Tristan Handy
Founder & CEO, dbt Labs. On 3 shows, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@jthandy ↗LinkedIn ↗getdbt.com ↗
Tristan Handy is the founder and CEO of dbt Labs, where he created the data transformation tool dbt. Prior to founding dbt Labs, he served as VP of Marketing at RJMetrics and Director of Operations at Squarespace.
3shows
5appearances
100statements
7resolved
5supported
1contradicted
71%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Tristan Handy said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Handy: Lean Startup and Y Combinator frameworks fundamentally misunderstand innovation
“I understand there's a lean startup approach and there's Y Combinator and all this. I actually am not a big supporter of these approaches because I think fundamentally what they're trying to say is you can take the process of innovation and you can put a metho…”
dbt CEO Tristan Handy: The modern data stack concept is dead
“I don't think the modern data stack is a useful idea anymore.”
Handy: dbt Labs replaced its entire executive leadership team over 18 months
“The initial leadership team that I had grown the business with scaled for a long way, but over the past 18 months, I've replaced every single person that reports to me with like the folks that can scale to the Next level.”
Handy: Data software must become sales-led unlike engineering PLG tools
“When you sell to software engineering, sometimes you can go PLG for a lot deeper in the journey and, you know, Stripe and Twilio and others have done that very successfully. But data for a variety of reasons that are probably too boring to get into ends up nee…”
Handy: Hyperscalers build features for RFPs, not to kill independent tools
“When you talk to the folks at the hyperscalers, they will say, we are, we're like making sure that our solution is like covers all these different areas, but it's mostly not. Because we want to compete in these areas. It's mostly because people come to us with…”
Handy: Building in-house is often faster than M&A for data infrastructure
“Had to build, you know, there's like the iceberg, which is 10% above the water and you can see it. And then there's 90% below the water for a data company. The platform is the below the water part. And then the functionality that you build on that platform is …”
Tristan Handy: Software multiple expansion has shifted from modern data stack to AI
“If what you were trying to do is maximize the multiple that your software company was trading at, then AI is the enemy because all the multiple expansion has moved from modern data stack to AI.”
Handy: Social media pricing backlash did not cause mass dbt cancellations
“Our business as a result has not really had a hiccup. But if you only existed on Twitter or LinkedIn you would think that you know, our customers desired us on mass and we're every single one of them was livid and canceled, but that just like didn't happen.”
Tristan Handy: Most startup and executive roles, including CEO, are not hard
“Honestly, I don't think that a lot of our jobs, including my job are like that hard.”
Tristan Handy: Hitting $1M ARR puts startups on an inescapable growth clock
“The minute that you have a million dollars in software ARR, you're on a clock. Like that people can take kind of infinitely long to get to a million dollars. It doesn't really matter. That's, Perceived to be like wandering around in the wilderness and that's f…”
Tristan Handy: dbt Labs has lost only around a dozen employees total
“We have an unbelievably high retention rate. Both voluntary and involuntary. So, so we, there really just aren't that many people who we've hired over the years that are no longer with the company. I mean, it's like maybe a dozen, maybe some, somewhere around …”
Tristan Handy: Remote work from home is lonely and dehumanizing
“Like just because it's lonely and dehumanizing and because we're built to interact with other Humans. And for many of us, especially for you know, early career folks who are, you know, I mean, I lived in an apartment with four roommates right out of college. L…”
dbt Labs to revoke $250 stipend for staff near satellite offices
“And then step two is in places where we have high concentration of employees. Open up satellites, satellite offices. We're calling this our many satellites strategy. And then the people who live in, I, we haven't finalized the like driving distance or anything…”
Tristan Handy: CEOs should aim to make as few decisions as possible
“I explicitly, I have a doc that says, like, working with me, and what, how do I see my job? And in it says, I try to make as few decisions as possible.”
Handy: Early-stage VCs doubted data practitioners would learn Git in 2016
“Early stage VCs that I spoke to back in 2016 told me that, like, it wasn't at all clear that data practitioners actually wanted to learn Git.”
Handy: Data processing will be polyglot with non-SQL abstractions within five years
“We really do think that the future of data processing is polyglot, and I think that if you look in five years, you will find more robust abstractions on top of data, and even in the DBT ecosystem, than SQL.”
Handy: RJMetrics could have been Looker, but missed the cloud transition
“We were supposed to be what Looker became. The thing that RJ was never, and I don't think would have ever been able to anticipate was The cloud, the rise of the cloud for data specifically.”
Handy: Tightly scoping consulting work enables hiring junior talent over 15-year veterans
“I think this is a thing that many people who build consulting companies, the thing that they get wrong is that they accept whatever work comes their way. I said no to anything that wasn't in those lanes. And that meant that we, not only did we get better at do…”
Handy: Product-market fit must be constantly re-solved at each revenue milestone
“I think one of the things about product market fit is that people don't realize that you have to keep solving for it constantly. You have to solve for it at zero and at one and at 10 and at 50 and at a hundred and different parts of that journey for different …”
Handy: Enterprise data migration to the cloud truly began in 2020
“Enterprises really started moving to cloud for their data in twenty-twenty. There was like Hadoop stuff going on before that, but that like never really achieved any level of maturity or real penetration. And yes, Redshift and stuff like did exist prior to, an…”
Handy: Experience is undervalued in startup culture; work elsewhere first
“I think that experience is just like extremely undervalued in startup culture. And I think that's a huge mistake. And one of the pieces of advice that I most frequently find myself giving to founders are people that are thinking about starting companies is lik…”
Handy: The core modern data stack architecture remains a good idea
“When people started using the term modern data stack, there was a there, like fivetran, dbt, mode, looker, et cetera. These are tools that. Were built around an idea of how data technology should work. And it was a, it was, and is a good idea.”
Handy: CDOs shouldn't build data platforms by integrating nine point products
“If you say I want a modern data platform as a CDO, like the right answer is not go out and buy nine different products and integrate them together.”
Handy: Cloud platforms care about compute consumption, not partner revenue
“My read is that people like us, people like Fivetran, while we are critical to their success as platforms, because we drive a ton of consumption. They don't actually really care about the dollars that we make as businesses. Cause they're so tiny relative to th…”
The other half of the tape: Tristan Handy's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 6 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Matt Turck 5DeVaris Brown 1Bob Moore 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the MAD Podcast 7
2024 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Tristan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MADLEDGER | Founder & CEO, dbt Labs | 3 | 51 | 50% 2/4 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |
 IN DEPTHLEDGER | Founder & CEO, dbt Labs | 1 | 29 | 100% 1/1 | full record on In Depth → |
 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO, dbt Labs | 1 | 20 | 100% 2/2 | full record on 20VC → |