Announcing our €3M seed in funding to replace dashboards with data notebooks

Paris, Dec 6th, 2022.

Some of you have known us for many months. Some for a couple minutes.

In both cases, this blog post highlights what we believe, what we do, and why we raised funding so you can know us better.

This post is about Husprey as a data product. If you're only interested in the fundraising details you can skip to the end.

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In recent years, the rise of the so-called "Modern Data Stack" has brought significant changes to the data pipeline, from ingestion to usage. However, traditional dashboard solutions still dominate the "last mile" of analytics.

Data Engineering teams have a wide range of tools to choose from for the various tasks they have, from data extraction to transformation. On the other hand, data analysts are often limited to using dashboard solutions that are designed primarily to provide business users with a seamless experience.

As a result, analytics teams are often forced to use these tools even when they are not well-suited to the task at hand. In particular, in cases where analysts need to work on more complex questions, traditional dashboard solutions fall short.

Using dashboards for ad-hoc analyses work leads to tedious and error-prone processes involving copying and pasting data between BI tools and other applications such as Notion or Google Docs. This not only slows the analysis workflow down, but it also increases the likelihood of inconsistencies and errors in the final results.

What we believe

Our belief that Data Analysts should not be hidden behind dashboards is stronger than ever. We also believe that the best way to improve data-driven decision making is to enhance a company's data culture.

While we do not expect business users to be able to write sql queries, we do expect them to improve their data literacy. This means not only being able to retrieve data points from dashboards, but also being able to ask better, more focused questions to their data analysts over time. The best way to achieve this is to experience and interact with expert-generated content.

We however believe that data analysts need to split their workstream into two parts. First, they should enable self-service and metric tracking for well-defined domains in dashboards. Second, they should continue to deliver high-value analyses, answering difficult business questions quickly and accurately.

Data notebooks are the best way to answer business questions, combining context, data, and insights in a single document. At Husprey, our goal is to empower analysts to create the best data notebooks and allow them to iterate as quickly as possible.

What we do

Data notebooks have been used by technical users for many years, but they have often been hard to share with others. At Husprey, we build the platform data analysts need to share their work with their teammates and business users.

We focus on two key moments in the data analysis process to build our platform.

First, we focus on the moment when the data analyst begins working on a topic. Our goal is to shorten the iteration loop as much as possible. To achieve this, we offer:

• A great writing experience, both for context and for sql code;
• A powerful data warehouse explorer, with a smart display of metadata, particularly through our integration with dbt;
• A "local table" functionality that brings the best aspects of notebooks to SQL, allowing data analysts to break up long queries into smaller, more manageable pieces that can be easily reused and reviewed;
• A simple interface for sharing takeaways, which allows data analysts to present their conclusions in a consistent and clear way.

We are currently working on a new Query History feature, which will make it easy to search among all the queries that have been executed in a workspace. While this feature is expected to be available by the end of the year, you can sign up for early access here.

Secondly, our platform also facilitates collaboration between data analysts and business users. We make it easy for business users to connect with data analysts, leave comments and reactions, share links in Slack, and share public links with readers outside of their organization.

As we speak, we are testing out a brand new Notion integration. To join the beta, you can subscribe here.

Again, we build our notebooks' platform so data analysts can provide better answers to business users, quickly and accurately.

Why we raised

In the past few months, we have been working with several successful scale-ups in France, such as Ankorstore, Malt, and GoJob. We have also expanded our operations to other European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, and more recently to the United States.

This continuous growth has validated both the market need for our product and our initial response to that need. As a result, we have decided to scale our operations and move faster.

We have been fortunate to have discussions with investors who we believe can help us achieve our vision. Galion.exe's impressive network of entrepreneurs will provide valuable opportunities for learning from peers, while Axeleo Capital's expertise in B2B SaaS will help us avoid common mistakes and accelerate both our distribution and operations.

Additionally, we are fortunate to have the support of experienced business angels who are providing expertise in areas such as sales, marketing, and product development.

Over the next few months, we will be expanding our team to support our growth and implement our vision. The funding we have received will be used to scale up our engineering and marketing teams, and to create dedicated success, data, and sales teams. If you are interested in joining us, please check out our Careers page.

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If our message resonates with you and your work, we invite you to try Husprey for yourself or to schedule a personalized demo. We are always excited to meet with individuals and discuss how Husprey can help them with their data analysis needs.

We are deeply grateful to our early supporters and look forward to welcoming more people to the Husprey community in the future.

We are more convinced than ever about the destination and are building the team that will help us fly there. (See Husprey definition)

Husprey

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