Episode 95: Open-Source DataOps, Building In Public, and Remote Work Culture with Douwe Maan

Datacast

Show Notes

• (01:46) Douwe went over formative experiences catching the programming virus at the age of 9, combining high school with freelance web development, and studying Computer Science at Utrecht University in college.
• (03:55) Douwe shared the story behind founding a startup called Stinngo, which led him to join GitLab in 2015 as employee number 10.
• (05:29) Douwe provided insights on attributes of exceptional engineering talent, given his time hiring developers and eventually becoming GitLab's first Development Lead.
• (08:28) Douwe unpacked the evolution of his engineering career at GitLab.
• (11:11) Douwe discussed the motivation behind the creation of the Meltano project in August 2018 to help GitLab's internal data team address the gaps that prevent them from understanding the effectiveness of business operations.
• (14:38) Douwe reflected on his decision in 2019 to leave GitLab’s engineering organization and join the then 5-people Meltano team full-time.
• (20:24) Douwe shared the details about Meltano's product development journey from its Version 1 to its pivot.
• (26:18) Douwe reflected on the mental aspect of being the sole person whom Meltano depended on for a while.
• (29:20) Douwe explained the positioning of Meltano as an open-source self-hosted platform for running data integration and transformation pipelines.
• (34:54) Douwe shared details of Meltano's ideal customer profiles.
• (37:45) Douwe provided a quick tour of the Meltano project, which represents the single source of truth regarding one's ELT pipelines: how data should be integrated and transformed, how the pipelines should be orchestrated, and how the various plugins that make up the pipelines should be configured.
• (40:39) Douwe unpacked different components of Meltano's product strategy, including Meltano SDK, Meltano Hub, and Meltano Labs.
• (45:05) Douwe discussed prioritizing Meltano's product roadmap in order to bring DataOps functionality to every step of the entire data lifecycle.
• (48:53) Douwe shared the story behind spinning Meltano out of GitLab in June 2021 and raising a $4.2M Seed funding round led by GV to bring the benefits of open source data integration and DataOps to a wider audience.
• (52:19) Douwe provided his thoughts behind open-source contributors in a way that can generate valuable product feedback for Meltano.
• (55:43) Douwe shared valuable hiring lessons to attract the right people who align with Meltano's values.
• (59:04) Douwe shared advice to startup CEOs who are experimenting with the remote work culture in our “new-normal” virtual working environments.
• (01:04:10) Douwe unpacked Meltano's mission and vision as outlined in this blog post.
• (01:06:40) Closing segment.

Douwe's Contact Info

• GitLab
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• GitHub
• Website

Meltano's Resources

• Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub | YouTube
• Meltano Documentation | Product | DataOps
• Meltano SDK | Meltano Hub | Meltano Labs
• Company Handbook | Community | Values | Careers

Mentioned Content

Articles

• Hey, data teams - We're working on a tool just for you (Aug 2018)
• To-do zero, inbox zero, calendar zero: I think that means I'm done (Sep 2019)
• Meltano graduates to Version 1.0 (Oct 2019)
• Revisiting the Meltano strategy: a return to our roots (May 2020)
• Why we are building an open-source platform for ELT pipelines (May 2020)
• Meltano spins out of GitLab, raises seed funding to bring data integration into the DataOps era (June 2021)
• Meltano: The strategic foundation of the ideal data stack (Oct 2021)
• Introducing your DataOps platform infrastructure: Our strategy for the future of data (Nov 2021)
• Our next step for building the infrastructure for your Modern Data Stack (Dec 2021)

People

• Maxime Beauchemin (Founder and CEO of Preset, Creator of Apache Airflow and Apache Superset, Angel Investor in Meltano)
• Benn Stancil (Chief Analytics Officer at Mode Analytics, Well-Known Substack Writer)
• The entire team at dbt Labs

Notes

My conversation with Douwe was recorded back in November 2021. Since then, many things have happened at Meltano. I'd recommend:

• Checking out their updated company values
• Reading Douwe's article about the DataOps Operating System on The New Stack
• Examining Douwe's blog post about moving Meltano to GitHub
• Looking over the announcement of Meltano 2.0 and the additional seed funding

About the show

Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.

Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. Get in touch with feedback or guest suggestions by emailing [e-mail].

Subscribe by searching for Datacast wherever you get podcasts or click one of the links below:

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If you’re new, see the podcast homepage for the most recent episodes to listen to, or browse the full guest list.

About the show

Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.

Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].

Subscribe by searching for Datacast wherever you get podcasts, or click one of the links below:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Listen on Google Podcasts

If you’re new, see the podcast homepage for the most recent episodes to listen to, or browse the full guest list.