Viraj Parekh On Raising $290 Million To Allow Data Engineers And Data Scientists To Orchestrate Data Workflows

In a world driven by data, it takes a visionary to see beyond the noise and build something truly scalable. Viraj Parekh, co-founder of Astronomer, didn’t have a clear roadmap. His journey from childhood curiosity in technology to becoming a key figure in data orchestration is fascinating.

Astronomer has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Venrock, Bain Capital Ventures, Insight Partners, and Sutter Hill Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Product pivots often reveal themselves through direct customer feedback, as Vijay discovered when demand for Apache Airflow exceeded interest in their original product.
• Success rarely follows a rigid plan; flexibility and responsiveness to market signals are essential in entrepreneurship.
• Creating value by simplifying complex processes, like Astronomer’s managed Apache Airflow, can be a winning strategy for startups.
• While large fundraising numbers are impressive, they should be used to deliver real value to customers and support long-term growth.
• Building a company where smart, motivated people thrive is key to fostering innovation and resilience in a high-growth environment.
• Prioritize process automation and scalable solutions only if they enhance the customer experience and reduce manual work effectively.
• Investors are drawn to companies with a clear vision that addresses genuine market needs, which helps secure funding even outside traditional tech hubs.

 

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About Viraj Parekh:

Viraj Parekh, based in New York, NY, US, is currently a Founding Team Field CTO at Astronomer. Viraj Parekh brings experience from previous roles at Venture for America, Forefront Advisory LLC, New Forest Capital, and Tutors for All.

Viraj Parekh holds a 2012 – 2016 Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science (minor) from Boston College. He has a robust skill set that includes Microsoft Excel, Research, Science, Tutoring, Bloomberg Terminal, and more.

Connect with Viraj Parekh:

• LinkedIn
• Eventible
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the Dealmaker Show. So today we we have a really amazing founder. A founder, you know, what we’re going to be learning about the the good stuff of building, scaling, financing. You know, in their case, they’ve raised $290 million. i And we’re going to be talking about the early life, you know, with them, you know, especially with this founder. Also how they had close calls, you know, of almost going out of business, you know, especially right before they did a pretty significant pivot.

Alejandro Cremades: And then also how to think about scalable business processes, value proposition, and all of the good stuff. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Viraj Parekh. Welcome to the show.

Viraj Parekh: Hey, great to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally, you know born and raised in New York, but parents from India. So you’re one of the first generations you know here of the American dream. So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, something like that. um So, you know, my parents margaret immigrated over in um and very, very late 80s. um And I grew up about 90 miles north of New York City in a small town called Loplanders Falls, New York. um And you know it’s a very classic story. I have a very large family, um very working class, um and I’ve always been super lucky. you know um My family gave me not only a lot of emotional support and love, but also everything I needed to you know focus on school. um And I had a bunch of family members who also taught me how to use a computer at a very young age, ah which obviously sparked interest that’s carried me into today.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. So then talk to us about you know how it was you know for you when you know all of a sudden you decide to become a student you know in BC you know and and all of that good stuff. you know When it came to mathematics and computer science, how did you get into computers you know to begin with?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah. So lucky enough, I had a couple of older cousins um who were getting jobs in the software industry. And one of them actually bought me my first computer um because he was staying with us for a summer when he was finishing up school. And as a thank you gift, he bought me a computer, which was very, very generous of him. um And, you know, just in terms of having something to do with my spare time, you know, when you’re young, you just want ways to you just want to be fascinated by something. um You can go a long way with ah ah being a fifth grader, having a ton of time on your hands and an Internet connection.

Viraj Parekh: And that really got me interested in technology. um And thankfully, I was in a place where I had friends who were interested in technology and math and computer science as well, ah which eventually carried me to go to school in Boston at BC. um And when I was there, you know, I really got interested in early stage technology companies. By a couple of courses and seeing some entrepreneurs talk on campus, um it really got me interested in trying to see what we would like to work in an early stage startup and work at an early stage company.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about a you getting into the world of um you know the labor world. Not because i mean you did the you know working with early stage companies, also private equity, i mean quite a ah few different stints before you actually came up with the idea of pushing for astronomers. So what were those sequence of events for you?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, you know I wish I could say I had a plan and I followed the plan I worked out that way, but it was anything but that. um So I didn’t really know what exactly I wanted to do when I was in in undergrad. um I thought I would go down the finance route in some capacity. um And then after just doing a couple of things in the summers and so on, I realized that like what I really just wanted to do was get experience at an early stage company. um And I was very lucky to find a fellowship called Denture for America.

