Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stancil: Modern data stack startups face an inevitable market reckoning
“Pretty quickly you're gonna realize they're all stepping on each other's toes, and that, that fallout has to go somewhere. Like, not all of these companies can be the next Figma that they all now say that they are, and so it's what happens then, and I think it…”
Opinion
Stancil: dbt's SQL-based semantic layer is not a real semantic model
“They're moving in, like, the semantic layer tool, so basically they're saying, give us raw data, and we will tell you, like, apply semantics to it. The way that they do that now is through SQL. So, like, semantics are kind of, like, air quote semantics. It's b…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stancil: dbt's initial ease of use may become its downfall
“Dbt is, I think, really popular because it's so easy to get up and running, but it may also eventually be, like, if it had an undoing, to me that would be the undoing, is the thing that was really easy to get up and running doesn't actually solve the real prob…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stancil: Native SaaS warehouse connections could undercut Fivetran's core revenue
“You know, it doesn't undercut everything for Fivetran, but it potentially undercuts the big sources, which I imagine are the things that are, like, the real drivers of revenue for them.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stancil: Enterprise data market won't support 1,000 unicorns
“The median outcome is the data philosophies of Facebook and LinkedIn and all these kind of early tech companies gets adopted by the enterprise, and so all these sort of modern data tools that tech companies buy today go off and get sold to Coca-Cola and Caterp…”
Insight
Stancil: Companies should hire social science graduates for data analytics roles
“If you want to find these folks, there's a really good place to look which is hiring social scientists. So social scientists are trained to think this way. They are analytical thinkers without some of the technical and quantitative background that a lot of STE…”
Insight
Benn Stancil: Data orchestration should be deadline-driven rather than task-triggered
“The way we've built DAGs are kind of like, when do I start the, like, when do I kick over the first one, and then we line it up such that we hope the thing arrives at the end. And the way it would make more sense to me is you just tell the thing, I need this t…”
Opinion
Stancil: Data mesh is an uninteresting side effect of failed centralization
“I guess, ah, seems hard to manage and practice. The way I've seen people describe it is basically it's the thing that you naturally create when you're a very big organization and you can't have a centralized data team that can possibly centralize everything, w…”
Opinion
Stancil: Semantic modeling layers should exist outside of BI tools
“Rather than that living in your BI tool, we think that should live in, in a more generalized layer, and then we just consume from it.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stancil: Integration standards will be set by Snowflake, not open standards
“I don't think the way we get there is sort of like through open standards and stuff like that. I don't think anybody will actually adhere to that. I think most likely what happens is Snowflake basically says, hey, if you do things in this particular way, we ca…”
Insight
Benn Stancil: Self-serve data tools provide access, not analysis
“It is strictly like a data access tool. It doesn't tell you what to do with that data after the fact. It doesn't actually tell you how to analyze it. And so this access is not analysis.”
Insight
Stancil: Knowing SQL and charts doesn't make someone a data analyst
“Me knowing SQL and me knowing how to create a chart doesn't make me an analyst any more than knowing Photoshop makes me a designer.”
Insight
Stancil: Mode is a BI tool built for people who dislike traditional BI
“It is a BI tool basically, but a BI tool built for people who don't like BI.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benn Stancil: Analytics tools will eventually embed directly inside workflow software
“You could potentially incorporate data into that, such that the data sort of surfaced to people in the moment they need it in the product you're trying to use to solve the problem, instead of going to a dashboard and, like, clicking on some stuff. So I think t…”
Insight
Stancil: Being data-driven means strategic decision-making, not dashboards
“And so, ah, a very uncontroversial statement for this group is probably that data driven means it is not dashboards and daily emails to execs, ah, it is decision making and strategic analysis.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benn Stancil: Data teams average 2% to 5% of tech headcount
“For the most part these groups average somewhere between like two and five percent. Ah, so about four percent of a company is, is analytics focused.”
Insight
Stancil: Unverified data analysis quickly turns into hard-to-erase corporate myths
“Things that may or may not be true end up becoming part of the culture, and it's very hard to get rid of it once they're there.”
Insight
Stancil: Technical data skills are learnable, analytical thinking is harder to teach
“They're gonna need SQL skills, they're gonna, they might need Python or R skills, they'll need something like Excel but those things are learnable, whereas I think, like, the way of thinking is often harder to teach.”
Insight
Stancil: Data roles divide into machine-automation modelers versus human-decision analysts
“There's folks who build models to help machines make decisions, and there's folks who, like, build charts and help people, humans make decisions at a much lower frequency.”
Insight
Stancil: Practice problems and tutorials fail to build real analytical skills
“I think that, that it's basically find problems that you're interested in and try to answer questions about it. That the, if you take a bunch of practice problems, it doesn't really work. It doesn't stick.”
