Accelerating and Expanding Data-Driven Engineering: Haystack Analytics is Creating Elite Tech Teams as it Announces New Capital and Traction with 7,000 Developers

This week, Haystack Analytics, an engineering insights tool backed by Y Combinator, announced that it had secured a $1.2 million funding round which included participation from Founders Club, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Entrepreneur First, and investors Dan Siroker and Blaine Vess.

Founded in 2020 by Julian Colina and Kan Yilmaz, the secured funding comes in less than 12 months since launch, in which Haystack is already being used by more than 7,000 developers at tech teams in GoDaddy, Microsoft (News - Alert), The Economist, Indiegogo, and Truebill, among others as revenues have increased by an average of 36% month on month.

Haystack helps build elite developer teams by providing engineering metrics and alerts proven to drive performance while also improving developer productivity and software quality. Through their integration with GitHub, Haystack provides live data insights that illustrate the entire delivery process from commit to deploy, being able to highlight bottlenecks like code review and team productivity.

Using this feedback loop, Haystack users have increased production deployments by 58% and achieved 70% faster cycle times on average.

"Tech teams and engineers around the world are key assets to any company, and shipping software is the heartbeat and competitive advantage they seek. The efforts of developers are at the heart of processes, products, and, effectively, the bottom line," said Julian Colina, CEO, and founder of Haystack Analytics. "Until now, it was difficult for CTOs and engineering managers to objectively know what their roadblocks are or have insights into resourcing levels. Haystack gives visibility by providing metrics and alerts to make sure nothing continues to be stuck. We are helping developers to ship faster and improve their satisfaction".

Research from a State of DevOps report has shown that elite performing engineering organizations are twice as likely to achieve their organizational goals and achieve a 50% higher growth rate over three years. It isn't just business objectives that do better; employees of elite performers are almost twice as likely to recommend their team as a great place to work. 

"Companies with strong technology teams are outperforming those which don't," said Colina. "Technology teams which follow DevOps best practice are less likely to see developers being burnt out, whilst allowing new product ideas to be experimented faster and shipping business value more reliably."

Haystack provides real-time alerts allowing organizations to resolve issues quickly and unblock their team by spurring meaningful conversations during the sprint instead of in the next retro. They also Track process improvements and act quickly with real-time updates, allowing companies to know if their changes are actually working.

 Finally, Haystack's feedback loop lets companies benchmark, set, and track targets for teams without micromanaging engineers.

The funding advances Haystack's commitment to building intuitive one-click dashboards and alerts using GitHub data. Haystack plans to expand its offering to a greater range of data sources while providing an ever-greater variety of user-friendly alerts and insights, and as companies move to hybrid office/home working environments, Haystack provides insights that teams need to experiment with their workflows to prevent developer burnout whilst shipping faster.

"Our mission is to bring the competitive advantage data-driven engineering teams like Google (News - Alert) have to everyone," said Colina. "We help teams track their delivery process and optimization opportunities instead of relying solely on gut feelings - resulting in 70% faster delivery on average. It's been an incredible 12 months, and we are well set to achieve much more in the next year."