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Pepperdata: The Real-Time, Automated Resource Optimization Company for Kubernetes Workloads

Pepperdata was founded over a decade ago to solve big data performance problems: how do you keep big data systems running optimally when the big data gets really big? What started as a prototype built in a Silicon Valley basement is now the only real-time, automated resource optimization solution for data workloads on Kubernetes that increases utilization levels by up to 80% to deliver an average 30% cost savings without the need for manual tuning or application code changes.

Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer was developed and tuned by founding Hadoop engineers and cloud experts from Yahoo, Google, and Netflix and has been hardened in some of the world’s largest and most demanding compute environments.

Deployed on over 30,000+ clusters, Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer optimizes resources in some of the largest and most complex environments in the world, providing more pods per node in Kubernetes environments, and more executors per node in YARN environments.

Since 2012, Pepperdata has helped companies ranging from startups and mid-sized ISVs to top enterprises such as Citibank, Autodesk, Magnite, Royal Bank of Canada, and members of the Fortune 10 save over $250 million. With Pepperdata serving as their savings engine, customers can run more workloads, accelerate their migration to the cloud and Kubernetes, increase their profit margins, and invest in innovative new projects like GenAI and agentic AI.

Pepperdata Leadership

Big data doesn’t make decisions, leaders do.

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Ash Munshi

Company Executive Officer

Before joining Pepperdata, Ash was executive chairman for Marianas Labs, a deep learning startup sold in December 2015. Prior to that, he was CEO for Graphite Systems, a big data storage startup that was sold to EMC DSSD in August 2015. Ash also served as CTO of Yahoo, as a CEO of both public and private companies, and is on the board of several technology startups. Ash attended Harvard University, Brown University, and Stanford University. Ash also serves as Pepperdata’s Chairman of the Board.

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Dan Marx

Vice President, Sales

Dan Marx joined Pepperdata in 2014. Dan brings deep expertise in complex enterprise sales, including more than a decade in big data and analytics at Cloudwick, WANdisco, and Zettaset. Dan has a BBA in marketing from the Isenberg School of Management at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Joel Stewart

Vice President, Customer Success

Joel is passionate about customers and distributed systems. He joined Pepperdata in 2018 with over 10 years experience in customer service for enterprise software companies. Combining his expertise in technology and his passion for customer success, he leads our support and services teams. He has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a focus on distributed computing from Westmont College.

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Chaitanya Patel

Director of Engineering

Chaitanya Patel has driven engineering outcomes at Pepperdata since 2015. By working on various products and projects across the Pepperdata stack, Chaitanya has developed a deep experience that enables him to bring insight to the continual evolution and expansion of Pepperdata products. Formerly at NetApp, he worked on High Availability (HA), Synchronous Disaster Recovery (DR), and RAID for NetApp’s scale-out and flash storage arrays. Chaitanya holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

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Board Members

We partner with some of the brightest minds in technology to support a common goal: help our customers get the most out of their big data analytics investment.

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Ash Munshi

Company Executive Officer

Before joining Pepperdata, Ash was executive chairman for Marianas Labs, a deep learning startup sold in December 2015. Prior to that, he was CEO for Graphite Systems, a big data storage startup that was sold to EMC DSSD in August 2015. Ash also served as CTO of Yahoo, as a CEO of both public and private companies, and is on the board of several technology startups. Ash attended Harvard University, Brown University, and Stanford University. Ash also serves as Pepperdata’s Chairman of the Board.

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James McLean

Founder at Silicon Valley Data Capital

Jim is the founder of Silicon Valley Data Capital and a co-founder of Silicon Valley Data Science. Previously, he was a Venture Partner at Crosslink Capital and has Board seats at Ayla, Coraid (observer), and 365 Main. Prior to joining Crosslink, Jim was the head of US investing for 3i Ventures, a global venture capital fund. Jim’s track record in the venture industry spans nearly two decades with experience at several of the industry’s leading firms. Before 3i, he was a Partner at ComVentures. Previously, he was a founder of Bedrock Capital Partners where he led the Information Technology practice. Prior to Bedrock, he served as a Partner at Highland Capital Partners and as an Associate at Accel Partners.