Viraj Parekh: um that ah you know At the time, what it was doing was it was connecting folks in who were about to graduate college with startups that weren’t based in New York or California right as a way to get folks to go to different parts of the country. um It was through that that I found a company called Astronomer um based in Cincinnati, Ohio. um and When I joined, I was actually the fifth employee. right We were kind of puttering along doing something. um What had happened was we ultimately, but sorry, can I say that one more time? ah Kind of messed up a little bit, yeah. um So, you know, I was, I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do. um I had done a couple of things in the finance realm. I’d taken courses in math and computer science. um And ultimately I decided that I wanted to get exposure at an early stage company. You know, I felt like that would be the environment where I would learn the most.

Viraj Parekh: um So, I was lucky enough to find a fellowship program called Venture for America um that connected recent grads with startups that weren’t based on the coasts. um So, via Venture for America, I moved out to Cincinnati, Ohio. um And, you know, that’s kind of where my astronomer journey began.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about the Sonoma journey beginning. How did that all happen?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah. You know, it’s another one of those things that, um, I wish I could say that there was a plan around and it would exactly at the plan, but it was really, uh, it was, it was a bit of a twister to say the very least. Um, so when I had joined astronomer, we were building a product that was helping with marketing analytics.

Viraj Parekh: And to power the back end of this product, we started looking at a lot of different open source technologies. um And the folks at Airbnb, which at the time was known as one of the leaders of building great data technologies and giving it and open sourcing it, um had put out this tool called Apache Airflow. um And we actually started using Apache Airflow to power the back end of our other product. um It was a product that helped you get clickstream data into your data warehouse.

Viraj Parekh: um And through doing that, we got really good at running and scaling Apache Airflow. you know I’ll fast forward a little bit. And what ended up happening was our Clickstream product was pretty good, ah but it wasn’t really enough to sustain us. um And we had a couple of near-death experiences as a company.

Viraj Parekh: um But this funny thing would happen where we would talk to customers about how our Clickstream product worked, and we’d say, hey, it’s powered by Airflow.

Alejandro Cremades: so

Viraj Parekh: And then they would say, oh, wait, like let’s talk about Airflow. you know That looks really exciting. Are you guys using it? How are you guys using it? And so on and so forth. Customers would be fascinated by it, because at the time, Airflow is going viral.

Viraj Parekh: um So you know we got really involved in the greater Apache Airflow community. We started committing a lot of code back. Um, and then we actually restarted the company and pivoted really hard to become the Apache airflow company. Um, and really just focusing on making it so that Apache airflow, we could give everyone who needed orchestration, sorry, really just focusing on, um, building the best possible orchestration platform around Apache airflow.

Alejandro Cremades: So eventually you guys, you know at the beginning, you ended up doing a pivot that kind of like safety company. So what was what what what was that the journey like to getting to the point where, hey, I think we we need to make a switch here. We need to change things around, otherwise we’re going to be in trouble.

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, you know I think it was really just a function of listening to customers. um A lot of times customers are going to tell you things that you don’t want to hear, things that aren’t very very um easy to hear, but ultimately are in your best interests. And it turned out that the way we were building our Clickstream product was actually more interesting to customers than the product itself. And what they really wanted to do was leverage the underlying technology, Apache Airflow, for their own needs.

Viraj Parekh: So instead of bringing it to them behind the walls of something else, they wanted the underlying technology itself. um And, you know, thankfully we had some really smart people around the table. We had some really forward thinking folks, and it was definitely a gamble at the time to go all in on airflow, ah but I would say it’s paid off pretty well.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about the business model. What ended up being the business model to today? How do you guys make money?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah. so

Viraj Parekh: Astro is the best place to run Apache Airflow. We have a managed service that lets you use Apache Airflow without dealing ah without dealing with any of the under-ferentiated heavy lifting that comes with adopting open source technology. um We let data teams build, run, and observe their data pipelines better than any other solution in the market.

