How Looker Turned a 216-Word Pitch Email into a $2.6 Billion Acquisition

In a little more than seven years, Looker went from a single customer to more than 1700, from a small, scrappy team in Santa Cruz to a 700-person company spanning eight offices around the globe. In this article (and podcast) you can learn the path that took Lloyd Tabb from writing the first few lines of code for what would eventually become Looker, to Google’s acquisition of the data analytics startup.

I have loved the article, it is really a journey from the perspective of the founders, but also the first investors. I pick this quote as one of my favourite parts of it: “Future founders, start with a really strong thesis on the problem you’re going to tackle. If you’re missing that first crucial ingredient, it’s best to keep your company building dreams on a low simmer while you work to figure one out.”

Lots of good lessons in this FirstRound article.