The average spreadsheet doesn't have a lot of thought put into it. But spreadsheets are becoming an increasingly essential tool for data teams.
Entrepreneur David Kirkos knows this all too well. He previously worked at his Techstars, an accelerator program, building financial models for startups.
“Building data models is best done in Python, but many of our team members only understood spreadsheets,” Kirkos told TechCrunch. “So I wrote code to generate a spreadsheet. It was a pain. I spent about 10% of my time doing valuable analysis and 90% building the infrastructure and pipeline to create the report. I was spending money on it.”
The experience led Kirkos, who previously started and left a fintech company called Challenger, to work on what would become Quadratic, a startup he launched from stealth this week. Kircos describes his Quadratic, which he co-founded with fellow entrepreneur Peter Mills, as “spreadsheets that run natively in Python and other programming languages.” This allows data analysts and developers to communicate with the rest of the organization using a tool that most people know how to work with: spreadsheets.
“Quadratic is on a mission to build the best tools for understanding data,” said Kirkos. “It is a platform that allows users to take data from its sources (software-as-a-service platforms, databases, CSV files, APIs, etc.) and manipulate that data using today's most popular data science tools, such as Python. . Pandas, SQL, JavaScript, and Excel formulas.”
Quadratic allows users to ingest hundreds of thousands of rows of data, write analysis in their preferred programming language, and share the results with external stakeholders. The platform offers workspaces for teams, support for elements such as charts and plugins for real-time collaboration.
Image credit: Quadratic
“Quadratic is a completely new type of spreadsheet, not an Excel clone,” Kirkos said. “We believe in the power of spreadsheets as the primary interface for working with data, but traditional spreadsheets no longer cut it.”
Many companies have tried or are attempting to “disrupt the spreadsheet” with varying degrees of success. When asked which vendors he considers to be Quadratic's main competitors, Kirkos did not directly answer.
Sourcetable includes key features such as real-time document collaboration, data sync with business apps, and an editor for querying large data sets. Launched in March 2023, Neptyne builds Python-based spreadsheets targeted at data scientists. Coefficient and Actiondesk focus on live data integration. And Equals is looking to enhance existing spreadsheets with additional analytical tools.
But Kirkos believes Quadratic is better in two ways. One is extremely performant thanks to an underlying engine built on Rust and WebGL, and the other is free for personal and educational use. Only businesses and teams need to pay for access.
“Quadratic is an open access project, built by more than six full-time contributors, 18 in total,” Kirkos said. “The ability to integrate and analyze data from different platforms creates a more efficient data and coding process for businesses.”
Boulder, Colorado-based Quadratic, which currently has approximately 45,000 users, recently announced a GV ( Closed a $5.6 million seed round led by Google's venture arm. Repit CEO Amjad Massad and Cockroack Labs Founder Spencer Kimball. Kirkos said the funds will be used to expand the team and acquire new customers.