From that experience, it was clear that every company was rapidly becoming a data company, and that there was a tremendous shortage of talent available to assist companies on their journey,” Knapp told TechCrunch in an email interview. Despite competition from startups like Matillion and Astronomer, Ascend’s user count expanded across customers including News Corp., Afresh and Harry’s as the platform began automating more than 10 million data processing jobs each month, Knapp says.