The Ledger

Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.

clear all ✕

why aren't all 10 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable

Opinion
Mike Palmer: Google's Looker acquisition failed by locking out non-experts
“Google's experiment with Looker has failed, and with Looker, they built a LookML, which by the way, I would say back in 2017, it was probably the best product on the market, but they built a product for experts, and they ensured that it was going to be a produ…”
Mike Palmer May 1, 2025 ▶ 32:56 Dashboards Are Dead: Sigma’s BI Revolution for Trillion-Row Data
Insight
Elsamadisi: Buying Looker requires hiring five to six BI engineers
“All it ends up doing is you end up having to hire a team of five or six BI engineers to write LookML and maintain these systems for you.”
Ahmed Elsamadisi Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 3:43 How to Answer Data Questions Without Being Miserable // Ahmed Elsamadisi, Narrator (Data Driven NYC)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Elsamadisi: Narrator reduced 40-hour Looker queries to just 10 minutes
“We've taken queries that were taking, like, literally 40 hours in Looker, and we've dropped them down to, like, 10 minutes. Queries that cross billions of rows end up happening in, like, seven to eight seconds on a warehouse.”
Ahmed Elsamadisi Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 17:47 How to Answer Data Questions Without Being Miserable // Ahmed Elsamadisi, Narrator (Data Driven NYC)
Disclosure
Looker's embedded BI drove 33% of revenue with 2 of 750 employees
“So at Looker, when we sold the business, a third of the revenue was embedded. And out of a team of about seven to 750, there were two people working on that product.”
Tomasz Tunguz May 16, 2024 ▶ 43:26 AI, Data and Blockchain: a VC perspective | Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of Theory Ventures
Opinion
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.”
Tristan Handy Feb 22, 2024 ▶ 5:49 Future of The Modern Analytics Stack | Tristan Handy, CEO of dbt
Opinion
Handy: Batch transformation is not LookML's core focus or innovation
“The part of LookML that does batch based transformation is, is not the primary focus of their product. It's not like the core innovation that they have.”
Tristan Handy Dec 11, 2020 ▶ 44:47 Fireside Chat: Jeremiah Lowin (Prefect), Tristan Handy (dbt) with Matt Turck (Partner, FirstMark)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Looker was Stitch's top go-to-market partner despite lacking direct software integration
“At Stitch back in the day, we didn't actually have hard integrations into Looker at all. It was the data warehouse that sat in between where we deposited data and where Looker pulled the data out. There was no physical integration between us and Looker, but Lo…”
Bob Moore Mar 13, 2024 ▶ 34:49 AI's Killing Marketing. Ecosystem-Led Grow is the Future | Bob Moore, the CEO of Crossbeam
Opinion
Handy: Looker and Mode were superior to pre-cloud Tableau
“I had a strong preference to use tools like mode or looker over a tool like tableau because tableau was pre cloud and it assumed that you were going to be able to download all the data that you needed to operate on into your local cache.”
Tristan Handy Feb 22, 2024 ▶ 4:33 Future of The Modern Analytics Stack | Tristan Handy, CEO of dbt
Disclosure
Stemma omits messaging and BI features to force Slack and Looker integration
“But when you grow, you have to integrate with the ecosystem the organization is in, and we, for example, we have no feature to have a conversation in the data catalog, right? And that's intentional because we want to integrate with Slack, and that's why there'…”
Mark Grover Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 22:45 Fireside Chat: Mark Grover (Co-Founder & CEO, Stemma) with Matt Turck (Partner, FirstMark)
Disclosure
Looker originally brought Snowflake into sales deals before momentum inverted
“When Looker went to market, we initially partnered with Snowflake, and we were bringing Snowflake into deals, and that worked really well, and then Snowflake started to grow really fast, and Snowflake was bringing Looker into deals, and so so why is this?”
Tomasz Tunguz May 16, 2024 ▶ 49:31 AI, Data and Blockchain: a VC perspective | Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of Theory Ventures
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