In the now iconic line of the 2015 movie The Martian, marooned astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) gave us a new verb to sum up his only possible exit from his Red Planet dilemma: “I’m going to have to science the sh*t out of this.” For many businesses, our...
Brett Hurt
Reflections on a $50 million fundraising round
Today is a really big milestone in data.world’s history as we just announced our $50m fundraise led by Goldman Sachs. The level of innovation and impact this will enable us to bring to our customers and community, as a proud Certified B Corporation and Public Benefit...
Data is from Mars. Data Science is from Venus.
Today’s explosion of data is unstructured, feral, even wild. It is heterogeneous, or simply diverse. Which contrasts with the way our technologies have long sought to organize data into usable form, by making it homogeneous – or uniform. Enter ‘data mesh’ a radical...
The Data Evolution — Part IV
Let’s Sprint the ‘Last Mile’ of Data Evolution to Empower Firms, Schools, Public Health, and More Every morning we are challenged to think about data when we open our news feeds: From a panel investigating disinformation, to commentary on the sins and virtues of...
The Data Evolution — Part III
The Conundrum of Data (and data.world) — a Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma To bend Winston Churchill's famous description of Russia, data is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. On one hand, data’s function is as apparent and concrete as...
The Data Evolution — Part II
How the Brains and Nervous Systems of Data Ignite Corporate and Collaborative Cognition Just as I began to write this essay, eyewear startup Warby Parker effectively made the point of my last post on data’s new “Cambrian age” — The company generated $6.7 billion in...
The Data Evolution — Part I
Dawn in the Anthropocene — The Evolution of Data We are currently witnessing the earliest days of humanity’s next chapter. Our society is evolving into a data-driven civilization, its contours just now emerging. Understanding the significance of this point in...
A Historic Investment in Fueling Data Cultures
On behalf of our incredible team at data.world, I’m very proud to announce our $26m expansion funding round. This is our fourth and largest round of funding to date, and like the others it was significantly oversubscribed. data.world is my sixth business as an...
In the age of the coronavirus pandemic, data democratization is more important than ever.
Today’s crisis has no precedent in our lifetimes. As a CEO and entrepreneur of technology startups since 1997, I know firsthand how hard it is to lead a company through a crisis—from the dot-com crash, to 9/11, and through the Great Recession. It was really painful,...
Three years in pursuit of a mission that really matters
On July 11, 2019, we celebrated our third anniversary of data.world’s launch. We gathered at the Alamo Drafthouse, followed by bowling and axe-throwing (yes, you read that right—it’s a thing now) at High 5. It was tremendous fun and I truly feel so proud to be a...
We’ve acquired Capsenta to bring the power of knowledge graphs to companies with on-prem data
I’m beyond excited to share this news. data.world has acquired Capsenta! In this brief post I’d like to explain why I personally think this is important for the enterprise data universe, and I encourage you to also read Capsenta co-founder Juan Sequeda’s own...
Check out this powerful #SXSW schedule query tool
Imagine having it all at your fingertips. All the sessions, speakers, and venues in a simple interface that tells you exactly what you need to know. That's what a query template does for data like SXSW's session information. While this was a private internal tool in...
Two incredible years at data.world
On July 11 we celebrated the second year anniversary of data.world’s launch. We had a great time at SPiN in the first ever OWL Cup (the ping-pong championship) during the same week as the World Cup in the finals. It was a real upset, and you should ask us about it (as...
The Incredible Challenge and Joy of Building the data.world Community
On July 11, 2016, we launched data.world to the public. Before that date, we were in stealth mode with only this quote on our home page: If the universe of data were suddenly made available, it would unleash the creativity of problem-solvers to combine different data...
Data donation: What’s at stake?
If your company had data that could help save lives, or feed the hungry, or slow global warming, or impact society in any significant way, what would you do with it? How many critical initiatives — and potential solutions to humanity’s biggest problems — die on the...
