The Analytics Engineering Podcast Caitlin Colgrove (CTO @ Hex): Notebooks for the Rest of Us
Sep 9, 2021
Caitlin Colgrove, Co-founder and CTO of Hex, shares her journey from Palantir to building a collaborative data workspace focused on SQL and Python. The conversation highlights the transformation of traditional notebooks into real-time collaborative tools, emphasizing a Google Docs-style approach for data teams. Caitlin discusses the importance of integrating interactivity in data apps, innovative writeback workflows, and the human-driven aspects of data automation, all while envisioning a future of evolved data tools reminiscent of web development.
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Notebook Pain That Sparked Hex
- Hex began as a direct solution to executives' inability to consume analysts' Jupyter notebooks without copying charts into decks.
- The founders built Hex to marry shareability of BI with the power of code notebooks.
Notebooks Excel, But Have Scaling Limits
- Notebooks excel at rapid interactive exploratory analysis and remain the best tool for that class of work.
- But scaling notebooks to technical analysts and cloud warehouses exposes limitations that need rethinking.
Design For Low Bar, High Ceiling
- Start with Python for flexibility and add SQL as a first-class feature because many analytics workflows are primarily SQL.
- Design for a "low bar, high ceiling" so beginners can start easily and advanced users don't hit limits.