The Story of Cinchy: Building a Future Without Data Integration
Sometimes the biggest innovations come from seeing what everyone else has missed. For Dan DeMers, it was realizing that the fundamental way enterprises handle data – through endless copying and integration – was fundamentally broken.
From Banking Tech to Founder Before founding Cinchy, Dan spent years in global banking technology, where he witnessed firsthand the growing complexity plaguing enterprise organizations. “I used to work in a bunch of big global banks, always in technology, and did that pretty much from being at school. Started off as a programmer, started to manage IT teams, and that’s where I got, let’s say, hands on awareness of the immense complexity that plagues every enterprise organization on Earth today.”
Interestingly, Dan never saw himself becoming a founder. It was his younger brother’s entrepreneurial journey that opened his eyes to the possibility. “It was actually through my much younger brother, who started off following in my footsteps, learning programming, realized he hated it, picked up a camera, then went down this whole journey where he ended up going from being a photographer to a videographer, to running his own businesses, to creating startups and then having different exits.”
The Genesis of Cinchy When Dan and his co-founder Karen started brainstorming business ideas, they generated over 100 possibilities, ranging from “mobile fruit stands that deliver fruit to your desk to data collaboration platforms.” What’s fascinating is how they couldn’t resist gravitating toward the most ambitious idea on their list.
“We couldn’t stop ourselves from falling back to what ended up being the single most complex idea on that list of 100 plus,” Dan recalls. “But it was like we didn’t have a choice. Something was pulling us in there.”
The Core Innovation At its heart, Cinchy’s innovation is remarkably simple to understand but revolutionary in implication. As Dan explains, “So we sell a data collaboration platform. The simplest way to get your head around that is imagine what Google Drive does for documents and for files and extend that to the world of data. So instead of sending copies back and forth, you’re collaborating in real time.”
This simple concept challenges a fundamental practice in enterprise technology: the copying and integration of data. Dan draws a powerful parallel: “Anything of value you can’t copy. You can’t copy humans, you can’t copy intellectual property, you can’t copy money. And why? Well, there’s good reasons for that. Yet we live in a world where historically you’ve been forced to create endless copies of data. How whack is that?”
Building for the Future Cinchy’s vision extends far beyond just eliminating integration. The company is working toward a future where metadata-driven solutions will fundamentally change how applications work. Dan explains their next major initiative: “The next big capability that we will be launching is the ability for organizations who create innovative solutions that are integration free to be able to package those up and make those available to other organizations. I-E-A zero integration marketplace.”
The ultimate goal? “I’m personally excited when you’re able to install an enterprise app with the same ease that you can install an app on your phone, one click done. Because there’s no integration friction.” This vision could revolutionize enterprise software sales by eliminating what Dan identifies as the primary barrier: integration friction.
For Dan and Cinchy, this isn’t just about building a successful company – it’s about fundamentally changing how organizations handle data. “If society doesn’t embrace this en masse, it’s the end of society as we know it. It’s an inevitability. There’s no other way. The data will be treated with respect, similar to how you treat money.”
In a world where data is increasingly valuable yet increasingly difficult to manage, Cinchy’s vision of a future without integration might be exactly what enterprises need – whether they realize it yet or not.