Founding
Builders
Every tool you depend on was unproven once, and somebody chose it early — before it was the obvious choice, while it was still being shaped by the people who used it.
Data Oil is one database for every kind of data you hold: rows, documents, relationships, full-text and vectors, on a single SQL surface, each answer returned with the evidence behind it. It is in production today behind three products.
It is also early — early enough that the people who build on it now will help decide what it becomes. We are opening fifty seats to the builders who want to do exactly that.
Why build on it
Six reasons that hold up after the demo
One engine, not five
Rows, documents, relationships, full-text search and vector search live in one place and answer one query language. There is no pipeline between four systems to keep in sync, and nothing to reconcile at 2am when one of them falls behind.
Answers that show their evidence
Ask in plain language and get an answer that cites the records it came from — so you can trust it, act on it, and audit it later. Not a list of documents to read: the answer, and where it came from.
It already speaks what you use
The PostgreSQL wire protocol, an Entity Framework Core provider, a plain HTTP API and an MCP server for your agents. Your drivers, your ORM and your tools connect with no adapter to write and no SDK to wait on.
One bill you can read
$0.02 per thousand units, with every rate shown in your UI before anything is charged. No seat tiers, no per-feature upsell, no line at the end of the month you cannot explain.
Secure down to the column
Your model, your key, your control. Access is enforced to the individual column, and your data stays where you say it stays — a thing you can hand to a customer in writing.
Nothing to install to begin
A public, read-only sandbox is live now. Query it from your own code in a few minutes, with no sign-up and no card, and see the shape of it before you ever ask for a seat.
The founding-builder seat
Fifty seats. An application, not a queue.
The sandbox is shared and read only. If you are building something real, build it on your own Data Oil databases, as one of our first fifty founding builders.
Why fifty? Because fifty is the number we can support properly. It is an application, not first come, first served — tell us what you are building, and we read every one.
What you get
- Room to build: once the product is released and in use, your free storage cap is raised to 500 GB for 12 months.
- Featured on “Built on Data Oil”: we showcase your project, you showcase us.
- A direct line to the founders, in a private channel where we answer quickly.
- A price lock: whatever you pay at launch, you keep paying for two years.
- A vote on the roadmap and early previews, with a public board so you can see what happened to your requests. Your vote shapes what we build next; we cannot promise every request ships.
What we ask in return
- Ship using Data Oil within 60 days.
- One short paragraph on how Data Oil will benefit you.
- Permission to use your project as a public example.
How to apply
Email info@dataoil.tech with the subject “Founding builder application”, and answer these:
- What are you building, in two sentences?
- Who is it for?
- What are you using for data today?
- A link to something you’ve shipped before (optional).
- Can you ship using Data Oil within 60 days? (yes / not sure)
- May we feature your project publicly? (yes / no)
- Where did you hear about us?
We reply by email.
Apply by email · info@dataoil.tech
The “Built on Data Oil” showcase, the private channel and the roadmap board open with the first founding builders. Until then, where the product is going next is on the roadmap.
Built on Data Oil
The fifty projects will live here
This is the wall. Each founding builder gets a tile — what they built, who it is for, and a link to it. Right now the wall is empty. That is the honest state of something just beginning, and it is the whole of the invitation: the first project on this page has not been written yet.
Ship something real on Data Oil, and it goes on the wall.
One tile, one builder, one thing that works.
Fifty tiles, waiting for fifty projects.
The best time to build on a new database is before everyone agrees it is the obvious one.