# David Hsu

> David Hsu is the founder and CEO of Retool, a San Francisco-based developer tools company that lets engineers build internal software through a drag-and-drop interface. He founded Retool in 2017 at age 25 after pivoting from a failed fintech startup (Cashew/Oatpay) where he kept having to build internal tools from scratch. A Computer Science and Philosophy graduate from Oxford, Hsu grew Retool to $2M ARR before public launch, achieved a $3.2B valuation by 2022 with $140M in total funding from Sequoia Capital and notable angels including the Stripe founders, and now serves over 10,000 companies including Amazon, Netflix, OpenAI, and the US Army.

- **Role:** Founder & CEO at Retool
- **Organizations:** Retool, Y Combinator
- **From:** Palo Alto, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BA, Computer Science and Philosophy, University of Oxford
- **Known for:** Founded Retool at age 25, growing it to a $3.2B valuation within 5 years, Grew Retool to $2M ARR before any public launch or marketing, Built Retool to $1M ARR with only 3 employees

## Career timeline

- **2013** — Enrolled at University of Oxford to study Computer Science and Philosophy
- **2015** — Co-founded Cashew (Oatpay), a UK peer-to-peer payments app, during senior year at Oxford
- **2017-01** — Cashew accepted into Y Combinator Winter 2017 batch
- **2017-06** — Pivoted from Cashew to found Retool at age 25 after recognizing the internal tools opportunity
- **2017-08** — Presented Retool at Y Combinator Demo Day; signed a $1.5M enterprise pilot deal
- **2018** — Retool publicly launched with approximately 40 customers and $2M ARR
- **2019-10** — Raised Series A led by Sequoia Capital
- **2020-10** — Raised $50M Series B
- **2021-12** — Raised Series C at $1.85B valuation
- **2022-07** — Raised $45M Series C2 at $3.2B valuation; investors include Stripe founders and GitHub's ex-CEO
- **2024** — Retool surpasses $138M ARR; launches State of AI in Internal Tools report
- **2025** — Launched AI AppGen platform; Retool wins Databricks Emerging Partner of the Year; 48% of non-engineers shipping production software with Retool

## Achievements

- Founded Retool at age 25, growing it to a $3.2B valuation within 5 years
- Grew Retool to $2M ARR before any public launch or marketing
- Built Retool to $1M ARR with only 3 employees
- Secured $140M+ in total funding from Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, Stripe co-founders, and other top investors
- Featured on Forbes Under 30
- Retool adopted by 10,000+ companies including Amazon, Netflix, OpenAI, DoorDash, and the US Army
- Retool automated over 100 million hours of work for customers
- Maintained near cashflow break-even operations at unicorn scale
- Won 2025 Databricks Emerging Partner of the Year
- Successfully pivoted from a failing fintech startup to build a billion-dollar company

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — Retool wins 2025 Databricks Emerging Partner of the Year for deep data intelligence platform integration
- **2025-10** — Launched AI AppGen platform at Retool Summit, enabling natural language enterprise app building
- **2025-10** — Released survey showing 48% of non-engineers are shipping production code using Retool
- **2026-02** — Appeared on Scaling DevTools podcast discussing AI use cases and 'tomorrow's developers'
- **2024-02** — Featured on Latent Space podcast discussing State of AI and why StackOverflow usage dropped 50%

## Links

- Website: https://davidh.su
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdhsu
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/dvdhsu
- GitHub: https://github.com/dvdhsu
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/retoolapp/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/david-hsu
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-27