1. How has bootstrapping influenced Infragistics’ long-term growth and ability to serve global giants like Fidelity and Morgan Stanley?
Infragistics has withstood nearly four decades of the ever-evolving technology industry. This isn’t because of luck or because we were in the right place at the right time. It’s because we built a strong foundation for the company to fuel our future successes.
Our strong foundation is a result of bootstrapping the company–and we’ve never taken a cent from investors since.
Without funding, we prioritized making decisions that would drive revenue rather than doing things because “we wanted to.” We thoroughly examined every decision we made and we learned from every mistake. And we focused on practical applications to create a secure company first, so we could innovate thoughtfully as the business grew.
Now, 35+ years later, we have built a lasting business that has created a culture centered around innovation. This continuous innovation is a large part of why more than two million developers now use our software, and our client roster boasts 100% of the S&P 500, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Intuit, and Bank of America.
2. What lessons from your 35-year journey shaped the creation of Slingshot, and how do you see data evolving as a centerpiece in work management?
I’ve led Infragistics through a series of tumultuous moments in the internet’s ongoing evolution over the past 35 years–from the dot-com tech bubble of the late 90s to the launch of the iPhone and more. Through it all, I’ve learned that the secret to Infragistics’ success and longevity has been our unique workplace philosophy for building trust, maximizing team results and using data to make informed decisions. This philosophy is now the foundation of Slingshot.
We built Slingshot as a work management platform that connects everyone teams work with and everything they need to get work done–all in one place. Rather than constantly switching between apps or piecing together information from different sources, Slingshot enables teams to bring data across company sources and systems together within the platform. This allows teams to spend less time finding data–and more time using it to drive results.
Slingshot puts data at the center of every organization so teams can integrate it into everything they do and make more informed decisions.
Now, with AI, data is continuing to evolve as a centerpiece to how employees drive productivity, efficiency and improve business results. We’ll continue to see companies invest more and more in creating data-driven cultures within their organization, with AI as a large part of that.
3. With the rise of AI-driven tools, what is your vision for how teams can integrate data into decision-making without getting lost in complexity?
Many teams know the importance of data in decision making–but few teams have access to the data they need or can turn company data into actionable insight. So, instead, they rely on making decisions based on gut instincts or the opinion of the most senior or the loudest person in the room.
With the rise of AI tools, any business user–or employee without prior data analysis experience–should be able to find data and utilize it as part of their day-to-day work. This means that employees don’t have to be data scientists to use data–or anything that tracks performance, process, people and profitability within an organization. AI removes the complexity of data, so teams don’t have to focus on the data itself, but rather the actionable insights that can be gathered from it.
For example, with Slingshot, every employee can turn spreadsheets of raw data to multi-source visualizations in just minutes. And with Slingshot AI, teams can take this a step further and automate the visualizations through questions in simple business terms. This helps teams to analyze data from across the organization to identify trends, assess performance and forecast the next best steps for a given project, or the business overall.
4. In your experience, how is the role of conversational AI transforming data accessibility for businesses, especially in a post-pandemic world where agility is key?
Most companies today are data companies in some capacity, collecting information on a daily basis on everything from customers and products to marketing and sales. But, for many organizations, this data is spread across several systems, channels and gatekeepers. With so much company data to sort through, most teams don’t know where exactly data lives and typically spend an unnecessary amount of time trying to search for exactly what they need.
At a time when agility is key, employees need to spend their time moving the needle for their business–not searching for data.
With conversational AI, teams can ask specific questions about their data–and the technology will sort through troves of company data to identify exactly what they need without employees having to search manually. For example, with Slingshot AI, teams can ask a question like, “How is marketing spend distributed by channel?” Slingshot will pull and analyze data from multiple relevant company sources, like Google Analytics, Excel, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot, to answer the question and automate insights and data visualizations–in seconds. This allows teams to immediately put data into action and use it to guide decision-making.
5. Are there any challenges you currently see as more companies lean into AI tools?
Companies have been quick to onboard AI tools over the past year–but not all of these companies were necessarily ready to implement AI.
For the large part, this has been because their data is not ready. Data is the foundation for AI–it’s necessary for AI to learn, adapt and continuously improve the insights it provides and the decisions it supports. Without it, AI cannot run.
In fact, according to Slingshot’s 2024 Digital Work Trends Report, nearly half (45%) of employers say they haven’t yet implemented AI because their company’s data is not ready.
Companies need to centralize their data that’s typically spread across different systems and channels into one place so it’s easily accessible by AI. These tools can’t move across different applications and channels for data–companies need to bring data to AI. Another part of readying company data for AI is to clean data by removing inaccuracies, eliminating redundancies, and filling in missing information. The more reliable company data is, the more accurate results and insights AI will produce.
It’s critical that companies focus on readying their data for AI before implementing any more tools. Once they do, they’ll be able to unlock the full potential of AI.
6. Slingshot marks a shift from your enterprise focus—what motivated you to create a platform for broader work management, and how do you see this reshaping the tech ecosystem?
Our workplace philosophy for building trust, maximizing team results and using data to make informed decisions ignited the idea for Slingshot. And beyond our own internal workflows, we’ve experienced a lot in how teams collaborate and communicate through our work with enterprise customers and partners for 35+ years.
While Slingshot is our first non-enterprise product, the platform has been informed by our nearly four decades of work in the enterprise space.
We released Slingshot in 2022, when remote and hybrid work had become the norm and companies were dealing with the aftermath of adopting more tools than they needed to support remote workers. By bringing everything teams needed to do their job and communicate with others in one place, we’ve been able to increase team efficiency and productivity.
With Slingshot, we’re reshaping how teams work by putting data at the center of everything they do. We continue to evolve the technology with the changing tech ecosystem and how teams work, like with Slingshot AI, for example. While we’ll continue to innovate, everything we do will always work to support our larger goal of making data a natural part of collaboration and decision-making.
Dean Guida started what would ultimately become global tech company Infragistics before the internet was even a sparkle in the mainstream’s eye. After a two-year stint as a coder on Wall Street, Dean found himself and his fledgling startup going head-to-head against Microsoft for a deal that he would ultimately win—and that would propel him to the forefront of the still nascent internet software industry.
Seemingly overnight, Dean had to go from early internet coder to business operator–a feat that forced him to learn some of businesses’ biggest lessons on the job. And while many businesses crumble at the mere hint of deteriorating market conditions, Dean built a business that has withstood a series of tumultuous moments in the internet’s ongoing evolution (think: the dot-com tech bubble of the late 90s, the explosion of the Internet, and the 2008 recession).
Fast forward 35 years. Infragistics now has 250+ employees and operations in six countries. More than two million developers use its software, and its client roster boasts 100% of the S&P 500, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Intuit, and Bank of America.
And he did all of this without ever taking a cent from investors.
In 2021, Dean celebrated the spirit of entrepreneurship that has guided his journey by launching a $50M Innovation Lab to inspire internal inventors to experiment with innovations beyond the company’s core products.
And in 2022, he launched data-driven work management platform Slingshot to put data at the center of businesses so teams can make decisions that lead to growth.
In 2024, Dean released his first book, When Grit is Not Enough.
