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pfduke02

29 karma · joined April 17, 2012

CEO @ Mozart Data -- best contact is my last name @ gmail YC Badge:0x0686b25EBFc7210517d78A818eC0289FCA5240Bd
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pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
Best contact would be -- amadeus [at] mozartdata.com
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
I'm curious what you've found works the best for finding people (employees, contractors, other resources) capable of drawing insights (or making heads/tails) out of the data? We're always trying to have a helpful perspective for customers - as well as wanting to give a great "push in the back" to get them going on that dimension as well.
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
It’s an apt comparison. The “fully turn-key ‘modern data stack’” is exactly what we’re going for. A key technology difference -- managed Redshift vs. managed Snowflake. Because Snowflake separates compute and storage, the pricing and scalability as data volumes grow become meaningful.

Here’s a more thorough writeup from our CTO, Dan… https://www.mozartdata.com/post/mozart-data-cto-and-co-found...

pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
Thanks!! More accurately put, you’re in good hands with Mozart Data. We have a product aimed to enable anyone to set up the data stack, without any data engineering needed. But ultimately, we want to help you be successful on your data journey, which is more than just a data stack - it is defining core tables, common analysis templates, and creating a great data culture.
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
I’m in extreme agreement for part -- for a company to get value out of their data, you want someone skilled at data cleaning, cutting it properly, and teasing out the insights. Where I disagree is that the person can be a data scientist, but doesn’t need to be. I believe that there is a growing population of data savvy employees without that title, many of them might not even have data at all in their title (they are in business operations, marketing, finance, and sales) -- many of them write SQL and are very comfortable manipulating data in BI tools, R, Python, Excel, or GSheets.

I also believe that company context matters a lot. I think so much of getting started with extracting value from data is getting up the learning curve of understanding what it means (which columns have the truth). One of the reasons that we don’t have a lot of canned reports is that understanding these edge cases within a company often matters a lot (and that not accounting for the nuance can often lead to a misinference). With this in mind, the explosion of ETL solutions and products like Mozart Data means that others at the company can specialize in their business context, as opposed to needing someone who can do all aspects of data including engineering, data science, analysis, and communicating/presenting it.

pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
Thanks! As mentioned in other comments, we partner with and use PBF (Powered by Fivetran) for connectors we believe are best in class. We are committed to ETL reliability, and that ease of use/setup and automatically managing changes is critical for success. In addition to PBF, we leverage Singer Taps, and our team is adding to the long-tail of connectors.
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
We have created our own transformation layer solution, which includes scheduling, run & version history, and lineage; we do not use dbt under the hood. We share a philosophy of being able to write transforms in SQL one layer above the BI tool -- this leads to greater consistency of downstream answers and allows for business users and analysts to write the business logic into the core tables.
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
Thanks! We couldn't resist a good pun on "data orchestration."
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
Functionality-wise that stack would be very similar! A core design principle of ours is that you should be able to have the power of a modern data platform even if all you know is a bit of SQL. So our product is functionally similar to a stack like Stitch+Snowflake+dbt (and we use some of those under-the-hood), but we try to wrap it all in an easier-to-use interface (e.g. typically to snapshot a table you write a few lines of config code, whereas in Mozart you just flip a toggle), and be more cost-competitive for smaller orgs.
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
We partner with and use PBF (Powered by Fivetran) for some connectors, which we believe are best in class. In addition, we are using Singer Taps and have also custom built some connectors. There are no additional fees for extract-transform-load, whether Fivetran or any other ETL service (we cover those). The primary additional data costs are for a BI tool, though there are a number of free options to connect to.
pfduke02··on Launch HN: Mozart Data (YC S20) – One-stop shop for a modern data pipeline
ETL tools like Stitch provide similar & critical functionality. We do this and host/store the data, as well as offer SQL transforms. This enables teams to put together a data pipeline with just one tool.

In terms of pricing we charge by monthly active rows (MAR) and compute time. An introductory package with 500k MAR and 500k seconds costs $1000/month; but we try to tailor to individual company needs.