Alejandro Cremades: So in terms of um you know really listening to customers, I mean, you you you talked about it earlier ah you know as part of that Pivote experience. you know I find that founders, most founders make the mistake of building stuff based on assumptions versus based on data. right And I think that that was one of your biggest guys’s lesson, right especially at the beginning, to be able to get it right and to adjust to what the market was asking you for. So I guess What are some of the things that maybe you can share with the people you know that are listening on how to get it right, how to get to product market fit, and and how to listen to your customers in order to get there?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, you know so the way I’ll tell this story is like when we first decided to pivot to Airflow, we just wanted to give people Airflow give people an airflow service so they would give us money so we could make payroll and just you know keep revenue rising. um But as we started actually doing that, and we asked the question, hey, why is this important to you? What are you doing with this? What happens if this breaks? um We actually learned a ton about how important orchestration is to companies and why it’s so valuable to them.

Viraj Parekh: um Orchestration was the path to production on how companies got business value from their data. you know It’s how they took an insight that happens in a vacuum and turned it into a process that runs every day or every hour or anything else of the sort. It doesn’t matter if you needed to create a dashboard for the CEO um or deliver a data set to an external vendor or even some sort of machine learning model that did something like predict customer churn.

Viraj Parekh: didn’t matter what that but that ah data-hungry business process is, the way you actually bring it to life and start to get business value is via orchestration. um So that became very clear when we asked our customers, hey, why are you paying us? you know Why is this important to you? Why are you looking for managed service here?

Viraj Parekh: um And you know what we learned was that Airflow was definitely the best underlying technology for data orchestration. you know It has the biggest community of users in the entire Apache Software Foundation. um But Airflow wasn’t always easy for everybody. right It could be a little bit hard to learn. It’s hard to scale out if you’re trying to be multi-tenant on Airflow because you have a large number of data users in your company. um That wasn’t ah always easy, and you’d have to invest your own resources into making that happen.

Viraj Parekh: um we wanted to build something that was an easy button for Airflow right to make it so that we could democratize access to orchestration for companies that didn’t have huge engineering teams behind them ah to build this tooling themselves. And even those companies that have huge engineering teams behind them, you know they don’t want to invest in getting really good at learning and building open source technology. you know They want to invest in doing things that are aligned to business value. um So what we found was that, hey, no matters

Viraj Parekh: No matter what a company is trying to do with their data, right? Be it some sort of large language model process or be it some sort of, do you like your classical dashboarding use cases? um you need underlying You need an underlying orchestration platform to bring it to life.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then let’s talk about then about raising money because you guys have raised $290 million, which is quite the amount. What was the ah what’ the journey to of going through the motions and raising the money, going from one financing cycle to the next, unlocking the next lifecycle of the business? How was that experience and that journey like for you guys, too?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, you know, it definitely wasn’t easy, especially early on. um When you say that you are an open source software company that’s based in Cincinnati, it was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio. um That’s not typically the thing that you you hear. um What I can say is that as it was clear to the market how viral Apache Airflow is, and how huge the community of users is, and how essential it is to doing anything with data, um that process ended up getting a whole lot easier. um Thankfully, we had some people around the table who had done it before who knew exactly how to tell our story in those in those in those and those windows, they’re in those settings.

Viraj Parekh: um And ah you know the number on paper looks very, very impressive. $290 million, dollars fundraising that much. you know that’s That’s such an impressive number. But I think what really gives me pride is the value we’ve bought to customers. Customers telling us that, like hey, if this went down, my company is at risk of getting sued by regulators. Or somebody saying, like hey, this helped us hit our Q4 target all the ways back in Q3.

Viraj Parekh: um you know Total is around fundraising. ah really They’re nice to talk about, they’re huge numbers, ah but it’s not a goal you should over-index on. The real thing that matters is your customer’s telling you how important your product their product your product is to their day-to-day.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about then, you know, on the, on the vision side of things, no, because when you’re raising this amount of money, you know, it’s because obviously investors are betting on you, they’re betting on the vision. So I guess if we’re thinking about the vision here and we’re thinking about, um, let’s say you going to sleep tonight and waking up in a world where the vision of astronomer is fully being realized, what does that world look like?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, you know, that’s such a great question.

