# thorntale

> thorntale (YC W24) is a San Francisco software company that built presentation tools for data storytelling. Instead of screenshotting charts from Looker or Snowflake into Google Slides, teams could connect live data sources directly into decks, so charts stayed interactive and up to date - even re-segmentable during a live Q&A. Founded in 2024 by data scientist Dori Wilson with engineers Ellen Hui and John Stimac, the company later pivoted toward an AI-powered presentation editor and shipped a free AI Presentation Review tool before winding the core Presentations product down at the end of 2025.

- **Founded:** 2024
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** Dori Wilson (Co-Founder & founding CEO (data scientist; SF Fed, Uber, CircleCI, Mux, Pave)), Ellen Hui (Co-Founder & CEO (backend & infrastructure; Microsoft, Cruise, Mux)), John Stimac (Co-Founder & CTO (full-stack & data engineering; Yelp, Clockwise))
- **Team size:** 2-3 (small founding team)
- **Products:** thorntale Presentations, AI presentation editor, AI Presentation Review
- **Notable:** Accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, Raised roughly $500K in pre-seed funding (Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund), Shipped live connectors to Google Sheets, Snowflake and PostgreSQL with native, re-segmentable charts

## Products & services

- **thorntale Presentations** — Presentation software that connects live data sources (Google Sheets, Snowflake, PostgreSQL) directly into slides, with native charting, opinionated templates for product/data/engineering teams, and charts that can be re-segmented mid-presentation for Q&A. A no-signup sandbox demo was available.
- **AI presentation editor** — A later pivot toward an AI-powered slide editor with Notion-style block editing, designer themes, AI slide creation and proofreading, and PDF export.
- **AI Presentation Review** — A free tool to upload presentation slides as a PDF and record yourself speaking to receive actionable feedback. No signup required.

## Achievements

- Accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch
- Raised roughly $500K in pre-seed funding (Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund)
- Shipped live connectors to Google Sheets, Snowflake and PostgreSQL with native, re-segmentable charts
- Launched a free, no-signup AI Presentation Review tool in September 2025

## Latest updates

- **2024-02** — Launched publicly via Y Combinator (Launch YC / Launch HN) as presentation software for data storytelling.
- **2025-09** — Released free AI Presentation Review tool - upload slides as PDF, record yourself, get feedback.
- **2025-12** — Announced that thorntale Presentations would shut down.

## Links

- Website: https://thorntale.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thorntale
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/thorntaleHQ
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thorntale/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thorntale
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thorntale

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/thorntale-yc-w24
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-30