Fivetran was founded in 2012 by George Fraser and Taylor Brown. The idea came from their experience at a previous startup where they spent months just getting data from various sources into a format they could analyze. They realized that data pipeline construction was a universal pain point.
Fivetran’s approach is fully automated, pre-built data connectors. Instead of writing custom ETL code, users select a source (like Salesforce, Stripe, MySQL, or Google Analytics), enter credentials, and Fivetran handles the rest — schema detection, incremental updates, and schema drift management. The data lands in a cloud data warehouse like Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or Redshift.
The company offers more than 500 pre-built connectors. Each connector is maintained by Fivetran’s engineering team, which means customers don’t have to fix pipelines when source APIs change. This maintenance burden is one of the biggest hidden costs of custom data pipelines.
Fivetran raised $565 million at a $5.6 billion valuation in 2021 from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst. The company has been growing steadily, serving over 5,000 customers including companies like Square, ClassPass, and Urban Outfitters.
The company helped popularize the ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) pattern — where raw data is loaded into the warehouse first and transformed afterward using tools like dbt. This contrasts with traditional ETL, where transformation happens before loading.
Fraser remains CEO and has been a vocal advocate for the modern data stack approach. Fivetran employs more than 1,000 people across offices in Oakland, Denver, Dublin, Bengaluru, and Sydney.
