for a data company. The platform is the below the water part. And then the functionality that you build on that platform is the 10% of the top. And a lot of times different companies in the space have already built their platform. And that ends up making acquisitions harder because you're like, well, I could acquire this other company and get the 10% of their stuff above the, because anytime you acquire a company, you've got to combine platforms. It's just shit ton of work. So you could buy, buy the 10% of the stuff that sits at top, or you could probably just build that yourself and it might be faster and cheaper to do that anyway.”
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