Innovation : Teamwork : Results : Fun
We are on a mission to make zero-downtime a reality!
Our Story: What Makes Us Different
The big idea behind StackState came from a high-stakes consulting project for one of Europe's largest banks. Our co-founders, Mark Bakker and Lodewijk Bogaards, had been called in to help the bank deal with a crisis. A highly-visible, critical, customer-facing application was failing repeatedly and the IT teams could not figure out why. There was plenty of data to analyze. However, the data was siloed, messy and lacked any unifying context. Integrating the various telemetry data silos was possible, although it was challenging and time-consuming to do so. Even then, the unifying context challenge still remained.
Our co-founders' epiphany was that topology could be the answer. There was just one problem. Tracking a large, dynamic, complex topology over time at millisecond resolution wasn't possible with existing technology. So Lodewijk and Mark built the world's first, and only, high-performance versioned graph database.
Today, that database and the framework that we call the 4T® Data Model, is the beating heart of our topology-powered observability platform. Our platform correlates topology changes with telemetry and trace data from any source, synchronized over time. This approach eliminated the data silos and provided a unified topology. For the bank, finding root cause was now straightforward - and fast.
Observability is fundamentally a data challenge. Only StackState solves this challenge by making topology a first-class citizen with our unified data model. Better observability data means better business outcomes. Check out the full story of our origin in this blog post or watch the video, below. Better yet, contact us to learn more!
Our Vision and Differentiators
Leadership Team
As the CEO of StackState, Toffer brings three decades of experience scaling technology companies to the table. As a leader at companies including Dynatrace, Tamr, and RSA, he built go-to-market engines that powered rapid growth and attracted great investors and partners. In his spare time, Toffer can be found with his family, on his bike, or in the kitchen.
Michel den Braver, who serves as overseer to the board and CFP, has more than 25 years experience within the IT industry. Michel fulfilled various finance roles, at Oracle, for almost 10 years, both domestic and international. After Oracle he was Finance Director for BroadVision and BEA systems, both listed at NASDAQ.
Lodewijk Bogaards is a StackState co-founder and CTO. Lodewijk combines deep technical skills with high-level technical vision. If he’s not working on StackState, Lodewijk might be found playing squash, answering questions on StackOverflow, or meditating.
Kees van Bekkum is an experienced sales executive and is StackState’s general manager. Kees earned his chops in enterprise sales, building out successful sales organisations. In StackState, Kees is responsible for overall company performance as well as leading our sales team. In his spare time, Kees likes to spend time skiing, boating or admiring classic cars.
Mark Bakker is a StackState co-founder and product owner. Mark is an experienced IT architect who lived the problems StackState is solving. With a deep knowledge of AIOps products and industry, Mark and his team design the StackState product. Outside of the office, Mark likes to climb rocks and runs a boyscout unit.
Andreas Prins is experienced in leading R&D organisations and is especially interested in Product Management. As a Chief Product Officer, he is responsible for defining product direction and designing the product roadmap. Outside of work you’ll find him baking pizzas in a wood-fired oven.
Alex is an energetic top executive with 30+ years of experience in the software industry, skilled in developing, growing, and directing global operations, sales, marketing, and services organizations. He is an inspiring leader with extensive knowledge and connections in the cloud, security, IT infrastructure, open-source, and related IT fields, specializing in sound positioning, growth, and go-to-market strategies.
Daan Teunissen is the founder of Xebia Group, a high-growth IT consulting firm with 2,500+ employees and 15+ offices globally. Under Daan's leadership, Xebia has been an engine of innovation, giving rise to independent software companies including XebiaLabs, StackState and Instruqt.
Wim Heijting advises IT businesses on PE/VC financing and M&A from his boutique firm Finch Corporate Strategy Services B.V., which he found in 2005. Besides this, he sits on the board of MaxGrip, MP Objects, and is a special advisor to the Noaber Foundation. Before Finch, Wim has been General Counsel, and COO at Baan Company, Managing Partner at Vanenburg Capital Management, CEO at Watermark, and COO at Cordys.
Our Values Are What Defines Us
Improving the quality of life
StackState does not exist for its own sake, but rather to improve people's lives. We want your train to arrive on time. Your mortgage payment to be processed in an orderly fashion. The bread to arrive at the bakery on time, so you can enjoy a nice breakfast, etc.
Engineering culture
We love to build and to innovate. We take pride in a strong engineering culture that is focused on producing a high-quality product that achieves more with less. Proof, logic, balanced trade-offs, and reason always win over politics and the status quo.
Team play
Large IT environments will always be heterogeneous and always evolving. Yesterday it was microservices, tomorrow it will be serverless and inevitably the day after tomorrow it will be the next new thing. StackState will not pretend to be the best at everything. However, we will help you integrate the tools and solutions you already love, so you will never be stuck.
Open and direct communication
We strive to align ourselves to the truth of the matter, that is why we value open and direct communication. We encourage short and frequent feedback loops and don’t run away from difficult conversations.
Keeping it simple
IT is already complex enough, we’re trying to keep it simple. If there is a simpler way to achieve the same thing, or a way to not bother you with something you don’t need to know at all, we will aim for it.
Happiness is important
We care about the happiness of our people. We work hard because we love what we do. We listen to each other and try to understand what drives us to make sure we don’t lose touch with our passions. It shows in the end result.
Join our mission
Our mission is to empower IT teams to deliver extraordinary customer experiences through autonomous, incident-free operations.
Our team is at the forefront of the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and information analysis. We are always looking for energetic, fun, and talented people who obsess over customers and aren’t afraid to show it.