Show Notes* (01:37) Caitlin went over her college experience studying Computer Science at Stanford University in the early 2010s. * (03:55) Caitlin talked about her teaching experience for CS 106A and CS 103. * (07:09) Caitlin shared valuable lessons from completing software engineering internships at Harvard University, Facebook, and Palantir. * (10:06) Caitlin walked over technical and organizational challenges during her time at Palantir — building products for both government/commercial customers and working with designers/infrastructure engineers to deliver full-stack applications to the field. * (12:01) Caitlin explained why Palantir is composed of “loosely individual startups.” * (14:56) Caitlin recalled learning curves during her transition to a tech lead role at Palantir — becoming responsible for the technical architecture and code quality of the product, mentorship and growth of the engineers, and the product direction and prioritization of features. * (18:31) Caitlin discussed her time as a Data Engineering Manager at Remix Technologies — leading the team that builds geospatial data pipelines on top of AWS, Postgres/PostGIS, and Apache Airflow. * (24:45) Caitlin reflected on valuable leadership and people management lessons absorbed during her transition to growing and developing diverse and inclusive engineering teams. * (29:05) Caitlin shared the founding story of Hex, the modern data workspace for teams, alongside her co-founders Barry and Glen. * (32:58) Caitlin talked about Hex’s ideal users (the “analytically technical” who need better tools to access and manage more sophisticated workflows) and introduced Hex’s Logic View. * (35:22) Caitlin examined the collaboration challenges in data teams and revealed Hex’s Library to address some of the shortcomings. * (39:59) Caitlin shared her thoughts on the evolution of data science notebooks. * (42:14) Caitlin unpacked the nuanced problem of justifying data ROI to functional stakeholders and described Hex’s interactive App Builder. * (45:17) Caitlin shared exciting development in the horizon of Hex’s product roadmap. * (46:37) Caitlin shared valuable hiring lessons to attract the right people who are excited about Hex’s mission. * (52:10) Caitlin shared the hurdles to find the early design partners and lighthouse customers of Hex. * (56:01) Caitlin shared upcoming go-to-market initiatives that she’s most excited about for Hex. * (58:24) Caitlin shared fundraising advice for founders currently seeking the right investors for their startups. * (01:01:42) Closing segment.
Caitlin’s Contact Info* LinkedIn * Twitter
Hex’s Resources* Website | Twitter | LinkedIn * Logic View | App Builder | Knowledge Library * Docs | Blog | Gallery * Customers | Careers | Integrations | Pricing
Mentioned ContentArticles* “Long Live Code” (June 2020) * “Don’t Tell Your Data Team’s ROI Story” (Aug 2020) * “The Sharing Gap” (Oct 2020)
People* Tristan Handy (Founder and CEO of dbt Labs) * Claire Carroll (Product Manager of Hex, previous Community Manager of dbt Labs) * Wes McKinney (Creator of Pandas and Arrow, Co-Founder and CTO of Voltron Data) * DeVaris Brown (Co-Founder and CEO of Meroxa)
Book* “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” (by Carol Dweck)
NotesMy conversation with Caitlin was recorded back in Fall 2021. Since then, many things have happened at Hex. I’d recommend looking at:
- Caitlin’s piece announcing Hex’s SOC 2 Type II report to reflect Hex’s commitment to security
- Caitlin’s recent talk at Data Council Austin about implementing reactive notebooks with iPython
- The release of Hex Knowledge Library, a new way to publish and discover data work
- Hex’s $16M Series A (led by Redpoint Ventures) and $52M Series B (led by a16z along with Snowflake, Databricks, and existing investors)
- Hex’s increasing list of customers such as AngelList, Fivetran, Hightouch, Loom, Mixpanel, Notion, Ramp, Replicated, SeatGeek, etc.