Tristan Handy is the Founder and CEO at dbt Labs, a cloud-based data management platform that has raised over $400M to date, and was last valued at $4.2B in 2022. Dbt Labs has grown from just three companies using its free tool in 2016 to an ecosystem of 30,000+ enterprise users. Before founding dbt Labs, Tristan was the VP of Marketing at RJMetrics and the Director of Operations at Squarespace.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:
- Dbt’s explosive growth
- The strategic pivot from consulting to a software company
- Unexpected strategies for building a tech category from scratch
- The critical moment: Why and when dbt Labs sought venture funding
- How to drive commercial adoption after open-sourcing
- Two things every founder CEO should do
- Much more
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Referenced:
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Where to find Tristan:
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Where to find Brett:
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Where to find First Round Capital:
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:56) The critical oversight in data analysis
(05:41) Becoming an “accidental founder”
(07:04) Inside the unique decision to start a consultancy
(08:17) The game-changing principle behind dbt Labs’ rapid growth
(11:20) Finding dbt Labs’ first customers
(15:52) Consulting's hidden scalability
(17:25) How dbt Labs created a new category
(21:03) The anti-demo strategy
(23:59) Community hacking: the Slack group that changed everything
(26:00) The open source philosophy
(27:39) When growth went exponential
(28:49) How consulting engagements shaped the roadmap
(30:02) Fundraising only when “things started to break”
(32:40) Consultancy superpowers: the hidden advantages
(34:04) Pivoting from consulting to software
(40:00) Key monetization strategies
(48:56) Why “begrudging” CEOs can be successful
(51:02) Advice for finding PMF: “It’s not a playbook”
(51:59) Lowering your standards is a hack
(53:30) Navigating emotional overwhelm
(54:25) Every CEO needs a coach
