Periscope Data

About Periscope Data

Periscope Data was established in 2012 by co-founders Harry Glaser and Tom O'Neill, who were college roommates at the University of Rochester. Before starting the company, Glaser worked as a Product Manager at Google, and O'Neill was at Microsoft working on machine learning algorithms for Bing. The idea for Periscope Data began as a side project to analyze data for their other ventures, and it evolved into a business when friends expressed interest in using the tool.

The company provided a data analytics platform designed for data professionals. Its primary function was to enable the ingestion, storage, analysis, visualization, and reporting of data from a single, connected platform. The platform was built to work with universal languages like SQL, Python, and R, allowing data teams to perform complex analyses and create custom dashboards and visualizations. Periscope Data could connect to various databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon Redshift, and Salesforce. A key feature was its caching layer, which claimed to accelerate data visualization significantly. The business model was based on providing this software-as-a-service to a client base that included companies like Adobe, Crunchbase, Tinder, and ZipRecruiter.

A significant milestone for Periscope Data was its acquisition by Sisense in May 2019 for a sum reported to be over $100 million in a stock deal. This merger was intended to create a comprehensive business intelligence platform catering to both business users and data scientists. At the time of the acquisition, Periscope Data had raised a total of $34.6 million in funding over four rounds and had grown to serve nearly 1,000 customers. Following the acquisition, the founders and their team took on leadership roles within the combined entity, which continued under the Sisense name. The product was eventually renamed Sisense for Cloud Data Teams. Glaser and O'Neill have since moved on to found a new startup called Modelbit.