In 2014, Jason Frantz and Rob Woollen co-founded Sigma Computing, a platform that overlays data stored in data platforms such as Snowflake and Google BigQuery with a spreadsheet-like interface for data visualization and analytics. With Sigma, the two former software engineers sought to tackle what they perceived as the intractable data challenges faced by large corporations: unwieldy tooling and difficult-to-manage data stores.

In a 2023 survey from Oracle, the majority of business leaders said that they don’t believe their employer’s current approach to data and analytics is addressing their needs. Seventy-seven percent said that the dashboards and charts they get aren’t germane to decisions they need to make, and 72% admit the sheer volume of data — and their lack of trust in that data — has at times stopped them from making decisions altogether.

“After recognizing the huge advances in cloud data infrastructure during the past decade, Jason and Rob identified a gap in the market,” Sigma Computing CEO Mike Palmer told TechCrunch in an interview. “Sigma is building a data workspace for everyone — where teams can analyze data in spreadsheets, build business intelligence in the form of dashboards and reports and create data workflows and applications where data never leaves a company’s data warehouse.”

Out of the gate (in 2014), Sigma only offered a set of basic business intelligence and analytics tools to connect to a customer’s outside databases. But the firm — which Frantz and Woollen founded while entrepreneurs in residence at Sutter Hill Ventures, Woollen having come from Salesforce’s Work.com org — quickly grew from there.

Today, Sigma’s product suite consists of tools that let users analyze data “in-place” in databases containing up to billions of records. Customers can tap the platform to build dashboards, reports, workflows and apps without data leaving its source.

“We champion what we call ‘massive multiplayer business intelligence,’ a dynamic environment where professionals, regardless of their technical expertise, come together to leverage their distinct skills, all in real time, all within the same platform,” Palmer said.