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Episode 232:

Building a Business Solo: Streaming Data, Synthetic Testing, and Startup Lessons with Michael Drogalis of ShadowTraffic.io

March 12, 2025

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and John welcome Michael Drogalis, Founder of shadwotraffic.io. Michael shares his journey in data, focusing on distributed systems and streaming data. He discusses his background as a software engineer, his work with open-source projects, and founding Distributed Masonry, which was acquired by Confluent. At Confluent, Michael contributed to stream processing technologies like Kafka Streams and KSQL. The conversation covers solopreneurship, synthetic data challenges, and the evolution of streaming technologies, offering valuable insights into innovation and entrepreneurship in the tech industry. Don’t miss it!

Notes:

Highlights from this week’s conversation include:

  • Michael’s Background and Journey in Data (0:24)
  • Synthetic Data Challenges (1:49)
  • Open Source Project Development (4:20)
  • Founding Distributed Masonry (5:56)
  • Acquisition by Confluent (7:27)
  • Introduction to Shadow Traffic (10:57)
  • Observations on Streaming Data (12:33)
  • Importance of Timestamps in Testing (16:22)
  • Customer Workflows with Shadow Traffic (19:09)
  • Artificial Intelligence in Data Generation (22:13)
  • Advantages of Domain-Specific Language (DSL) (25:14)
  • Solopreneurship Insights (26:53)
  • Exit Criteria for Startup Focus (30:12)
  • The Feedback Loop (33:51)
  • Balancing Customer Needs and Vision (35:02)
  • Navigating Administrative Tasks (38:15)
  • Expected Value Mindset (41:00)
  • Solopreneur Efficiency (43:01)
  • Maximizing Velocity (46:06)
  • Final Thoughts and Takeaways (47:34)

 

The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, the CDP for developers. Each week we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.

RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.

About the Podcast

Each week we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.

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