Jun 6, 2023 · 29m · top-founders
How Investors Bought 50% of Data.World with 2.1m free users, accounts at 31k paid seats
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this in-depth interview with Nathan Latka, serial entrepreneur Brett Hurt details his multi-decade journey founding CoreMetrics, scaling Bazaarvoice to a capital-efficient $1B IPO, and architecting Data.world into an enterprise cloud data catalog powered by knowledge graphs and modern AI.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 30.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.6 Guest teaching 3.6 Guest disagreement 2.6 Nathan pushing back 3.9
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 23:20 Brett calls out Nathan's VC-style interrogation
Brett bluntly refuses to disclose forward revenue projections, joking that Nathan acts like an aggressive VC and would need to write a $100M check for that data.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 20:05 Nathan challenges the 85% penetration claimNathan interrupts Brett's usage claim to demand proof of whether customers actually evaluated competitors before adopting Data.world.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 5:10 Brett explains the pre-SaaS eraBrett educates Nathan on pitching multi-tenant software in 1999 before the terms SaaS or ASP existed and overcoming on-premise incumbent resistance.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 25:45 Nathan details ZenBusiness revenue trajectoryNathan demonstrates command of SaaS data by citing precise historical ARR figures and funding terms for Brett's recommended portfolio company.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Genesis and Timing of Bazaarvoice | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Nathan introduces historical parallels with Salesforce, but Brett gently corrects the timeline by noting Bazaarvoice was his fifth company rather than his first. The discussion remains cordial and focused on the emergence of customer reviews and the social wave. | |
| CoreMetrics and the Dawn of Enterprise SaaS | 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Nathan pulls up profile data on debt financing and fundraising timing, but Brett points out Nathan's Series E valuation data was after his tenure. Brett educates the host on early SaaS dynamics in 1999 prior to ASP and multi-tenant terminology. | |
| Navigating Startup Trauma and Founding Bazaarvoice | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Nathan inquires about ARR metrics at exit, leading Brett to recount the dot-com crash trauma where CoreMetrics lost 97 of 100 customers. Brett shares how he rebuilt the business before transitioning to Bazaarvoice. | |
| Bazaarvoice Equity Allocation and Capital Efficiency | 6 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Nathan presses on co-founder equity splits and stock option pool sizing at IPO. Brett admits he refused a 50/50 split due to his track record while underscoring employee equity generosity and high capital efficiency. | |
| Building Data.world: Mission, Architecture, and Differentiation | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Brett details the extensive pre-revenue investment required for Data.world due to broad enterprise integrations and security requirements compared to legacy competitors like Collibra. Nathan listens as Brett outlines the knowledge graph architecture. | |
| Data.world Fundraising, Valuation, and Enterprise Seat Expansion | 6 | 3 | 5 | 7 | Nathan repeatedly drills into valuation multiples, ASP, and seat expansion to pin down concrete metrics. Brett pushes back against sharing confidential pricing data while pushing back on vague comparison metrics by citing 31,000 paid enterprise seats. | |
| Scaling with AI, Team Architecture, and B-Corp Community | 7 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Nathan challenges the public user metrics by citing TechCrunch figures and estimates Data.world revenue around $20M ARR. Brett pushes back playfully comparing Nathan to an aggressive VC and distinguishes free B-Corp community members from paid enterprise deployments. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions | 7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | In the rapid-fire section, Nathan demonstrates his deep market knowledge by rattling off ZenBusiness historical revenue milestones and funding rounds from memory when Brett names Ross Buhrdorf. Brett reflects on life lessons and family office investing. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Hurt: Bazaarvoice serves over 20,000 customers in 40+ languages
“As of today, it's an over 20,000, or over 20,000 customers, rather, And over 40 international languages, and it's run by a really good friend of mine Keith Nealon, and it's an amazingly scaled company at this point.”
Hurt: Only three US retailers had customer reviews in 2005
“And to put that in a historical context, there were only three retailers who had customer reviews at the time in the entire United States.”
Hurt: Apple privacy changes profoundly broke Facebook's ad targeting engine
“And of course they had invented the world's best ad targeting engine up until when Apple changed their roles and really broke that, that that engine pretty profoundly.”
Hurt: CoreMetrics sold to IBM for around $300M in 2010
“And then it exited to IBM for around three hundred million dollars in 2010. And that was my first significant exit.”
Hurt: Bazaarvoice had a $1B+ IPO, ranked top five in 2012
“But it was two years before bizarre voice went public and bizarre voices over a billion dollar IPO and one of the top five IPOs of 2012.”
Hurt: CoreMetrics reached approximately $30M in revenue by 2005
“I think it was around thirty million.”
Hurt: CoreMetrics Lost 97 of 100 Customers in Dot-Com Crash
“We have a hundred dot com customers. We're ringing the bell all the time, winning new customers. And 97 of our customers went out of business in the dot com crash. And so I had a huge amount of scar tissue. We had to let go of two thirds of the people.”
Hurt: CoreMetrics Could Have IPO'd Instead of Selling Early to IBM
“Now, I will tell you that I wish that the CEO that took it forward didn't sell it so early. But you know, it had gone through some trauma. I mean, honestly, it could have been an IPO just a couple of years later.”
Hurt: Refused 50/50 equity split with Bazaarvoice co-founder Brant Barton
“I won't tell you where we ended up, but we did not end up at fifty-fifty, but I ended up with a much bigger equity stake.”
Hurt: Bazaarvoice IPO'd at $100M+ run rate using $10M net capital
“One is we had only raised twenty three million, and we had over a hundred million run rate with thirteen million left in the bank.”
Hurt: Bazaarvoice had second-most generous employee equity among SaaS IPOs
“We were the second most generous SaaS company by that time, 20 12 out of all SaaS companies had gone public before in terms of how generous we were with equity to all of our employees.”
Hurt: Former Bazaarvoice employees have founded over 60 companies
“It led to over 60 companies started by former Bizarre Voice people.”
Hurt: Competitors Alation and Collibra rely on slow on-prem releases
“Cause we're competing here primarily against Alation and Calibra, which are both primarily on-prem. Most of the revenue comes from on-prem and they come out with a couple of releases a year. We come out with over a thousand product releases a year, literally r…”
Hurt: Data.world made zero revenue until 2018 after raising $50M
“At Data. World we didn't even make a dollar of revenue until we had raised over fifty million dollars. And we didn't break a dollar of revenue until 2018.”
Hurt: Data.world is split 50/50 between investors and internal stakeholders
“So we're about fifty-fifty owned right now between investors and internally.”
Hurt: Data.world has raised over $132M in total funding
“We've raised over a hundred and thirty-two million to date.”
Hurt: Goldman Sachs invested $40M in Data.world's $50M Series C
“The last round we raised was from Goldman Sachs. That was a fifty million dollar round. They put in forty million of that fifty million and we were oversubscribed on the remaining.”
Hurt: Customer scaled from 12 Collibra users to 31K on Data.world
“Yeah, so that was one where they failed with Calibra and they never got- They never got over 12. Users. And with us, they're at 31,000 users.”
Hurt: Data.world has approximately 150 employees
“Yeah, so we're about a 150 people today, and our engineering team is getting a lot more efficient right now because of generative AI, like all engineering teams are.”
Hurt: Data.world has over 2.1 million free community contributors
“Those are people contributing to the learning model.
That's just dated because that's an old TechCrunch article.
But yeah, that's now over 2.1 million.”