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The era of zero-interest rates has companies scrambling to cut costs wherever possible, but one area that’s still eating up a big chunk of the budget is observability. For many organizations, understanding and collecting data and systems remains the second-largest cloud expenditure after actual cloud provisioning. Some even talk about an observability cost crisis, with stories like Coinbase dropping $65 million on their Datadog bill.
Why is observability so expensive and crucial? Well, with complex cloud setups and the rise of microservices, security issues, and service outages are all too common. Ops teams rely on observability data to keep everything running smoothly.
Enter Dash0, a new startup looking to tackle the cost issue. While they may not promise to be cheaper than competitors like Datadog, they aim to make purchasing and using their services a more straightforward process.
Dash0, pronounced “Dash-zero,” is all about transparency. Founder Mirko Novakovic believes companies will still spend a significant portion of their cloud budget (10-20%) on observability. However, Dash0 wants to make pricing and observability itself more transparent. They leverage the open-source observability framework OpenTelemetry to achieve this goal.
While there are other companies like Signoz that are also OTel-native, Dash0’s approach has struck a chord with investors. They recently secured a $9.5 million seed funding round led by Accel, with participation from Dig Ventures.
Novakovic’s success with his previous company, Instana, which was acquired by IBM for $500 million, has also contributed to Dash0’s appeal. Many former Instana employees are now part of the Dash0 team.
Dash0 is not only built on OTel but is also focused on enhancing the framework. They aim to make OTel more user-friendly and accessible, with features like intuitive UI, dashboards, and integrations with tools like Slack and email. Their target clients are companies with 50 to 5,000 employees.
As they launch publicly, Dash0’s main focus is on perfecting their product before diving into heavy sales and marketing efforts. Their team of 21 (with 19 engineers) is dedicated to improving the tech and product side. They plan to hire a developer relations specialist to drive adoption of OpenTelemetry and collaborate with other OTel-related startups to fill any gaps in the technology.
Overall, Dash0 is working towards making observability more transparent, accessible, and cost-effective for companies navigating the complex world of cloud architectures and microservices.
