Data Driven Discussions

In this episode I interview Michael Katz, the CEO of mParticle which is a leading customer data platform. We’ve covered data collection on the Data Driven Daily previously (see Data Collection Tools) and Michael shares with us his experience working across many different companies as they adopt and start using more advanced data in their business. It’s a rare chance to learn from someone who is at the heart of the current data driven revolution.

In this episode I interview Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, the CEO of Instrumental which is bringing data, machine learning, and intelligence to the assembly line. Manufacturing is an old industry that has been resistant to change and new technologies, even as the products it builds have gotten more complex. That is changing as factories are considering new technologies a necessity to stay competitive and productive. Data will be the key to this innovation. Products like the Instrumental System will enable factories and the brands that build in them to collect data that was not available before and to use algorithms to find defects the moment they happen on the assembly line.

In this episode, I interview Nathan Wenzel, CEO of SimpleLegal, about the emerging field of legal operations. Although legal is one of the oldest professions (and one that is instrumental in operating a successful business), it’s only recently that companies have started to bring on dedicated legal operations specialists to more efficiently run the department. Legal operations is responsible for managing the money spent on lawyers and law firms to ensure the best return on investment. Nathan tells us all about this new function and how data is changing how companies run their corporate legal departments.

In this episode I interview Maya Hope, the VP of Product and Data at eSpark, which provides educational software tools to schools. In recent year, data has become a big part of how schools are run and has started to change the way teachers approach education. Maya is an expert in both data and education and tells us about how data is used to make decisions for students, teachers, and schools.

In this episode I interview Jonathan Kressaty, the head of marketing at Mattermark, which helps sales teams find potential customers. Mattermark also runs two very successful e-mail newsletters, Raise the Bar and the Mattermark Daily, which reach hundreds of thousands of subscribers everyday. Jonathan explains how data drives everything about their newsletters including the content, subscriber focus, and eventual measures of success.

In this episode I interview Ari Akerstein, an expert on e-commerce and most recently one of the product leaders at Walmart.com. We all buy things online, but it is not clear from the outside how data is used to turn a click on a website into a cardboard box on your doorstep. Ari walks us through the use of data at one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies and how it’s used to build and optimize e-commerce products.

In this episode I interview Alex Shartsis, the CEO of Perfect Price and an expert on dynamic pricing and the car rental industry. If you’ve rented a car before it might not seem like a complex business, but as Alex tells us these firms are enormously data driven because of how competitive the industry has become. These businesses are a great case study on how important it is to understand not only user engagement and cash flow metrics, but asset values as well.

In this episode I interview Alex White, the founder and head of Next Big Sound which is the data group at Pandora, a leading online music service. Music is a competitive industry, and even though it’s driven by artistic creativity the business of music is driven heavily by data. Alex walks us through how difficult it can be to get reliable data about music and data can become a competitive advantage.