David Glueck, VP of Data Science & Engineering at Bonobos, discusses the company's scale and history during a presentation at FirstMark's DataDrivenNYC in June 2015.
Insight
Data teams make a critical mistake by de-emphasizing operational reporting
“I think what I've seen as a trend in the industry, a lot of data teams are starting to try and de-emphasize the BI in reporting. They kind of see it as, ah, well, you know, it's a lot of work, which it really is, and in the end it doesn't add as much value to …”
Insight
Separating data engineering from data science ties expensive employees' hands
“If you're hiring a bunch of data scientists and then making them dependent on a different organization for engineering is basically Hiring some really expensive people, and then tying their hands behind their back, and you know, that's not a smart thing to do,…”
Insight
Simple recommendation algorithms deliver 80 to 90 percent of the total benefit
“You get 80, 90% of the benefit from a very simple algorithm, and most of the really hard math and work goes into closing the gap on the rest of it.”
Insight
Native apps distract engineering teams by forcing them to build features thrice
“Because it's a, you know, huge distraction. You have to develop every feature, you know, three times for iPhone, Android, and the web.”
Insight
Direct-to-consumer models allow superior inventory optimization by avoiding physical store distribution
“And being that we don't have to worry about distributing our inventory across hundreds or thousands of stores we have a real opportunity to do that better than the traditional retailer, if we can get smarter about it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bonobos boosted email campaign revenue 4x purely through smarter targeting
“We were able to find, even without changing, ah, the emails that we were sending out, the different product emails that we were sending out, just by being smarter about who we sent each email to, we were able to get sometimes as much as Forex, the revenue for …”