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What are the switching costs between reverse ETL and other related tools, and how do you perceive them impacting HeadsUp's potential defensibility?

Earl Lee

Co-founder & CEO at HeadsUp

I should caveat that. We're not a big company that uses a reverse ETL tool, so I can only infer what the switching costs look like from the experiences of others.

I think that the switching costs are low, but at the same time, the reasons to switch are also pretty low. It's a pretty simple job that you have to get done as a reverse ETL tool, like move data from point A to point B reliably. It's hard to differentiate, so I feel like there's this land grab going on right now with Hightouch and Census trying to grab as many customers as they can, because once you start using a tool, even though it is easy to switch, there's not much reason to switch.

I saw Hightouch recently raised a large growth round, and I'm sure they're going to use that to invest in sales and marketing resources to get out there. But fundamentally, you own the data that you're syncing and the SQL queries. You can just as easily plop that into Hightouch as you can into Census.

Find this answer in Earl Lee, co-founder and CEO of HeadsUp, on the modern data stack value chain
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