Founded in 2007 in Connecticut by software programmerAustin McChord, McChord initially built and marketed his own hand-made data backup devices. Securing his first customers in 2008, he afterwards built a system that allowed for data synchronization between two computers, before building a version of Zenith InfoTech that ran on Linux. By the end of 2009, the company had $70,000 in monthly sales. When a new Datto product in 2010 caused old systems to crash, a replacement system was designed from scratch: SIRIS was released several months later as a free upgrade. In 2011, Datto was credited with helping local hospitals impacted by a tornado in Joplin, Missouri retrieve their data. In 2011, sales were $9 million. The following year, they were at $25 million. The established business model sold products primarily through managed service providers. By 2013 the company was continuing to focus on small and mid-size businesses, with clients such as Susan G. Komen for the Cure and several NFL teams. In September 2013, the company raised $25 million in its first round of venture capital financing, which was led by General Catalyst Partners. At the time, Datto had 225 employees and had "posted four consecutive years of 300 percent annual growth." In 2014, Datto Inc. purchased Backupify, a cloud-to-cloud backup company. Backupify focused on backing up data on servers, complementing Datto's focus on local or private clouds.
2015-2018
In November 2015, the company garnered $75 million in a Series B funding round mostly led by Technology Crossover Ventures. In 2015, it became Connecticut's first "unicorn" company. In early 2017, Datto acquired Open Mesh. Datto was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for around $1.5 billion in late 2017. As part of the deal, Datto merged with the Vista portfolio company Autotask Corporation and Austin McChord remained CEO of the combined company. McChord stepped down as CEO in October 2018, remaining on the board.
Staff and facilities
In recent years the company has increased its employee number significantly. Datto had 550 employees by November 2015, 700 employees by January 2017, and 883 workers by October 2017, 434 of whom were in Norwalk. With 1,300 employees as of November 2017, as of March 2018 that number had grown to 1,400. That month, Datto was ranked first among midsize companies on the Democrat and Chronicle’s Top Workplaces list.
Products and business model
Datto builds hardware and software for both data backup and recovery purposes. In 2016 the company released its SIRIS 3 data protection platform, claiming it was the first system on the market to have ransomware detection capability.