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Linus Liang

Partner at Signia Ventures

Linus Liang is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in technology and medical devices. He most recently co-founded a company called Embrace, a social enterprise that develops and distributes a low-cost infant incubator for developing countries. Unlike traditional incubators that cost up to $20,000, the Embrace Infant Warmer costs about 1% of this price and works without a constant supply of electricity. He has spent the last five years living in India and China scaling the company, which has now helped over 150,000 babies in 11 different countries. Prior to Embrace, Linus founded several software companies in the mobile and social networking space — the last one resulting in an acquisition by Zynga. Linus has also worked in the corporate sector as a Program Manager at Microsoft, a database researcher at IBM, and on the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz. Linus graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Peter Wagner

Founding Partner at Wing Venture Capital

Peter is a Founding Partner of Wing. He has led investments in dozens of early stage companies, more than 25 of which have gone on to complete IPOs or successful acquisitions. Before founding Wing, Peter helped lead Accel Partners for 15 years as Managing Partner. Prior to joining Accel, Peter was a manager at Silicon Graphics, previously worked with McKinsey and Company, and began his career as a physicist working in nuclear fusion research and aerospace. Peter holds an A.B. in Physics from Harvard College, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

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Greg Sands

Founder and Managing Partner at Costanoa Ventures

An early-stage investor for over 20 years, Greg helps startups analyze and interpret early signals to identify and leverage the most valuable aspects of their solution. As Managing Director at Costanoa, Greg is focused on investing in the next generation of great enterprise technology companies. Prior to founding Costanoa, Greg was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill focusing on early-stage, enterprise technology investments, including Merced Systems, AllBusiness, Quinstreet, Feedburner and Youku.

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Investors

We partner with the technology leaders focused on the Modern Enterprise, an agile workplace built on data and powered by AI.

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Costonoa Ventures has helped hundreds of startups go to market, achieve product-market-fit, and become successful. They focus on early-stage companies because it’s where they have the most impact. They invest mostly in SaaS infrastructure and marketplaces because they believe they change how business gets done.

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Signia Venture Partners Signia Venture Partners is a unique early-stage venture fund dedicated to helping passionate entrepreneurs build impactful, world-changing, and iconic companies. Signia operates as co-founders and investors in five key areas: mobility, enterprise, education, e-commerce, and data and in new disruptive technologies.

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The SVD Capital team represents four generations of enterprise technology investment professionals including venture investors, c-level executives, senior advisors, serial entrepreneurs, and founders. Today, we apply the lessons we’ve learned from these environments to systematically design, test, build, and invest in positive experiences that help you maximize your potential and that of those around you.

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The SVD Capital team represents four generations of enterprise technology investment professionals including venture investors, c-level executives, senior advisors, serial entrepreneurs, and founders. Today, we apply the lessons we’ve learned from these environments to systematically design, test, build, and invest in positive experiences that help you maximize your potential and that of those around you.

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Wing Venture Partners is a venture capital firm specializing in investments in seed/start-ups, early stage, and growth capital. It prefers to invest in business technology companies operating in enterprise, cloud computing, mobility, mobile technology, and data technology areas.

Meet A Few of Our Team Members

Jeremy Hay

Front-End Development

Shekhar Gupta

Big Data

Kimoon Kim

Big Data

What Our Customers Say

Pepperdata allowed us to significantly increase capacity

“Pepperdata allowed us to significantly increase capacity for our Amazon EMR workloads and reduce our EC2 costs by over 50%. We can focus on our business, while they optimize for costs and performance.”

Mark Kidwell Chief Data Architect, Data Platforms and Services

Almost too easy

“Getting set up [with Pepperdata] was a breeze. It was almost too easy.”

Ben Smith VP of Technical Operations, Extole

Top notch

“[Pepperdata’s] support is top notch—they go above and beyond in getting the most of the product. This is a no-brainer for any Big Data workload.”

Verified Customer Enterprise Bank

It was really refreshing

“It was really refreshing …to see how quickly [the Pepperdata process] could move, both to meet our needs and to get the problem solved.”

Ben Smith VP of Technical Operations, Extole

Saved 75%

“Saved 75% cost on [Amazon] EMR… Pepperdata capacity optimizer helped us to reduce the wastage on EMR clusters and increased the efficiency.”

Senior Director Global FinServ company

Pepperdata has really helped

“Our collaboration with Pepperdata has really helped the business.”

Mark Kidwell Chief Data Architect, Data Platforms and Solutions

You see it in the numbers

“I was thinking there’s no way there’s a 30% overhead in [YARN or Hadoop] that everyone is paying that isn’t fixed… But you see it in the numbers [with Pepperdata] that it’s true.”

Ben Smith VP of Technical Operations, Extole

Helps optimize the efficiency

“Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer helps optimize the efficiency of our infrastructure to reduce our spending.”

VP Big Data Solutions Engineering Global Financial Services Customer

They started optimizing everything for us

“We had a lot of challenges with our data platform; getting things to scale, getting things to run cost effectively… All we had to do was turn on the settings with Pepperdata and they started optimizing everything for us.”

Mark Kidwell Chief Data Architect, Data Platforms and Solutions

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Looking for a safe, proven method to reduce waste and cost by 30% or more and maximize value for your cloud environment? Sign up now for a free cost optimization demo to learn how Pepperdata Capacity Optimizer can help you start saving immediately.