Inside Timescale’s Category Creation: Redefining the Database Market for Data-Intensive Applications
Category creation in enterprise software isn’t just about building new technology – it’s about recognizing fundamental shifts in how businesses operate. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Timescale CEO Ajay Kulkarni shared how they’re reshaping the database market by identifying and capitalizing on a crucial trend in software development.
From IoT to Something Bigger
Initially, Timescale saw themselves operating in familiar categories. “Initially, we thought it was IoT. Then we thought it was this thing called time series, which is like, IoT and finance tick data, and maybe metrics data,” Ajay explains.
But as they grew, they noticed something interesting. Their technology was being adopted for unexpected use cases: “We saw all these use cases like gaming and music analytics and marketing tech email analytics, and new Internet protocols.”
Identifying the Real Opportunity
This diverse adoption pointed to a larger trend. “What we essentially discovered is that as Compute has gotten more powerful and storage has gotten cheaper, developers are just building more applications that capture large amounts of data and make use of it,” Ajay notes.
This realization led them to identify a new category: data-intensive applications. These weren’t just traditional database use cases – they represented a fundamental shift in how companies were building software.
The Software Company Thesis
Their category creation strategy is built on a powerful observation about the market: “Every company today is either a software company or is becoming a software company or is getting replaced by software company,” Ajay explains.
This thesis shapes their entire approach to the market. As Ajay puts it, “Great software is built on great databases, and databases are hard. There’s actually a lot you have to worry about.”
Redefining the Database Experience
Rather than competing solely on technical capabilities, Timescale is focused on reimagining the entire database experience. “I think the database needs to be reimagined,” Ajay states. “I think the database in the cloud will look very different.”
Their cloud service, for example, integrates with S3 for object storage, enabling postgres tables that can be virtually infinite in size. This raises interesting category questions: “Is that a database? Is that a data warehouse? I don’t know,” Ajay admits.
Focus on Developer Experience
Their category creation strategy centers on the developer experience. “If I’m a developer, I don’t want to think about the database. I want to focus on my application,” Ajay explains. “I want to focus on my user or on my customer, and I want the database to work.”
This focus on developer experience shapes their entire go-to-market approach, including their community-first strategy and product-led growth motion.
Building for the Future
Looking ahead, Ajay sees their category evolving beyond traditional definitions: “In five years you’ll see Timescale not as a time series company, maybe not even as a database company, but as something really providing a data platform for the future of computing.”
This vision is backed by their observation of how companies are using their technology. They have customers building battery list sensors that reduce waste, managing global recycling systems, building new Internet protocols, and manufacturing electric car batteries.
For founders thinking about category creation, Timescale’s approach offers valuable lessons:
- Look beyond initial use cases to identify larger trends
- Focus on fundamental shifts in how businesses operate
- Build category definitions around user needs rather than technical capabilities
- Think long-term about how your category will evolve
The key is not just building new technology, but identifying and enabling fundamental shifts in how businesses operate. As Ajay emphasizes, success in category creation comes from “solving a much bigger problem” than initially anticipated.
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