The PRQL: Solving Identity in Marketing vs. Security

Eric Dodds 00:05
Welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel where we talked about the show we just recorded to give you a sneak peek, a little taste of what’s to come in the episode that will be published. We had Jeff Chao on a three-peat guests guest Kostas, which is really cool. And we’ve had the chance now, because the show is actually I guess I can say, a couple of years old. Now, we’ve had the chance to follow him through his career a little bit. So we met him when he was a Netflix, he was on the show when he was at strike. And we just had him on and he started a new company called Abby, and cost us I was the part of our show, of course, this isn’t gonna surprise you, that I love the most is talking about solving identity problems. Now Abby’s focused on solving identity and security problems inside of an organization. But the way that Jeff talked about it was so similar to identity challenges that I’ve faced on the marketing side for years, which is really fascinating. So what’s your take on that? How similar are those?

Kostas Pardalis 01:08
I mean, from the point of view of like, what kind of methodologies and techniques you can use, I think they’re pretty similar. Like, are the ends you pretty much do the same thing? Like, can you try like to create some kind of like, graph there that associates different identities into one, right? So it is the same thing? The difference? Of course, like in the details, like you have a completely different problem space, you have very different sources of data like, and actually like, well, one of the one of the interesting things is that insecurity you start with the existence of an identity, right? Like you kind of like that, yeah. While in marketing, you try to surface identity with, like, slightly different or mix like problem, like much more noisy. But of course, like also, like, games are like completely different, right? Like, if someone steals an identity as part of like a security incident. That’s where all the like, let’s say, a different problem to have them not figuring out one out of 10 of your users will

Eric Dodds 02:23
slightly worse than sending someone the wrong coupon in an email.

Kostas Pardalis 02:28
Probably yeah. Yeah, probably. So yeah, I don’t say that, like, one’s like, bigger than the other. It’s just like, it’s itself like a kind of like problem. Yeah, in the middle of like, from a technical perspective, like, the methodologies that you’re doing, like, the tools that you’re going to use are like, probably quite similar. And I think that’s like a great example, to communicate to people like what why there’s like a huge difference between building a technology and getting a product to market.

Eric Dodds 02:59
Yeah. Yep. I agree, I think. So one thing I do have to call this out, he said that solving identity in the context of marketing is an inspiration. So being, you know, marketing being an inspiration.

Kostas Pardalis 03:12
I mean, you are like you were many people.

Eric Dodds 03:16
Actually dig all that out. The one redeeming thing we’ve talked about, you know, marketers doing on the show.

Kostas Pardalis 03:23
Yeah, we still like, considering marketing as lights, you know, the bad doctor, like, that’s true. Most people, that’s true, can imagine our life without marketing, like so forth.

Eric Dodds 03:37
Maybe we need to start talking about sales. But that’s we can do a shop talk on that. What I was going to say before shining the spotlight on on marketing was that I actually think, and this is, you know, definitely listen to the show. Because of this, I actually think that it’s the reverse the way that Jeff is approaching solving this problem inside of a company, I think, put certain principles up front that make the challenges way easier. And graph was one thing that he talked about, right, considering the problem in the context of using graph technologies as a primary component of the stack. Whereas in marketing, generally, when you get to graph you’ve, you know, sort of gone through a huge amount of pain, doing a lot of different things. And then you sort of get to the point where, you know, okay, well, we’re gonna use graph to solve this. And actually, I loved that. And I that was a great example, to your point of Jeff, really bringing a unique mindset into this and sort of thinking about the first principles of this in a different way. So I love that aspect of the show, too.

Kostas Pardalis 04:41
Absolutely. I totally agree. And I can’t wait to have him again, like in a couple of months, because he’s like, very new company. And then like, in a couple of months from now, like he will have like, many more like stories to share with us. So we should do that.

Eric Dodds 04:57
We will. All right, well done. definitely catch this episode. Jeff is one of our favorites. Jeff is a subscriber to the show. So if you want to follow in the footsteps of someone who’s built technologies at Netflix, Stripe, and other companies, definitely subscribe and we’ll catch you on the next one.