Tristan Handy

Tristan Handy is co-founder of dbt Labs, the company behind the open-source dbt data transformation tool. He started it in 2016 as Fishtown Analytics, a consultancy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Watching RJMetrics Get Sold

Handy worked at the analytics startup RJMetrics, where he fell in love with the cloud data tools that pushed him to strike out on his own, according to First Round Review. When Magento bought RJMetrics, he wrote a farewell post titled "Goodbye RJMetrics, Hello Fishtown Analytics". The firm took its name from Fishtown, the Philadelphia neighborhood he called home.

Bringing On a Second Founder

Handy did not want "another mouth to feed" at first. Then Drew Banin, who had worked part-time at RJMetrics as a software engineer while finishing college, pitched himself for a job instead of looking for one after graduation. Within a few weeks of starting the consulting business, the founders had built dbt for their own use and posted it as an open-source repository.

The company later pivoted to software around the dbt tool and grew triple digits year over year for several years, according to Forbes.