Thumbtack Technology is now Lineate!

Thumbtack has changed a lot in the 15 years we’ve been in business. When we started, we were a small consulting company helping people tackle specific software challenges in the scalability space. As time passed, our customers asked us to contribute more, and our engagement types changed from simply developing software to becoming close and trusted partners to get business applications to market quickly, robustly, and efficiently. We’ve done this by adopting Lean Innovation principles and leveraging our own IP in addition to our practices. To reflect these changes, we decided to also change our corporate name to better represent the company as it is today. Effective today, the company will be known as Lineate.

In 2005 we were 4 people serving a small handful of clients. Today we are over 200 people in five cities with a client roster of 125 customers. The challenge we’ve had in managing this growth is keeping what makes us unique and different — our values, our creativity, and our expertise. Of course, this starts with people, and will always be about people. We’ve consistently resisted the urge to grow at all costs if it meant compromising who we are. At the same time, our customers needs have changed and we have evolved to meet these needs.

We’ve tackled this by applying the principles of Lean Innovation to everything we do. Our internal quality metrics are based on customer-centricity. Our goal is to quantify business value and prove that value early and often, then iterate upon those successes to continue driving growth and scale. On top of that, we’ve been incorporating more of our IP, which helps companies identify, gather, and activate their own data. The name Lineate comes from this combination of data enablement, combined with Lean principles and iterative problem solving.

We have also spent the last few years developing our DataSwitch product, which helps organizations leverage their own customer data combine it with new data sources, and/or to create targeted audience segments that can then be activated across a variety of messaging channels and platforms. DataSwitch is intended to capitalize on the shift towards the greater array of connected devices and tools that are now available for companies to manage and leverage the data they own. Our mission has evolved with such changes in the market and the needs of our clients, from developing applications at scale to empowering the aggregation, interpretation, and activation of data from diverse sources. In short, we’re moving from an application development company to a customer-centric solutions provider focused around the enablement of customer data. With the formal launch of our DataSwitch product and our newly refined approach, we saw this as an ideal opportunity (and time) to rebrand.

What does this mean to our customers? Our company’s strategy and values remain the same and we’re convinced the path we’re taking is the right one. We will continue to operate under the same principles that we always have. We feel that Lineate is both more descriptive and more distinctive of the iterative, data-focused, and customer-centric organization we are, while allowing us to continue doing the kind of work others have come to expect of us.

- Ben Engber, CEO, Lineate