[7] The company's founders, Christian Chabot, Pat Hanrahan and Chris Stolte, were researchers at the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University.

[8] They specialized in visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and data cubes,[9] and started the company as a commercial outlet for research at Stanford from 1999 to 2002.

[22][23] The software is able to plot latitude and longitude coordinates and connect to spatial files[24] like Esri Shapefiles, KML, and GeoJSON to display custom geography.

In Tableau, the following data types are supported[29] While at Stanford, founders Hanrahan and Stolte, as well as Diane Tang, created the predecessor to Tableau, named Polaris; Polaris was a data visualization software tool, built with the support of a United States Department of Energy defense program, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI).

[32] Tableau was formally founded in January 2003 by Pat Hanrahan, Christian Chabot, and Chris Stolte, and moved its headquarters to the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, the following year.

[51] The accompanying blog post cited the two main changes as (1) creating a formal complaint process and (2) using freedom of speech as a guiding principle.

[52] In addition, the post announced the creation of an advisory board to help the company navigate future situations that "push the boundaries" of the policy.