This was the seed that started Plotly.
When we first started developing our technology, the tools for scientific and data analysis simply were not keeping pace with business needs. In our quest to make data and knowledge sharing more accessible, we focused on promoting the use of technology in these ways:
Use the web as a data science platform.
We focused on the most commonly used platform to enable sharing of complex data and models. By making it easy for data scientists to create, design, and build web interfaces for complex data and models, end users could interface with data interactively and online in any web browser.
Power discovery with open source.
We are firm believers in the power of the open-source community and the innovation that results from sharing and community development. For data science to keep pace with business needs, we focused on developing a core technology that is open-source and free, enabling greater sharing and faster innovation.
Provide unlimited flexibility.
As global coding literacy has increased, particularly the growth of Python and R, code-based analyses are supplanting that of point-and-click software for everything from data analysis and exploration to complex AI and Machine Learning models. Our solution would build on these flexible coding environments and enable businesses to go farther, faster.
Remove language as a barrier.
Language agnostic coding tools prevent duplicate effort and accelerate innovation. We aim to create software that enables developers, data scientists, and quants everywhere to use the coding tools of their choice.
Enable shared goals across the organization.
Business groups, Data Science, and Tech teams need to align and have a common language and data platform. At Plotly, we develop software that’s designed to enable data scientists, analysts and technical teams to work hand-in-hand with business teams, giving everyone in a company direct access to data and models.
Plotly Timeline
2015
Plotly’s Python and R interactive graphing libraries become the most downloaded in the world.
Plotly launches the first open-source enterprise product in the data science space, making the core technology, Plotly.js, free and accessible under the MIT license.
2017
Plotly launches Dash 1.0.0.
Plotly’s graphing libraries top 10M downloads and 2M site visitors per month.
2019
Sales and marketing executives join Plotly from U.S. giants MathWorks, SAS & Tableau.
Plotly releases Plotly.express, enabling users to create interactive graphs in a single line of code.
Dash 1.0.0 is released!
Plotly releases Dash for R, providing full Dash OSS and enterprise offerings to R programmers.
Plotly.py 4.0.0 is released!
Emma Gouillart joins Plotly as Scientist-in-Residence.
2013 & 2014
Jack, Chris, Matthew and Alex found Plotly and officially open the Montreal headquarters.
Plotly.py is released.
MHS Capital leads Series-A investment round.
2016
Plotly holds PLOTCON, a data visualization conference in NYC, and Chris showcases a preview of Dash.
2018
Vanedge Capital and In-Q-Tel lead Series-B investment round to fuel Plotly’s growth.
2020
Scale AI awards $1.7M to Plotly to speed innovation in supply chain AI technology.
Plotly closes Series-C investment round with NVIDIA as a new partner.
Dash Enterprise launches on Azure marketplace.
Jon Mease joins Plotly as Chief Scientist.
The main website, plotly.com, relaunches with refreshed branding.
Dash Enterprise 4.0 is released, introducing Data Science Workspaces and integrations with Databricks and Snowflake.
Plotly.py 4.10 and Plotly.js 1.55 are released!
Dash for Julia is released, further making Dash language-agnostic.
Plotly In The Wild
50M+
Plotly users
33K
GitHub stars for Dash, Plotly.py, & Plotly.js
350K
Monthly Dash downloads
4M
Monthly downloads of Plotly open-source graphing libraries.
Our Leadership Team

Jack Parmer
Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer

Chris Parmer
Co-founder & Chief Product Officer

Alex Johnson
Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Ben Postlethwaite
Chief Solutions Architect

Rob Williams
Chief Customer Officer

Jon Mease
Chief Scientist

Gary Young
EVP Sales & Alliances

Alexandre Bernier
VP Finance

Chelsea Douglas
VP Customer Success

Derek Nogiec
VP Business Development & Strategic Alliances

Laura Gray
Head of People & Operations
Our Supporters





Grant Supporters



Advisors
Fernando Perez
Fernando Perez is the creator of IPython and Project Jupyter and he also serves as assistant professor in Statistics at UC Berkeley and a Faculty Scientist in the Department of Data Science and Technology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a National Academy of Science Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow and a Senior Fellow and founding co-investigator of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. He is a co-founder of the NumFOCUS Foundation, and a member of the Python Software Foundation.
Moody Hadi
Moody Hadi is the Senior Director of Innovation and Product Research Risk Services at Standard and Poor’s. He leads a team focusing on applying modelling techniques, such as machine learning and data sciences to extract information value for risk management. Previously, he was Co-Head of Research and Development at Credit Market Analysis (CMA), where he led the model development and research on Credit Default Swaps pricing and risk management. Prior to CMA, Moody was at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group and before that had several senior roles in analytical consulting.
Matthew Sundquist
Matt Sundquist studied philosophy at Harvard College, where he was the student body president. Previously Matt has been a writer for SCOTUSblog.com, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Student Fellow at Harvard Law School. He worked as a Product Manager at Water.org and Change.org, and was on the Privacy Team at Facebook. He was previously the COO of Plotly, where he was a Co-Founder. He is now the General Manager of Fly Ranch, a 3,800 acre ranch in Nevada.