Tristan Handy, the Founder and CEO of dbt Labs, shares his journey of transforming a consultancy into a $4 billion cloud-based data platform. He reveals unexpected strategies for community building and driving software adoption after open-sourcing their tools. Tristan discusses the pivotal moment for seeking venture funding and emphasizes the importance of humility in creating a user-centric startup. He also touches on the impact of cloud technology on data analytics and the personal growth challenges faced in entrepreneurship.

Tristan Handy, Co-founder and CEO of dbt Labs, shares his inspiring journey from a data practitioner to leading a billion-dollar tech company. He discusses the transformative power of cloud technology and the birth of dbt as a community-driven tool for data transformation. Key topics include the impact of AI on non-linear growth in technology, the challenges of scaling data solutions, and the ethos of self-reliance in entrepreneurship. Tristan emphasizes the importance of resilience and innovation in navigating the evolving landscape of data analytics.

Over a decade after the idea of “big data'' was first born, data has become the central nervous system for decision-making in organizations of all sizes. But the modern data stack is evolving and which infrastructure trends and technologies will ultimately win out remains to be decided.In this podcast, originally recorded as part of Fivetran's Modern Data Stack conference, five leaders in data infrastructure debate that question: a16z general partner and pioneer of software defined networking Martin Casado, former CEO of Snowflake Bob Muglia; Michelle Ufford, founder and CEO of Noteable; Tristan Handy, founder of Fishtown Analytics and leader of the open source project dbt; and Fivetran founder George Fraser.The conversation covers the future of data lakes, the new use cases for the modern data stack, data mesh and whether decentralization of teams and tools is the future, and how low we actually need to go with latency. And while the topic of debate is the modern data stack, the themes and differing perspectives strike at the heart of an even bigger: how does technology evolve in complex enterprise environments? We're re-running this episode as part of a special report on Future.com, the Data50: the World's Top Data Startups, which covers the bellwether private companies across the most exciting categories in data, from AI/ML to observability and more.