Viraj Parekh: I would say there’s really two buckets of that. Number one is, it has been so far, and I’m hoping that it’s always gonna be this way that we’re a great place to work. We’re a place to work, astronomers place to work that um You know, it’s not always easy, but it sh surrounds you with good people who are smart people who will both challenge you to learn more, but also um motivate you when something didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. um And it’s really important to me to build a company that brings out the best people, right? You hear stories about the Stripe Mafia or the PayPal Mafia or all these other companies that have churned out these great entrepreneurs. um I really think astronomer can be one of those. um That’s always going to be something that’s very, very important to me.

Viraj Parekh: As far as the vision goes, you know we want to make sure that any data professional can put their pipelines into production in a very easy way. um

Viraj Parekh: As far as how that plays out, um yeah one second. I just didn’t prefer that one.

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, so as far as the product mission goes, right, it’s really about making it so data teams can work better than ever without focusing on things that aren’t directly related to getting value out of their data.

Alejandro Cremades: So in that regard, to as as as you guys have are now like in growth stage mode, how was that experienced tool of um or that or or or that opportunity of now going from early stage to growth stage? And when you’re thinking about being now at a growth stage, how do you guys think about scale? How do you guys think about business processes?

Alejandro Cremades: and and and doing stuff around data and and really being able to turn that wheel faster, not by throwing more people, but by building technology and and other good stuff around it.

Viraj Parekh: Yeah. So ideally you could always do things in a scalable fashion, right? Ideally it’s like you say a problem and you’re like, Hey, this is going to come up again. Let’s just solve this in a vacuum. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. The way we think about it is like the most important thing is our customers have a great experience. You know, it doesn’t matter if that has to happen manually or we can automate the process in some capacity.

Viraj Parekh: So a lot of times, you know you can look at what has to be done manually to give customers great experience, and then take a step back and say, hey, how important is this to automate? Because when you’re growing really quickly, there’s 1,000 fires every day. right There’s a bunch of things you can do if you have the time for, but you just don’t have enough time or people to it. ah So for us, it’s about working backwards from the customer experience and thinking about, hey, what do we just need to do regardless of how it gets done? And then after that, the most important and urgent thing, being like, OK,

Viraj Parekh: What do we scale out? um Because we’re going to be we don’t have enough people hours to do it in the day.

Alejandro Cremades: And then on the on the corporate structure too, I mean, when you go into the growth stage side and now you’ve raised all this money, how do you think things change as as the company is now becoming more of a robust ah corporate structure?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think one thing you have to get used to is just there’s going to be new people around the table and they’ll be really smart and they’ll come from really interesting backgrounds. But things change really quickly as a startup. ah So that underlying context of why things are the way they are or the nuance around the particulars of an industry or something, I think it’s really important to make sure that everybody knows that because it just makes it easier for folks to get productive quickly.

Viraj Parekh: um The other thing you have to make sure is that it’s more important than ever to know how the company is spending its money. um You know, we saw it during COVID that a lot of startups grew really quickly. um A lot of folks started overspending. Just being disciplined is harder when you’re further along, but it’s more important than ever.

Alejandro Cremades: And where would you say that the astronomer right now falls when it comes to value proposition? you know Where does astronomer fall in the market when it comes to value proposition?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, so if putting data pipelines in production is important to you, if you’re trying to innovate with data and you’re trying to make sure that you’re building a data platform for your company that can change with the times, um orchestration is a foundational piece of that. And there’s no better way to do orchestration than Astro.

Alejandro Cremades: How big is the team now of Astro? You know, how do you guys go about culture?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, so we’re in the ballpark. We’re over 250 people today, um growing very quickly. um And culture is one of those things that ah you know you can say a lot about, but it really matters more in what you do than what you say about it.

Alejandro Cremades: What does culture look like in Astronomer?

