Data 14 Feb 2023

Why data infrastructure remains hot into 2023 even as the economy cools

Despite the economic downturn, a crowded market and high valuations, there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity upon us. We don’t mean the buzzy concepts like the metaverse or NFTs or Web3. Instead, we’re talking about data infrastructure.The term infrastructure doesn’t typically generate a lot of excitement. But it’s nevertheless one of the most interesting investment sectors, now thanks in part to the pandemic. The prize for a startup that becomes an integral part of the data stack is massive. There is an opportunity for a winner-takes-all outcome, as well as the potential to build a decacorn, or a startup with a market capitalization of $100 billion.And even if that doesn’t pan out, startups could still be acquired by one of the existing data infrastructure mainstays like Snowflake, Fivetran, DBT, Tableau or Looker. For example, Streamlit, the three-year-old startup that developed an open-source project for building data-based apps, was acquired by Snowflake for $800 million in March 2022. That’s not a shabby outcome.