Sigma built a spreadsheet-to-SQL prototype in three weeks for a Snowflake meeting
Rob Woollen · He went 7 years with no revenue— then grew to $100M ARR. | Rob Woollen, Co-Founder of Sigma · PMF Show · Jun 30, 2025 · at 38:29
Rob Woollen is the co-founder of Sigma Computing. He describes pivoting the product architecture in 2017 prior to a partnership meeting with Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia.
“And so, we once again threw away everything we'd done, and in essentially, I think about three weeks between the time we set the meeting, when we actually showed up there, we built a brand new interface, one that looks like a tiny part of our product right now. It had a grid, it sort of looked like a spreadsheet, but we said, what if instead of us, you know, building all these different pieces, we just gave you something that looks kind of like a spreadsheet, everything you do in it, we're going to translate to SQL, And we're going to run against one of these warehouses like Snowflake.”
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