5 min read

MDS Newsletter #19

MDS Newsletter #19

Happy Lunar New Year Folks!🐯

Each week on Wednesday we bring you the latest from the data space. We intend to do this in the best way possible, so if you guys have any suggestions or thoughts, drop us an email. Also, don't forget to share this with your friends & colleagues who love to remain on top of everything latest in the modern data space.

Let's take you through this week's edition!

Here are this week's featured companies from the Modern Data Stack.

  • Lightup Data helps in detecting data drift and data outages before they hurt product experience and business decisions.

    It is the next-gen data quality and data observability platform for the enterprise that is serving this critical unmet need. The Lightup platform is purpose-built to continuously track data quality for high volume and high cardinality data with rapidly evolving data shapes.

    Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Lightup Data was founded in 2019.

    Lightup has raised a total of $4.5M in a seed round of funding in April 2019.
  • Jitsu is an open-source data integration platform. Their mission is to ensure that all your business data is consolidated in a single database and ready for analytics.

    It is a fully-scriptable data ingestion engine for modern data teams. Set up a real-time data pipeline in minutes, not days.

    Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Jitsu was founded in 2019.

    Jitsu has raised a total of $2M in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Dec 2, 2020, from a Seed round.

Good reads & resources

Keep pace with the latest developments in the modern data stack. Always be learning!

  • The Four Innovation Phases of Netflix’s Trillions Scale Real-time Data Infrastructure: In this article, Zhenzhong Xu has talked about the four phases of Real-time Data Infrastructure’s iterative journey in Netflix from 2015 to 2021. He has summarized his learnings around building the real-time data infrastructure at Netflix to help platform engineers develop their cloud-native, self-serve streaming data platforms and scale use cases across many business functions.
  • Five steps for making data-informed decisions: Data-driven decision-making is the key to unlocking success. However, it is often difficult for business organizations to figure out the "What", "When" & "How" of data. What data to use, When to use, and How to use it in order to make this process of data-based decision-making smooth and effortless. In this article, Caitlin Hudon shares her 5 step process to make better decisions with data.
  • 10 reasons why you are not ready to adopt data mesh: There is a lot of buzz around "Data Mesh" lately! One can find a lot of articles explaining the concept & benefits of incorporating data mesh. But like everything else, it's not for everyone. In this article, Thinh Ha has explained in detail 10 reasons why an organization is not ready to adopt data mesh.
  • The data-driven enterprise of 2025: With rapid technology advances & increasing data literacy, what it means to be data-driven is changing for organizations. This comprehensive guide by Neil Assur & Kayvaun Rowshankish from McKinsey & Company intends to help executives understand the characteristics of the new data-driven enterprise and the capabilities they enable. It also provides resources to dive deeper into how to embed them in your organization. They explained seven characteristics that will define this new data-driven enterprise in this article.
  • Why Data Governance Matters: Though not as fancy as other categories of "data", data governance is something that companies no matter what they do can't ignore anymore. In this article, Andrew Hershy discusses why Data Governance matters, and why it’s a win-win no matter the company.

Latest funding news

The latest happenings in the VC world for data stack companies.

  • Deepnote

    Deepnote raises $20 million in Series A round of funding!

    Deepnote is a notebook that brings teams together to explore, analyze and present data from start to finish.

    This round of funding was led by led by Accel and Index Ventures and existing investors Y combinator and Credo Ventures who also participated in this round. Read here.
  • Dremio

    Dremio raised  $160 million in Series-E round of funding and Hits a $2 Billion Valuation!

    Dremio is a high-performance SQL data lakehouse that helps to accelerate BI & Analytics directly on cloud data lake storage.

    This round was led by new investor Adams Street Partners with participation from new investors StepStone Group and DTCP, along with existing investors Sapphire, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture and Cisco Investments. Read here.
  • Canvas

    Canvas raised $4.2M  in funding led by @sequoia.

    Canvas is a collaborative data exploration tool that helps modern business teams make decisions without SQL.

    This round of funding was led by Sequoia Capital. Other investors included Abstract Ventures(@AbstractVC) and SV Angel (@svangel). Read here.

Upcoming data stack events & webinars

Upcoming conferences, summits, and webinars for you. Start networking!

  • Data Visualization Society is hosting an OutlierConf aiming to reflect & celebrate the global viz community from Feb 3-4, 2022

    Outlier will provide inspirational talks and the ability to meet and connect with others, and the opportunity for all attendees to have a voice.

    Register here.
  • Sofa Summits is organising 'DATA & AI SUMMIT' on 3rd Feb 2022

    Data & AI Summit brings together leading data speakers from various organisations to demonstrate the very latest applications of Data & AI across the Enterprise.

    Register here.
  • Starburst is hosting 'The Data Mesh Summit' from 9- 10 Feb 2022

    Datanova will feature insights from data leaders, subject matter experts, and the world’s leading organizations who’ve built a Data Mesh architecture.

    Register here
  • Sifflet Data is organising ENTROPY: A Data Observability conference on February 8th, 2022

    It is a full-day virtual event bringing together leading industry experts to share their most valuable insights and discuss current trends of the modern data stack. Topics will include Data Lineage in Observability, Data Mesh, Data Governance, Data Observability at the source, and more!

    Register here

MDS Jobs

  • Ruby Labs is hiring a ‘Lead Analytics Engineer’
    Location: Remote
    Stack: dbt, hex, lightdash, Avo.
    Apply here
  • Stonly is hiring a ‘Senior Analytics Engineer’
    Location: Paris, France
    Stack: Fivetran, DBT, Redshift, Hightouch.
    Apply here
  • Striim is hiring a ‘Data Engineer - Community’
    Location: Remote
    Stack: Google Cloud, Snowflake, Kafka, Redshift.
    Apply here.
  • Bolt is hiring a ‘Director, Revenue Analytics & Insights’
    Location: Remote
    Stack: Looker, Fivetran, Metabase, Hightouch
    Apply here.
  • Checkr is hiring a ‘Senior Data Analyst, Insights’
    Location: Denver/Remote
    Stack: Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Kafka
    Apply here

What's trending on Twitter in the Data Stack world! Tweet link

Just for fun


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