You shouldn’t need to be an analyst or programmer to make sense of the world’s information.
This is the idea that brought our small team together.
Decipad is a new way to create, collaborate and build anything you want using numbers. Whether managing cashflows, analyzing vaccination rates or exploring crypto, we’re making it easy and more accessible for anyone to be a data analyst, every day.
Today, we’re excited to announce our raise and invite the curious minded to join our private beta.
A sneak peek,
Today, people and businesses have access to more data and information than ever before. By 2025, there will be 175 zettabytes of data. Yet, most of us struggle to derive insights from data and use numbers to drive decisions.
The tools available today are limiting. And, our culture around collaborating with numbers is nowhere near as inclusive as it should be.
Data Programming tools are powerful, but the barrier to entry is high. They require knowledge of complex programming languages like python. It is estimated that only ~0.5% of the world’s population knows how to code. And, inclusivity in data science continues to be a challenge.
Spreadsheets are more accessible with ~20% global adoption, but they come with inherent problems. Have you ever used spreadsheets? Or, tried to read one? If you have, you know they are error-prone, quickly become too complex and were never designed for collaboration or knowledge sharing.
Today, making sense of data and information remains a privilege of the very few.
I’m an open-source developer. Data is something I have been working with most of my life. I love using powerful data programming tools like Jupyter Notebooks. Collaborating with data has always been a passion.
When I was building YLD, an engineering and design consultancy, that is where the idea for Decipad started. Working with a range of business clients, the gap between tools for programmers and everyone else was massive. It was just so complicated for non-developers to collaborate and meaningfully contribute to a modern company in a data-driven way. They either got stuck in excel, or needed a developer/analyst to achieve their goal. I was surprised how in open-source we could create so much knowledge from working together. Outside that, we are still emailing excel files crossing our fingers they work and then answering several questions to explain what it means, “can you explain this excel sheet to me” shouldn’t be common practice. Most non-developer users know the problems they want to solve with data, this is the important part, but just lack the tools to achieve it and a collaborative culture to learn together.
These tools lacked the fundamentals that made me love being an open source developer: community, extensibility and a shared language for connected thought and learning.
The idea for Decipad started with a few simple questions:
With today’s access to data, the rise of low-code and a shifting culture toward creating in the open, there is an opportunity for a new, more modern approach to data analysis and knowledge collaboration. Over the past year, we’ve been building tools to make it easier for anyone to gather information, build models quickly and publish data-driven ideas. We’ve been designing around three principles.
It’s still early days. We’ve built an early version of the product, and we’re excited to begin testing with select members from our community on Discord.
Today, when you enter Decipad, you can create a notebook and just start writing with text, data, and numbers together. It’s a more human way to build models with greater readability for collaboration and shared learning. The experience is powered by a new, more human language for writing with numbers and interactive no-code elements. You can build something as simple as an interactive 5k running model or something more complex like a dynamic VC term sheet.
“I am most excited about the role Decipad is playing in the future of work,” says Avi Eyal, Managing Partner at Entrée Capital. “It is crucial that more people and teams become data active to accelerate better decisions.”
This is just the beginning. We’ll be sharing more of our journey with our community along the way.
We hope to see you on Discord 👋
Nuno & The Decipad Team
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