This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Sandy Ryza, Lead Engineer at Dagster. During the episode, Sandy shares insights on data cleaning, data engineering processes, and the need for improved tools. He introduces Dagster, an orchestrator that focuses on assets like tables, datasets, and machine learning models, and contrasts it with traditional workflow systems. He also explains Dagster’s integration with DBT, while also exploring the changing dynamics in data roles, the impact of modern tooling, the potential for increased creativity in the field, and more. 

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Katie Bauer, the Head of Data at GlossGenius. During the episode, Katie shares her journey in data science, starting from academia to working in various industries including natural language search, social media, and now the beauty and salon space. She discusses the evolution of the data scientist role, the challenges faced in different companies, and the importance of understanding the specific needs of different business models. She also highlights the potential of using data products to provide value back to businesses, the importance of having an analytics engineer in an organization, and more. 

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Tasso Argyros, the Founder & CEO of ActionIQ. During the episode, Tasso shares his journey from Stanford to founding ActionIQ. He discusses the evolution of database architecture, the challenges of handling customer data at scale, and the importance of making data accessible to business users. Tasso also discusses his experience selling MySpace as his first customer and how ActionIQ bridges the gap between data engineering and marketing. He emphasizes the importance of customer interaction, understanding business user needs, creating a flexible, workload-agnostic infrastructure, the future of customer data platforms, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Paolo Platter, Zhamak Dehghani, and Melissa Logan about the concept of data mesh, a complex topic that encompasses both technical and organizational aspects. During this conversation, the group discusses the transition from a monolithic IT team to a data mesh model, the implementation and adoption of data mesh, and the concept of data products within the data mesh framework. The episode emphasizes the importance of empowering domain practitioners and building platforms that support the creation and sharing of data products to enable the implementation of data mesh, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Ben Miller, the Co-Founder and CEO of Fundrise. During the episode, Ben discusses how Fundrise democratizes investment opportunities in asset classes such as corporate real estate and venture capital. He explains how Fundrise is a data-driven company and discusses its approach to data modeling and analysis while also sharing his views on the future of data infrastructure, emphasizing the need for it to be accessible to non-technical users. The conversation also covers the role of emotions in investment decisions, the challenges of data analysis in the financial industry, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Pedro Pedreira, a Software Engineer at Meta (formerly Facebook). During the conversation, Pedro discusses the intricacies of data infrastructure and the concept of composability. He delves into the specifics of data latency, explaining the spectrum of requirements from low-latency dashboards to high-latency batch queries. Pedro also discusses the concept of vectorization in database operations and the benefits it brings. The conversation shifts to the development and usage of certain libraries and the goal of converging dialects in data computation. Don’t miss this great episode!

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Colin Zima, the Co-Founder and CEO of Omni, a company building consistency of a shared data model with the freedom of SQL. During the episode, Colin, a former Looker employee and Co-Founder of Omni, shares insights into Looker’s impact on the data industry, its unique architecture, and the role it played in the evolution of data analytics. He also discusses the concept of an analytics engineer, the balance between governance and flexibility in data modeling, the future of business intelligence, the merging of SQL and Python, the vision for Omni, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Travis Henry and Hillary Carpio of Snowflake. Travis works as the Director of SDR Operations while Hillary is Head of ABM. During the episode, Travis and Hillary discuss the importance of data in their marketing and sales strategies. They delve into the types of data they use, the challenges of data overload and the importance of a strong partnership between marketing and data teams. They also share their experience of writing a book about their unique approach at Snowflake. The conversation further explores the role of sales and marketing in targeting different personas within an organization, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with David Yaffe and Johnny Graettinger, Co-Founders of Estuary, a company building the next generation of real-time data integration solutions. During the episode, David and Johnny discuss streaming technology, the challenges of real-time streaming, the importance of low latency and high-scale data processing in the ad tech industry. They delve into the reasons behind building Estuary, its unique approach to decoupling storage and computing, and its focus on real-time updates and scalability. They also touch on the complexities of state management in streaming applications, data mesh, the impact of streaming on data processing and orchestration, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric chats with Mark Huang, Co-Founder and Chief Architect at Gradient, a platform that helps companies build custom AI applications by making it easy to fine tune foundational models and deploy them into production. During the episode, Mark discusses the role of Gradient in simplifying the usage and adoption of LLMs by packaging open-source models into a service. Mark highlights the importance of collaboration and data sharing among enterprises for model development, the impact of LLMs on enterprises, the challenges of operationalizing LLMs, the future of AI and its potential, and more.