Benn Stancil, Co-Founder and Chief Analytics Officer of Mode, evaluates dbt's long-term sustainability as an architectural foundation for enterprise data stack needs.
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: 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…”