About us

Grist Labs is a software company. We care about software because it matters inordinately for today’s world — for productivity, communication, decision-making, human progress, and life pursuits.

Our software principles

1. Software should be for the people: to enable and serve them, not limit and control.
2. The security and privacy of software users are fundamental. They must not be for sale or treated as optional.
3. Free and open source software provides the basic foundation of trust in embodying the above values.
4. Quality of software is important, including functionality, reliability, usability, and performance.

Who we are

Grist Labs was founded in 2014 and has been self-funded ever since.

The company was started by brothers Dmitry and Stan Sagalovskiy. Dmitry previously co-founded Hudson River Trading in 2002 (a high-frequency trading firm, which still exists and is going strong), and New York Math Circle in 2008 (an educational non-profit, which still exists and is going strong).

In 2017, Paul Fitzpatrick joined Grist Labs as CTO. Paul co-founded Data Commons Cooperative in 2012 (a co-op of over 30 member organizations, which still exists and is going strong). He brought his own passion for democratic flows of data, and experience as the creator and maintainer of multiple popular open source data tools.

Grist Labs was founded shortly after mass surveillance disclosures exposed the vulnerability of even the most respected cloud services. The best remedy we knew was open source code, transparent security practices, and enabling users to use their own infrastructure.

Grist was originally envisioned as installable software with end-to-end encrypted sharing – software that users can trust. Users would have full control of data, and would not need to trust the cloud. A SaaS service, however, is simpler for users, easier to start with, and easier to share with others. That’s what we released.

Since then, we’ve open-sourced Grist and made it possible to run a Grist instance on your own infrastructure. We’ve been working on making Grist run everywhere. A version of Grist can now run on the desktop of every major OS.

The original vision of “software users can trust” has grown into the vision and values described on this page.

Grist Labs is headquartered in New York City, with a distributed team that spans half the globe: from Canada to South Africa, and from California to Poland. (Our users span the rest of the globe!) Read more about our team.

Vision of Grist

Grist is our flagship product that we describe as the evolution of the spreadsheet.

What is Grist?

1. Grist is general purpose. It is not opinionated. The long tail of use cases matters. It works well for common business needs (like bookkeeping) and unique non-commercial use cases (like Morse code flashcards).
2. Grist addresses a wide range of data-related needs, for which people have turned to spreadsheets, online databases, and no-code platforms. Grist organizes data like a database or an app, while analyzing and visualizing data like a spreadsheet.
3. Grist includes privacy and security by default. User is in control of sharing and access.
4. Grist does not lock you in. Data is portable and users can take it with them. Interoperability is prioritized.

Who uses Grist?

1. Individuals and teams, working on business, personal, or community projects.
2. Users without a software engineering or IT background. People of any background are able not only to use solutions created by others, but to create new solutions by themselves to organize, analyze, and collaborate on data.
3. Users with technical expertise, who are able to enhance functionality, connect it to other systems, and add controls to help reliability, auditability, or maintenance.

Bridging technical and non-technical users has its own benefit: it allows solutions to evolve. Solutions can be created by end users without waiting for IT teams, then technical expertise can be brought in if needed.

Grist essentials

1. Relational database that’s easy to create and use by non-technical people.
2. Data/view separation, for app-like functionality, easy to set up and use by non-technical people.
3. Sharing and access controls that allow users to address complex real-world access requirements.
4. Open source, for transparency and trust in the software’s promises, and freedom for technical users to improve it. Read more on this.
5. Options to run self-managed, or on the desktop; reliance on a service provider is optional.
6. Support for spreadsheet-like formulas, to extend use cases and empower users.
7. Extensibility via APIs and other integration points.
8. Data is portable, allowing lossless export in a well-supported format, and common export/import options.
9. Comprehensive documentation and learning materials.
10. High quality implementation, well-tested, with a focus on reliability and performance.

We believe that good software can have a profound positive impact on people’s lives. We are glad to work with others who share these beliefs. We are excited to bring our work to the world.

Grist is a proud supporter of