Viraj Parekh: From people that have worked here, right? um I’m obviously biased around that because I’ve been here for so long. but What people that come work here say is it’s the most collaborative culture at a company they’ve ever worked at, right? One thing that I take a lot of pride in is that nobody is ever tasked with solving a problem alone at Astronomer. um Everybody is competent and focused, but if you need help, if you ask for help, um you’re never going to be turned down, um which I think is a really core tenet of getting of what’s gotten us to where we are today. More importantly, what’s going to get us to where we want to go.

Viraj Parekh: ah I

Alejandro Cremades: So the other the other question that I wanted to ask you is, when it comes to the um actual you know growth, right? Because I mean, you have um the company’s growth on one end, and then also you have your own personal growth. I mean, the the eight years ago that you’ve been at it now you know with the company, I guess for you to… How would you say that you’ve been able to grow yourself, you know to go at the same pace as the pace of the growth of the company in parallel?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah.

Viraj Parekh: So startups are a great place to go very quickly.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously you’ve been at it now for about eight years, over eight years with the company. And you know eight years at a startup is a tremendous amount of time. I guess the company that you know you started at here is a different company today.

Alejandro Cremades: I guess to be able to go at the same pace of growth um personally you know and professionally with the business as the company has taken on, which is incredible with all this money raised, all these employees,

Viraj Parekh: Mm

Alejandro Cremades: How do you think you’ve been able to keep at the same pace of growth with the business?

Viraj Parekh: hmm.

Viraj Parekh: Yeah. So, you know, I think one thing to think about on that is startups are a great place to grow very quickly, um but growing very quickly is very hard and it doesn’t happen linearly. So it tends to happen in bursts anyways, right? You’re going to have to struggle with something for a little while. You’ll get some help. You’ll think about it really hard and then you’ll kind of spike up in growth.

Viraj Parekh: ah I think based on my experience, the most important thing around growth is curiosity. um And just learning how to approach things with general curiosity. Startups are very difficult. um And you’re going to go through a lot of ups and downs. you know Like one day you’ll have somebody leave that you didn’t expect to leave. Another day you’ll get a great hire you didn’t expect to get. um One day you’re going to have a bunch of really happy customers. And another day those same customers are going to be really angry for something that you did or didn’t do.

Viraj Parekh: um And all of that, you’re going to have emotional fluctuations, right? Because it’s only human. um When something bad happens, it sucks. And when something great happens, it’s awesome. um I think the most important thing is as you experience these emotions,

Viraj Parekh: it’s important to take a step back and ask why and keep a curious mindset into a lot of things. Because if you just get wrapped around the axle of something, um you’re not going to make any progress on it. But if you can kind of have an intellectually honest conversation with yourself and just be curious about an outcome or curious about something not so great that happened, um that’s really the only way to learn and keep getting better. It’s just to approach those things with genuine curiosity, in spite of whatever emotional reactions they may or may not cause in the moment.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s say now I’m able to put you into a time machine and I put you in a time machine that brings you back in time, you know, maybe to 2016. And you’re able to have a conversation with that younger self, that younger barrage, and you’re able to give that younger barrage one piece of advice for launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, so I’ll reemphasize the piece on learning to approach your feelings and the things with genuine curiosity. um It’s one of those things that’s kind of cliche, it’s very easy to say, but hard to do. um And I think that’d be the biggest one. I think in a more practical setting, um or a more kind of real world thing. Learning to be a really effective communicator, both in a written format and in a oral format.

Viraj Parekh: um At least for me anyways, it’s something that I only got any sort of skill at by doing it over and over and over and over. So I think really focusing on that and practicing written and verbal communication, um I think that really does set people apart when they can be exceptional communicators.

Alejandro Cremades: So then for the people that are listening, Barash, that would love to reach out and say, hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, so please feel free to shoot me an email. You know, I’m barrage at astronomer at.io. That’s probably the easiest way. I love talking about all things data and early stage startup.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, easy enough. Well, hey, Barash, thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Viraj Parekh: Yeah, thanks. And I did just want to give a last shout out to the rest of the early founders at astronomer. You know, I feel very lucky to be here, but I would not be here without um without the work about all of it.

Viraj Parekh: ah Sorry, I feel very lucky to be here on this podcast with you, um but all of them are just as qualified to talk about the astronomer journey as I am, if not more, um and working with them has been the pleasure of a lifetime.

*****

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