Founded in 2010 in New York by French duo Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc, software company Datadog has seen significant success across the Atlantic — and now a number of employees are launching their own thing, both in the US and back in Europe.
The company, which provides analytics tools to help businesses keep track of the performance of their apps and web services, raised $648m when it listed on the NASDAQ in 2019; before that, it had raised nearly $150m from global investors like Index Ventures and ICONIQ Capital.
Datadog’s market cap is now nearly $43bn.
Although the company is HQed in the US, the founders have kept strong links to the motherland. Today, Datadog’s 5.2k employees are spread across 33 countries — and in Europe, nearly 15 years after it was created, a founders factory is starting to emerge.
Sifted tracked down which Datadog alumni have gone on to start their own businesses, focusing on European founders and startups based in Europe. If we’ve missed any alumni who are now founders, please reach out.
Hugo Delaby and Mathieu Rousse, cofounders at Hopserve
Founded: 2023
HQ: Paris, France
Funding raised to date: Undisclosed
Delaby and Rousse both spent four years at Datadog in Paris, as a product manager and engineering team lead respectively. Last year, they launched Hopserve — a platform that helps product managers, designers and engineers interact and provide feedback on new product features, to enable teams to iterate more quickly. Based at Station F in Paris, the founders have raised funding but declined to confirm how much.
Vladimir de Turckheim, cofounder at Heal.dev
Founded: 2023
HQ: Paris, France
Funding raised to date: Undisclosed
De Turckheim was a software engineer at Datadog in Paris for two years. He launched Heal.dev in 2023, which leverages Generative AI for developer tools — and currently is in stealth. The company declined to share details of funding raised.
Paul Vidal, cofounder at Collective.work
Founded: 2021
HQ: Paris, France
Funding raised to date: $8m
Vidal founded Collective.work at Paris-based startup studio Hexa after he left Datadog in 2021, where he had spent three years as a software engineer. Describing itself as a ‘LinkedIn for freelancers’, the startup provides a platform for self-employed workers to interact, collaborate and develop their network.
Gabriel-James Safar and Sébastien Deprez, stealth company
Since 2019 Safar has been a senior director of product management at Datadog while Sébastien Deprez managed five of the company’s engineering teams, both from Paris. Three sources with direct knowledge tell Sifted that the pair are now launching their own company, which is still in stealth.
Antoine Dussarps, cofounder at Webcapsule
Founded: 2022
HQ: Paris, France
Funding raised to date: Bootstrapped
Dussarps cofounded Webcapsule with his brother and two other associates in 2022 after spending 2.5 years as a software engineer for Datadog in Paris. The startup provides an internal platform for developers within enterprises to support the deployment and optimisation of web applications.
Lucas Masson, cofounder at Konvu
Founded: 2024
HQ: New York, USA
Funding raised to date: Undisclosed
Masson oversaw Datadog’s security products for two years in Paris before launching Konvu. The startup is building a platform to detect and remediate application code vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and cause cybersecurity issues. Although Konvu is HQ-ed in the US, Masson says that most of the engineering team is based in France.
Robert Krahn, founder at podwriter.io
Founded: 2023
HQ: Berlin, Germany
Funding raised to date: Bootstrapped
After nearly two years working as a software engineer for Datadog in Berlin, Krahn launched podwriter.io, which provides automated transcriptions of audio and video content, as well as features that build on that such as text search, automated summaries and content alerts.
Gabin Marignier, cofounder at Focus Tree
Founded: 2022
HQ: Paris, France
Funding raised to date: $2m
Launched in 2022, Focus Tree is a productivity app intended to help students stay focused and reduce their screen time by rewarding them with financial incentives like NFTs. Marignier says that although the company is HQed in Paris, Focus Tree is global and fully remote.
Jack Whelan, cofounder at BrowseBuddy
Founded: 2024
HQ: Funchal, Madeira
Funding raised to date: Bootstrapped
Whelan spent nearly three years, from 2018-2021, as part of Datadog’s commercial team in Dublin and has since worked elsewhere, including at cybersecurity companies Protegrity and CybelAngel. He launched BrowseBuddy this year, an AI-powered virtual sales assistant that provides support to customers while they shop online.
Julien Danjou, cofounder at Mergify
Founded: 2018
HQ: Toulouse, France
Funding raised to date: Bootstrapped
Danjou ran SaaS company Mergify as a “side project” while working at Datadog as a staff engineer in Paris between 2019 and 2022; since then, he has worked on the company full-time while also doing some angel investments. Mergify provides automation tools for software engineers on GitHub.
