Quesma, a Polish startup that allows companies to switch and orchestrate databases, announces its €2.1 million pre-seed round, co-led by Heartcore and Inovo. Quesma aims to help customers innovate faster by reshaping how applications are built and connected to their database. Quesma’s first product targets customers currently facing challenges with the ELK stack (Elastic, Logstash, Kibana). Its vision is to become the ultimate gateway for databases within companies.
Both founders, Jacek Migdal and Pawel Brzoska, are veterans of the observability industry. Jacek worked for ten years as an engineering leader at Sumo Logic (acquired in 2023 for $1.7 billion by Francisco Partners). Pawel Brzoska spent fourteen years as a product lead at Dynatrace/Compuware (NYE: DT, $16 billion).
They have first-hand experience with many companies’ struggles with databases. The DB outages are among the most painful, which lead to conservative approaches that stiff innovation. Leveraging data can be a critical competitive advantage, yet typical enterprise data architecture is not ready for agile fast-paced innovation.
“Too frequently, companies are burned with legacy maintenance, the wrong tool for the job and data cleaning instead of producing business value,” said Jacek Migdał, Quesma’s CEO. “Their data is not ready to take advantage of recent LLM advances. The typical enterprise data migration is a multi-year effort with a massive percentage of failures and cost overruns. We want to change that.”
As AI gains prominence, effective data storage and analysis demand a specialized approach. Existing databases often fall short, necessitating dedicated platforms for success. This means the need for innovation in the DB realm will be (or already is) bigger than ever before. The amount of changes, experimentation, and quick iterations without risking existing business will be crucial for those who want to achieve satisfactory results faster than the competition.
Founded in 2023, Quesma will introduce a novel database gateway, bringing benefits similar to breaking the monolith into microservices. This will allow CTOs to seemingly switch applications and databases – by doing this, they are future-proofing the whole stack. Spotify and Doordash are examples of companies who have recently switched user databases on a running system.
The company was incorporated in October 2023 and hired the founding engineering team. The first release is planned for 2024 which will provide flexibility to ElasticSearch/OpenSearch interface. Quesma will launch as an open-core product, meaning that everyone can use it on their own. While Heartcore and Inovo co-led this investment, they have not yet closed their angel round.
Christian Jepsen, Partner at Hearcore, commented: “We are happy to join the team at Quesma on their journey to redefine how applications and databases interconnect. Jacek and Pawel have an exciting technology vision and are assembling a strong team to take on the challenge. Europe has produced great technology in the database space before – as we have seen through our engagement with Neo4j – and we love to invest in these foundational capabilities.”
Tomek Swieboda, Partner at Inovo, added: “Joining forces with Quesma aligns perfectly with our mission to support ventures poised to redefine their industries. Jacek and Paweł bring to the table a wealth of experience in the data architecture space and a unique blend of skills. Their vision and track record convinced us to co-lead this round, and we’re excited to be part of their journey.”
