Disclosure certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

Birchbox uses the Gurobi solver for monthly subscription box personalization

Liz Crawford · Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital) · Oct 21, 2015 · at 7:04

Liz Crawford, CTO of Birchbox, describes the tech stack and algorithms used to solve subscription box inventory allocation.

0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And we do this with the help of a very nice solver called Garobi.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Liz Crawford

Insight
Centralized functional data teams prevent duplicate work and foster peer learning
“To organize functionally, but what we've found is that people can learn from each other really well that the data scientists and the statistical analysts can learn from each other and that that's great, and that it really helps when people are working together…”
Liz Crawford Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 1:45 Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Disclosure
Birchbox defines data scientists as PhD-level coders on product teams
“So we see a data scientist as someone who contributes to product development, essentially. Someone with very specialized skills, Who helps us deliver our products into market. And so by specialized skills, I essentially mean a PhD or something very much like i…”
Liz Crawford Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 2:26 Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Non-scrappy data scientists do not belong in early-stage startups
“I wouldn't hire someone that couldn't go out and be scrappy and get their hands dirty. That person doesn't belong in an early stage startup anyway.”
Liz Crawford Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 15:42 Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Data science teams must be empowered to gather new data
“Don't be limited by the data that you have today, and if you run a data science team, don't let them be limited by it. Empower people to go out and get the data that they need to do their jobs.”
Liz Crawford Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 14:01 Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Birchbox's catalog recommendation algorithm boosted full-size product conversions by 20%
“We were using one of our recommendation algorithms just recently in a catalog sort which we newly put in, and it showed a 20% lift in conversion on, like, full size purchase.”
Liz Crawford Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 20:22 Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Birchbox trained nearly its entire company workforce to write SQL
“Trained almost the entire company to use SQL.”
Liz Crawford Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 24:22 Liz Crawford, Birchbox // Data Science & Analytics at Birchbox (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 400 conversations transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.