Category Makers and Wall Breakers: Recent Episodes
Knotch
Anda Gansca and Barr Moses join forces to shed light on the fascinating intersection of storytelling and data through the perspectives of some of the most innovative and creative minds in business. Listen in as Anda (CEO & co-founder of Knotch) and Barr (CEO & co-founder of Monte Carlo) chat with category creators, wall breakers, industry pioneers, and other leaders who dare to break the mold when it comes to making an impact in their industry.
On his first day as Chief Data and Analytics Officer at GM, Jon Francis sat down with Barr Moses and Anda Gansca to discuss his career in data: from the early days of site performance testing to now, with machine learning and AI as valuable tools. Amid all of it is a foundation of generating excitement and acceptance around data, and empathy for your teams and your customers.
Amy Avery’s job is to make data more accessible within Bank of America, but she doesn’t really love the word. The atypical start to her data career within a creative agency led to her perspective that democratizing data has as much to do with qualitative context as it does quantitative input and output. Amy is the SVP, Head of Analytics, Research and Insights at Bank of America.
In this episode:
(3:59) Switching from agency to client-side within her career
(9:01) Data can’t be everything; it’s art and science
(11:55) You have to pay attention to the human data, the qual with the quant
(13:22) People don’t want data democratization; they want knowledge democratization.
(14:31) How do you measure success?
(19:55) Data teams can be the connective tissue across different functions
(23:02) Advice for people who are trying to make an impact with data
(26:30) Four things Amy finds difficult about this role
(28:13) A really good insight comes from tension - how can two things be true?
(32:26) What career advice do you have?
(34:58) Rapid-fire questions: favorite book, what podcasts do you listen to, what was your pandemic TV binge, if you could have dinner with anyone (dead or alive) who would it be?
Listen to more episodes of Category Makers and Wall Breakers at knotch.com/category-makers-and-wall-breakers
Anda Gansca is co-founder and CEO of Knotch, which proves content’s impact on business outcomes.
Barr Moses is co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, the data reliability company.
Spenser Skates, co-founded Amplitude in the wake of his own experience trying to bring a product to fruition. Spenser (https://www.linkedin.com/in/spenserskates/) has a candid conversation with Anda Gansca (Co-Founder and CEO, Knotch) and Barr Moses (Co-Founder and CEO, Monte Carlo) about his journey through entrepreneurship, leading Amplify from startup to IPO.
1:55 - Origin story from Sonalight to Amplitude
4:15 - The realization to help people understand their products with data
8:44 - Did Spenser set out to create a category when creating Amplitude?
12:09 - The struggle to get a new company and product in front of the right people
13:26 - What was it about previous analytics companies that didn’t stick?
17:06 - Is Spenser jaded about content creation?
22:25 - You have to start with the customer problem
26:34 - You need a change agent to break down silos
33:08 - How has Spenser thought about the role of values in a company?
36:22 - Spenser’s own transformation as a leader: what is most difficult?
40:01 - Rapid fire questions!
Listen to more episodes of Category Makers and Wall Breakers at knotch.com/category-makers-and-wall-breakers
Anda Gansca is co-founder and CEO of Knotch, which proves content’s impact on business outcomes.
Barr Moses is co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, the data reliability company.
Cara Dailey, Chief Data Officer at LPL Financial, considers herself a problem solver at her core. In this episode, she talks with Anda Gansca (Co-Founder and CEO, Knotch) and Barr Moses (Co-Founder and CEO, Monte Carlo) about how data is “a fire to run toward” — how an organization’s hairiest problems relate to data, the opportunities a Chief Data Officer has to make better decisions and measure the impact, and how to prioritize focus on three main goals.
2:45 - Cara is “obsessive” about problem solving.
7:00 - Do certain industries experience higher stakes when it comes to getting data right?
11:50 - What are the things that make driving data adoption difficult? How do you set goals?
16:50 - Encouraging decisions on data vs gut.
18:00 - Where are the biggest opportunities for Chief Data Officers?
23:30 - How do you decide what NOT to measure?
25:40 - Cara’s work within the startup community.
30:20 - What a Chief Data Officer should do in the first 90 days
Listen to more episodes of Category Makers and Wall Breakers at knotch.com/category-makers-and-wall-breakers
Anda Gansca is co-founder and CEO of Knotch, which proves content’s impact on business outcomes.
Monte Carlo is co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, a data reliability company.
Sandra Nudelman, Head of Consumer Data and Engagement Platforms at Wells Fargo, brings her experience across digital transformation in banking and fintech, as well as bold ideas and great taste in SciFi shows. She and Anda Gansca (Co-Founder and CEO at Knotch) go into greater detail about Sandra's experience working with and through data silos, leveraging data to empower the marketing stack, the importance of leading the race for data analyst talent, and the role of storytelling data (as well as data in storytelling).
Key quote: "How are we leveraging this data not just for the basics, but to create really interesting and unique experiences—predominantly within financial health—to make sure we meet those needs for our customers?"
Anda Gansca and Barr Moses are two co-founder/CEOs, entrepreneurs, and data nerds who realized a common element among the executives they work with: the best ones are constantly working to break walls and shift paradigms. Listen in as they interview innovative and influential data and analytics leaders, and celebrate other entrepreneurs who are building new categories to define the world we live in.
Anda Gansca is co-founder and CEO of Knotch, the content intelligence platform that enables brands to connect their digital content investments to business outcomes. Learn more at www.knotch.com/pro
Barr Moses is co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, with a mission to accelerate the world's adoption of data by reducing data downtime. Learn more at https://www.montecarlodata.com/