Raj De Datta
Co-Founder and CEO, Bloomreach. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveauthorinvestor@rdedatta ↗LinkedIn ↗dedatta.com ↗
Raj De Datta co-founded Bloomreach in 2009, scaling it into an AI-driven digital commerce experience platform valued at over $2 billion. He also authored the book The Digital Seeker (2021) and was previously part of the founding team at FirstMark Communications.
2shows
2appearances
32statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Raj De Datta said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Horizontal AI Suites Like Salesforce Einstein Are Just Marketing Fluff
“When we hear marketing terms like Einstein, or Sensei, or pick your other dead male inventor, That, that approach applied to a horizontal set of software problems simply doesn't make sense because the interesting stuff recruiting data or hiring data or our dat…”
Speed Matters More Than Quality or Optimization in Data Products
“Speed is more important than quality, which is more important than optimization.”
De Datta: All AI, machine learning, and data science is vertical-specific
“All data science And all AI and all ML is fundamentally vertically specific. Which is the dirty secret about AI and ML powered businesses. They are fundamentally vertical problems.”
AI and Machine Learning Buzzwords Have Zero Value in Enterprise Marketing
“AI and ML has zero value in marketing.”
Bloomreach Employs Zero Dedicated Data Scientists
“Yeah, so first of all, we don't have any data scientists. We only have engineers who understand data science.”
Bloomreach rejected multiple acquisition offers in the $400 million range.
“Well, I think it's fair to say that we've received very healthy acquisition offers, you know, at or around that range and turned them down.”
Bloomreach projects hitting $100 million ARR profitably with 40% growth.
“The intention for the company is to get to a point where the company, when it crosses a hundred million dollars, it's a profitable company growing at 40 to 50% year over year. And we're on track of that.”
Bloomreach Touches 20% of All US E-Commerce Transactions
“We power almost 20% of e-commerce transactions in the U.S. At some point hit a Bloomreach server of, ah, of some kind.”
Cutting Autosuggest Latency Outperformed All Algorithm Accuracy Gains
“In, in the course of building the first versions of Autosuggest, they were, they returned data back at the level of about a 150 milliseconds. Today, they return data back at the level of 10 milliseconds. And the delta between that was more important than anyth…”
De Datta: Innovation mostly happens outside of your product
“And I think what I've learned from this is really that innovation mostly happens outside of your product.”
Raj De Datta: Data science software requires workflow or infrastructure integration
“At least in software, enterprise software, the value of data science is, is hugely valuable as a source of differentiation. But it's only valuable if presented along with either a workflow problem or an infrastructure problem.”
Raj De Datta: Data startups need not match tech monopoly salaries
“If you're an entrepreneur building a business around use of data and data science, You don't have to pay what the unnamed tech monopolists pay.”
Bloomreach generates between $50 million and $100 million in annual revenue.
“And you can think of the scale of the business as being between 50 and a hundred million dollars.”
De Datta estimates Adobe holds $1.2B in Bloomreach's $8B addressable market.
“What's interesting in our space is I think we are very much a challenger in an eight billion dollar market that is dominated by people like Adobe that have a 1.2 billion dollar software revenue stream in our market.”
De Datta notes founders inevitably experience regret after rejecting acquisition offers.
“Every time you turn down one of these things, the moment that I've talked to every entrepreneur about is you have that. Oh shit moment after you say no, or something that happens in your life, man, I should have taken that deal. Right. And you got to know that…”
De Datta: Every enterprise requires three core digital experience platforms
“The way we see the world is more and more every enterprise has three core platforms that power their digital experience, or their digital business.”
Raj De Datta: Software applications and data platforms have no value without each other
“Bloomreach has, is always, you know, I struggle to describe it about whether it's a software company or whether it's a data company, because really one without the other has no value.”
Raj De Datta: Consolidated data sources create massive platform dependency risk
“There is arguably no bigger platform dependency than if your data largely comes from a consolidated set of sources”
De Datta: SaaS plus data science demands a new customer success model
“But today, because this is a handshake between our SaaS environment and the customer's data, that, that handshake requires a completely different, ah, model for customer success and support. Because what we have learned in being a data science plus SaaS compan…”
Algorithms Are Useless If Users Cannot Interpret and Trust the Outputs
“That at the end of the day, if people can't interpret it, if people can't make sense of it, if people can't trust it, then it really doesn't matter what you did.”
Practical Enterprise ML is 20% Algorithms and 80% Systems Engineering
“So, you know, when you start getting into problem areas, you start to find that really that what you need to solve a practical problem is like, 20% algo and 80% systems, you know, in many cases.”
Bloomreach Monetized Demands for AI Explainability as a New Analytics Product
“At a certain point, our customers kept asking us, how is the algorithm making a decision about what to do? And so what we did is we built an analytics tool and sold something to them. So we effectively turned the question into a product, and then monetized the…”
Bloomreach averages $250,000 contracts with multiple million-dollar clients.
“Average ASP for us is around 250 K per year. We've got several clients that pay us more than a million dollars a year.”
The other half of the tape: Raj De Datta's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Chris Dixon 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the MAD Podcast 2
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Raj's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MADLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Bloomreach | 1 | 20 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Bloomreach | 1 | 12 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Top Founders → |