FIRN’s History

The dream

In 1995 Clayton M Christensen and Joseph Bower first coined the term ‘Disruptive Technologies’. FIRN Managing Director, Nick Lupis, was in his final year, studying Engineering Science at Auckland University. His business partner and fellow Kiwi, Grant Buckley, was a self-employed contractor at a start-up, learning the art of timely delivery at the sharp end.

Both Nick and Grant travelled extensively and Nick developed his recognition  for emerging software products with potential. He dreamed of bringing them home to New Zealand, disrupting our data ecosystem and introducing innovative corporations to the latest leading-edge technology.

How it all started

Already a Tableau advocate, Nick loved its point-and-click function allowing non-experts to visualise data easily for the first time. The ability to pivot data into all sorts of different perspectives using its viz-SQL tool meant the user was no longer reliant on multiple ports to provide different views. He describes this software for data analysis as a game-changer. 

Partnering with Tableau proved to be the catalyst that opened the market for what became the data stack: complimentary software for data analysis that provides insights companies never dreamed possible.

Tableau had a gap around data ingestion that Alteryx neatly filled and Snowflake delivered yet another missing piece in the data jigsaw. The affordable cloud data warehouse had eluded Nick when he first tried to build one for a client. When he came across Snowflake at an expo in the US, it was like discovering the internet all over again.

FIRN Analytics

In April 2017, FIRN was born and became the first Snowflake partner in APAC. Snowflake joined Tableau and Alteryx in an elite stable of best-of-breed data software. The word was out, FIRN seemed to have the inside track, large corporations started to notice. 

Before long, his network introduced Nick to DataRobot; easy data-modelling for non-techs. Nick saw its potential – software that could do in minutes what he learned to do manually at university. 

In 2017 Nick also met Grant, who became a foundation customer. A year later Grant, who has a background in AI, Data Science, Analytics, and Business Intelligence, joined the company and the FIRN family began to grow.

Software partners, Fivetran, Matillion, Collibra, ThoughtSpot, and dbt joined the FIRN data stack in quick succession, making it quite comprehensive.  FIRN is now one of the fastest-growing tech companies in NZ, featured in the Deloitte Fast-50 Index in 2021.

A holistic approach

Alongside software, FIRN has always offered complimentary support services to smooth the customer journey.  Embedded hands-on consultancy has taken on new importance with the post-pandemic skills shortage. FIRN’s team of expert consultants can provide support for specific projects, a quick start in building visualisations, standing up data warehouses, creating predictive models or solidifying clients’ strategies. 

Unlocking the power to grow your business 

FIRN’s data software consultants skillfully embed data software within organisations. A favourite with change managers, FIRN’s trainers create learners who love their new tools. FIRN may be disruptive but always in a good way!