Episodes

In this episode, we debut a new format where engineer-founders discuss key tech topics. Joined by Graham Thompson of Privacy Dynamics and Debo Ray of DevZero, we dive into modern software development. Topics include the role of developer productivity, challenges of new productivity tools and the problems that arise around data access. We also discuss the evolving role of database administrators, the shift to cloud-hosted dev environments and the impact remote development environments have on tec...

In this episode, I have the pleasure of hosting Spencer Kimball, a former Google engineer turned tech entrepreneur, and now the Co-Founder & CEO of Cockroach Labs. Spencer shares his journey from working at Google to creating his project, Viewfinder, which eventually led to the birth of CockroachDB. Spencer discusses his advice for founders as they approach the challenge of starting a company, finding co-founders, and more. We also delve into the decision to change CockroachDB's licensing to pro...

Today on the podcast, I interview DJ Patil, an entrepreneur, investor, scientist and leader in public policy. The former (and first) U.S. Chief Data Scientist, DJ wrote the book on being Data Driven (literally: O'Reilly Data Driven) and now puts his knowledge to work as General Partner of Great Point Ventures. Highlights 00:29 - Intro [1:50] - A discussion of the “Sexiest Job in History: Data Scientist” HBR article and how data science has changed since that article's publication [5:00] - As fa...

Today on the podcast, I interview Matt Fuller, the co-founder of Starburst. Matt has worked in data for years .... Highlights [1:00] - How Matt got into data & the C-Store paper which led to him joining Vertica, an early columnar database prior to technologies like Hadoop, HDFS or Parquet [3:45] - The increasing adoption of OSS data storage tools and the growth of the Hadoop ecosystem that ultimately led up to Presto/Trino [6:00] - How Matt took the plunge as an engineer-founder to become a co-...

In this episode, I interview Eric Sammer, the founder & CEO of Decodable. Eric was previously an engineering manager at Cloudera, and before that the founder of Rocana, an early observability company that was sold to Splunk. Eric has an amazing perspective on the architecture of data systems based on his years of experience in the field. We chat about his thoughts on the opportunities and challenges specifically around streaming data. Highlights: [1:45] - Eric's start in ad-tech, which led him ...

Josh Benamram is the the co-founder & CEO of Databand, a data observability company acquired by IBM. We’ll discuss Josh’s segue from an early career in venture capital, into becoming a product manager for a business intelligence company (Sisense) and then becoming a founder himself, where he eventually exited his company to IBM. Highlights: [2:00] - How Josh's start in finance led to his career in startups [6:25] - How working on cloud data warehouse connectors at Sisense, plus the growing need...

Alexis is the co-founder and CTO of Datadog, which was founded in NYC in 2010. He shares with the Pete the origin story of the company, how & why raising capital was very different in that period, and their thought process as engineer-founders in arriving at the right product to build for their customers. We also chat a bit with Alexis about his angel investing activity and what types of founder characteristics he looks for in an ideal angel investment. Highlights: [2:10] - Alexis nurturing his...

Brad is a repeat founder and is currently the co-founder of Census, an SF company that syncs customer data to go-to-market tools. Brad shares his path from initially joining a startup as an engineer and continuing on to become a co-founder himself. Highlights: [1:20]: on choosing Ruby for early stage product hacking & data integration [5:01]: Brad’s path from AWS engineer to startup engineer to becoming a founder himself [7:44]: insights on how to listen to customers and figure out the right pr...

Pete chats with Wes McKinney, the inspiration behind many popular OSS data & data science tools like pandas, Apache Arrow, Ibis and others. We learn from Wes' experience in starting businesses around OSS tooling, and hear his thoughts on monetization, ecosystem building and challenges in starting his companies as an engineer-founder. Wes is currently the co-founder & CTO of Voltron Data, which is building accelerated computing technologies powered by Apache Arrow. Highlights: [0:50]: Wes’ thou...

Join us for an interview with Max Beauchemin, the original creator of both Apache Superset and Apache Airflow and the founder and CEO of Preset, the company built around Apache Superset. [1:37] Motivations for building Apache Superset [5:30] Open source project KPIs [7:19] Differences between Preset and Superset [11:18] Superset deployment methods [13:02] Superset metrics layer (dbt integration) [14:33] Superset embedded use cases 👉 👉 Don't forget to join us at Data Council Austin - where hund...

Pete interviews Lindsay Pettingill, CEO & Founder of Iggy. Iggy allows users to quickly understand physical locations to make better investment and management decisions. Lindsay gives us an overview of Iggy, how working at Airbnb informed founding Iggy, what neighborhood data is, and what the long term vision for Iggy is. Check it out! Highlights: [1:20] What does Iggy do? [5:20] How did your experience working at Airbnb inform founding Iggy? [10:06] Neighborhood data [13:22] Iggy’s long term v...

Join us for an interview with Shinji Kim, the CEO and founder of Select Star. She walks us through the data catalog landscape, where Select Star sits within that, how the startup thinks about data integration, and lastly she outlines how the data governance ecosystem is changing. Check it out! Highlights: [0:45]: Starting a company as an engineer (Concord Systems) [6:15]: The connection between Select Star and Concord Systems [10:57]: Controlling the inception of data so we know what ends up in...

Join us for an interview with Joey Gonzalez, one of the founding members of the UC Berkeley RISE Lab and the founder of Aqueduct. Aqueduct is helping take data science into production systems. Listen to this episode to learn more! Highlights: [1:48] How Machine Learning Became Useful blog post [5:04] Building and deploying predictive models [8:36] Learnings from Turi [10:55] Real time prediction at Apple [13:19] Founding story of Aqueduct [16:42] How is Aqueduct differentiated from other projec...

Shirshanka Das spent a decade leading data architecture at LinkedIn where he was the co-creator of DataHub, Apache Gobblin, Databus, Espresso and other high scale data infrastructure projects. Today he is the co-founder and CEO of Acryl Data, listen and learn what problems they are seeking to solve. Highlights: [1:10] Leaving LinkedIn and starting Acryl [4:33] Datahub growth [8:12] Where will the data catalog market segment be in 5 to 10 years? [12:07] Unlimited context within the operating sys...

Get an update from Nick Schrock on the dagster project. This episode discusses the world of data orchestration at large, when and how to implement dagster, and the broader competitive landscape. Highlights: [0:34] The Dagster project and the problems it solves [3:05] Software defined assets and how they work [4:55] Example of how this can be implemented [6:30] Promotion of Dagster pipelines from development to production [10:34] Dagster cloud overview [13:15] When to adopt a data orchestrator [...