The Data Stack Show

Latest Episodes:

27: Building B2B Marketplaces with Mike Luby from LeafLink Mar 03, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas are joined by Mike Luby, director of engineering at LeafLink. LeafLink is a cannabis industries B2B wholesale marketplace where thousands of brands can manage and track their orders and relationships.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

The infrastructure LeafLink provides for the cannabis supply chain and how it deals with compliance issues. (2:03)
Structuring product management organization to launch high-velocity teams (8:08)
How it started vs. How it's going (12:00)
Containerization and leveraging AWS tools for LeafLink's stack (13:19)
Shifting to an event-driven architecture (24:46)
Using APIs to provide critical integrations for customers to automate and optimize their businesses (32:47)
Keeping an eye for the future but building for today (36:56)

The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack. 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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

26: Democratizing the Insurance Market with Daniel Gremmell from Policygenius Inc. Feb 24, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas are joined by Daniel Gremymell, head of data at Policygenius, Inc. Policygenius, an insurance marketplace, strives to make it easy for people to understand their options, compare quotes, and buy a policy all in one place with help from licensed experts.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

What brought Daniel to Policygenius and how his background in industrial engineering and statistics impacts what he does (1:49)
Policygenius consolidates carriers and pairs insurance customers with live experts to get the best prices and plans (6:29)
How data analysts and data scientists re-shape the customer experience of selecting insurance (10:36)
How roles and titles like "head of data" are changing the industry (24:32)
Organizing a company with structured embedding (27:28)
Policygenius' data stack (31:31)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

25: MLOps and Feature Stores with Willem Pienaar from Tecton Feb 17, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Data Stack Show, Kostas is joined by Willem Pienaar, tech lead at Tecton to discuss machine learning, features and feature stores.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

Willem Pienaar's background in South Africa and southeast Asia and from Goject to Tecton (1:58)
Tecton was founded by the builders of Uber's Michaelangelo (6:37)
Defining features and their life cycles (10:05)
Comparing a feature store to a database (16:40)
Data architecture in a feature store (26:16)
How feature stores evolve as a company expands (30:12)
Main touchpoints between the feature and the data infrastructure (37:59)
How Tecton manages productizing complex architectures (41:44)
How Feast and Tecton work together (45:12)
Tecton impressing VCs and preparing for a competitive, emerging market (48:14)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

24: Demystifying AI with Duc Haba Feb 10, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Data Stack Show, Eric is joined by Duc Haba, an AI researcher and enterprise mobility solution architect consultant who most recently did AI consulting work with Cognizant. Their discussion revolves around demystifying artificial intelligence and why so many people either fear AI or place too much trust in it. Duc talks about some of the AI projects he has worked on, some successes and some failures, and points to how the data biases that humans bring into the models can radically alter the outcome of those endeavors.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

Duc's background with AI and getting to work with LeVar Burton (1:44)
Demystifying AI and coming up with a definition for it (3:34)
Misplaced fears of AI (7:53)
Misplaced trust in AI (10:36)
Public versus hidden AI (13:58)
Acquiring the data needed for to train AI models (23:11)
Examples of interesting AI projects Duc has worked on (27:58)
Where to go to learn more about AI (35:06)
Thinking of AI as something that can help your business do something better with what it's already been doing (39:53)
Anticipating the near-future of AI (44:16)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

23: Migrating from On-Premises to the Cloud with Alex Lancaster from Intuit Feb 03, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Data Stack Show, Kostas and Eric are joined by the risk data engineering manager at Intuit, Alex Lancaster. Alex has been with Intuit, known for its products like QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mint and more, for 15 years and was part of a recent massive and successful re-architecturing from on prem to cloud-based.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

Alex and his role at Intuit (1:51)
Data marts at Intuit (2:57)
Revolutionary changes in the data engineering space in the past 15 years (6:46)
Security in the cloud vs. on prem (12:46)
Data architecture at Intuit (15:42)
Doing ETLs inside or outside of the database (19:11)
How to transition successfully from on prem to cloud. Forklifting vs. re-stacking (23:22)
Alex’s application of software engineering skills to data engineering (28:44)
Dealing with data engineering challenges related to security and regulation (31:48)
Pipelines managed and challenges in data types (36:45)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

22: Season One Recap with Eric Dodds and Kostas Pardalis Jan 29, 2021

Show notes

Season One of The Data Stack Show is in the books, and in this episode, Kostas and Eric take a look back at some of the biggest takeaways, trends, and topics from the season. With some great guests already set for season two, the next slate of episodes is shaping up to take an even deeper dive into the world of data and the people shaping it.

