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Investing in Equals – Andreessen Horowitz

VisiCalc, the first computer-based spreadsheet, was launched in 1979. For the first time, this brought data analysis and computing together, in a way thousands of times more powerful than pen and paper. While VisiCalc is no longer around, the category and interface it created – the spreadsheet – endured and is now the standard for data analysis at companies of all sizes. 

However, the world has changed dramatically since 1979. Data no longer lives in the spreadsheet. It’s generated and stored in the hundreds of SaaS tools used daily by each organization. For example, creating a model to analyze your sales funnel can require pulling data from Google Analytics, Salesforce, Segment, and Stripe. Similarly, creating a cash burn model requires pulling data from Plaid. To import this data into a spreadsheet, however, you either “copy-paste” or hack together numerous CSV files. 

Data in the spreadsheet remains static, stale, and disconnected. 

While many organizations have invested in powerful data stacks to unify and make sense of all this disparate data, many teams still fall back on spreadsheets to answer questions about the business. Why is this? It’s because the spreadsheet remains one of the best interfaces for data analysis and exploration. It’s a flexible canvas that can be easily adapted to any scenario or business, and it’s easily understood by everyone.

So what would a spreadsheet look like if it was built today? The answer is Equals, a browser-based spreadsheet with built-in integrations to any database, versioning, and collaboration.

Equals empowers users to seamlessly pull in data from connected data sources directly in the spreadsheet. Before Equals, business users relied on the whim of data teams, resulting in inefficient data requests, significant time lost, and errors. Today, Equals has democratized access to data by building direct connectors to data warehouses (Snowflake, Redshift, and BigQuery), business software (Plaid, Stripe, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and QuickBooks) as well as SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL), and there’s a lot more coming. Additionally, everything about the spreadsheet itself works exactly like Excel. Formulas and core features like conditional formatting, pivot tables, and others are all familiar. This enables users to create dynamic and real-time analyses without needing to learn a new tool or leave the spreadsheet. 

We’ve had the privilege of knowing Bobby Pinero and Ben McRedmond for 10 years, and firmly believe there is no better team to rebuild the spreadsheet than Equals. Both Bobby and Ben were early Intercom employees who ran Finance and Growth, respectively. Together, they helped scale Intercom from the early days to $150M+ ARR and built almost every analysis imaginable in Excel. Their ambition to build a modern spreadsheet is unwavering and infectious. 

We’re thrilled to be partnering with Ben, Bobby, and the team, and to lead Equals’s $16 million Series A. We believe Equals will pull spreadsheets into the 21st century and democratize data analysis. 

***

The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the current or enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein.

This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://ift.tt/DRBAvyu.

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