This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Apurva Mehta, Co-Founder and CEO of Responsive, about event-driven applications and the necessary infrastructure. Apruva shares his journey from LinkedIn to Confluent and eventually founding Responsive, focusing on managing event-driven applications in the cloud. The discussion covers the definition of event-driven applications, the significance of latency and state in event processing, and the evolution of Kafka and Kafka Streams. They also explore the challenges of managing Kafka in production, the developer experience with Kafka Streams, and the operational complexities of running distributed stateful applications. Apruva highlights Responsive’s approach to simplifying the management of these applications, the potential for innovation in event-driven architectures, and more. 

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Chad Sanderson, the CEO at Gable.ai. During the episode, Chad discusses the complexities of managing the data supply chain, emphasizing the importance of data quality, feedback loops, and aligning incentives within organizations. He shares his journey from analyst to data infrastructure leader at companies like Oracle, Sephora, and Microsoft. Chad introduces his company, Gable, which tackles upstream data quality issues. He critiques traditional data catalogs and advocates for a more dynamic, decentralized approach. The conversation explores the role of metadata, the integration of data quality checks in the software development lifecycle, the need for cultural shifts towards data responsibility, the significance of full lineage graphs and semantic metadata, treating data as a product with quality gates, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Kevin Liu, Software Engineer at Stripe. During the episode, Kevin discusses data infrastructure challenges and the development of data products. He also shares insights on the importance of metadata management and the role of catalogs in maintaining data consistency across various systems. The conversation also covers open-source projects like the Python Iceberg library and the future of databases in the cloud, the ease of use of internal tools, the integration of data for builders, the balance between simplicity and functionality in user interfaces, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Mike Driscoll, the CEO of Rill Data. During the episode, Mike recounts his journey from the Human Genome Project to developing the Druid engine, which was created to handle massive advertising data. He discusses Druid’s adoption by major companies and its evolution, emphasizing the importance of speed, simplicity, and scalability in data tools. The dialogue covers the progression of BI tools, the role of object stores, and the integration of AI in data technology. Mike also touches on the significance of SQL and AI’s influence on data visualization, what he would do if he wasn’t working in data, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Kunal Agarwal, the Co-Founder and CEO of Unravel Data. During the episode, Kunal discusses the evolution of data operations and the role of Unravel in simplifying these processes. The group discusses the shift towards real-time workloads, the impact of AI and machine learning, and the challenges of cloud migration and managing complex data environments. Kunal shares his journey from fashion to data management and emphasizes the importance of observability for data ops teams. The conversation also covers cost optimization, the productivity of data teams, reliability of data systems, the unique cost management considerations in cloud versus on-premises setups, and more. 

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Tony Wang, Graduate Research Assistant (PhD) at Stanford University. During the episode, Tony discusses his journey from China to studying electrical and hardware engineering at MIT, his transition to data processing systems for his Ph.D., and the academic-industry connection. Tony shares insights on cloud data processing, the limitations of academic hardware projects compared to industry giants like NVIDIA, and the potential for software innovation in academia. He also delves into his current research focus on time series data management, the challenges of integrating different data systems, the goal of improving data processing efficiency, the sales aspect of his research, and more. 

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Peter Chapman, Peter is a consultant who specializes in helping PLG companies drive more revenue with data. With a background in data and revenue operations, Peter shares his experiences in building data stacks at startups like Heroku, emphasizing the early consideration of data architecture to avoid future issues. He highlights the significance of a cohesive data stack for product-led growth companies and the unique challenges faced by open-source companies in commercializing their projects. The conversation also explores the operationalization of data, the importance of aligning sales with a company’s technical ethos, debating the balance between inference and training costs, the strategic approach to margins by focusing on enterprise features over infrastructure reselling, and more. If you’d like to contact Peter about his advisory services, his email is peter@chapman-coaching.com.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Rishabh Bhargava, Co-Founder and CEO of refuel. During the episode, the group discusses the evolution of AI, machine learning, and large language models (LLMs). Rish shares his background and the inception of refuel, which focuses on making clean and reliable data accessible for businesses through data cleaning, labeling, and enrichment using LLMs. The conversation explores the impact of LLMs on data quality, the challenges of implementing LLM technology, and the user experience of working with LLMs. They also touch upon the importance of confidence scores in machine learning and the iterative process of model training, a practical use case involving refuel and RudderStack, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Viren Baraiya, the Co-Founder and CTO of orkes.io. During the episode, Viren discusses the evolution of orchestration in the context of AI and large-scale systems. The group discusses the transition from Viren’s work at Netflix to founding orkes, the challenges of integrating AI into applications, and the importance of orchestration to manage these complexities. He also highlights the non-deterministic nature of AI, the need for guardrails, and the potential for AI to change technology interaction. The episode also covers the recent move of Netflix’s Conductor project to a community foundation, the future of AI in business and its impact on job creation, and more.

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with a panel of experts as Wes McKinnyey (Cofounder, Voltron), Ryan Blue (Co-Founder and CEO, Tabular), Chris Riccomini (Seed Investor, Various Startups), Pedro Pedreira (Software Engineer, Meta), all share their thoughts around the topic of composable data stacks. During the conversation, the group chats about the importance of open standards and APIs for efficient interoperability in data management systems, the evolution of data workloads, the need for specialization, and the challenges in building composable components. The conversation also covered the significance of an intermediate representation (IR) for decoupling various layers of data systems, the complexities of data types, and the desire for more secure data sharing methods. The panelists explored the evolution of open standards and the trade-offs between composable and monolithic systems, expressing excitement about new data infrastructure projects and technologies, modular execution engines, new query interfaces, standardizing policy decisions across different data management platforms, and more.