Key points in the conversation include:

Patterns with data warehouses and data lakes (3:38)
Looking back at the people behind the data and their stories (8:12)
Minimizing flaws while remembering that data is built by humans, for humans (11:02)
Using proven technology and making mature solutions (15:20)
Data involves a significant amount of trust (23:38)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

21: Data Integrity and Governance with Patrick Thompson and Ondrej Hrebicek from Iteratively Jan 20, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Data Stack Show, Kostas and Eric are joined by the co-founders of Iteratively, CEO Patrick Thompson and CTO Ondrej Hrebicek. Iteratively helps companies know that their data can be trusted by helping capture clean, consistent product analytics. Today’s conversation digs into the behind the scenes of Iteratively and how trust in data can help accelerate the velocity of an organization.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

Patrick and Ondrej’s background and the biggest problem Iteratively addresses (2:50)
Why some companies still use spreadsheet schema management and the potential pitfalls they’re setting themselves up for with this (4:39)
Defining schema in the context of data (7:02)
Viewing the process as a team sport (11:34)
Identifying common mistakes and implementing best practices (13:46)
A walkthrough of Iteratively (17:13)
Utilizing a JSON schema format (26:58)
Laying Iteratively on top of or integrating it with an implementation for analytics (30:36)
Entry point into organizations (33:02)
Organizational change and velocity realized after implementing Iteratively (36:04)
What’s next for Iteratively? (42:47)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

20: Transforming the Real Estate Market with Predictive Analytics with Arian Osman from Homesnap Jan 13, 2021

Show notes

This week on The Data Stack Show, Kostas and Eric are joined by Arian Osman, a senior data scientist at Homesnap who is also nearing the end of his PhD in computational sciences and informatics and is the developer of an e-commerce clothing brand. Homesnap is designed for both homebuyers and agents to access data from the MLS (Multiple Listing Service), providing real-time, accurate information to all parties involved.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

Arian’s background and an overview of Homesnap (2:30)
Utilizing data in Arian’s e-commerce clothing brand (7:14)
Homesnap’s sell speed feature and visualizing outputs (13:28)
The psychology that drives upper and lower limits (19:33)
Deciding the life-cycle of a model (25:50)
Collaborating with internal stakeholders (30:47)
Unique challenges of data in the real estate domain (38:16)
Useful third-party tools (43:33)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

19: Defining Data Governance with Stephen Bailey from Immuta Jan 06, 2021

Show notes

This week on The Data Stack Show, Kostas and Eric are joined by Stephen Bailey, Director of Applied Data Science at Immuta. Immuta is a startup that focuses on enabling data teams to have really fast, efficient, and understandable access controls on their data.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

The problem that Immuta solves (2:04)
Stephen’s background researching how the brain works (4:56)
Immuta’s stack (15:09)
Leveraging metadata (18:02)
The main use case for Immuta is simplifying the access control layer (20:06)
Unifying data (31:52)
Defining the quality of data (34:04)
Learning to trust the numbers (39:42)
What’s next for Immuta (46:15)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

18: Data Science in Health Insurance with Jason Haupt of Bind Dec 31, 2020

Show notes

This week on The Data Stack Show, Kostas and Eric are joined by Jason Haupt, data science lead at Bind, a no-deductible health insurance company determined to give immediate answers and clear costs before point of care. Jason’s unique background of having a Ph.D. in particle physics and working at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN have informed the way he goes about approaching data at Bind.

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

Jason’s background in particle physics and his path to Bind (2:53)
A cloud-only approach to data and utilizing AWS (9:01)
Focusing on activities that help its members (12:08)
Dealing with 12,000 columns of data from an insurance claim form (17:13)
Rethinking the relationship between marketing and product teams (25:28)
Examining the data pipeline (29:30)
Privacy and security concerns with medical information (35:45)
How experience with the LHC impacted the way he thinks about data (40:06)
Transition from academic work to industry (46:20)

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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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