Ep 56: The end of the modern data stack (w/ Benn Stancil, Mode)

Benn Stancil joins Tristan to discuss the arc of the "modern data stack" and what will come next.

Welcome to Season 5 of The Analytics Engineering Podcast! Tristan’s recent post, Is the "Modern Data Stack" Still a Useful Idea?, has caused a bit of a stir.

Benn Stancil, cofounder and CTO at Mode, returns to the show to discuss the evolution of the term "modern data stack" and its value today. Benn wrote his own thoughts on the subject in The problem was the product: How the modern data stack got lost.

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  Key takeaways from this episode.

Tristan Handy: Let's talk about whether we should continue saying “the modern datastack.” Is that a useful idea?

Benn Stancil: I think I think the general arc of your narrative to me is right where it was a there were a handful of companies early on that were doing things differently. I think your points are mostly right too, that it was primarily cloud and this focus on SQL.

I think people forget that no professional wanted to put SQL on their resume in 2015. They were like, I must use Spark or Python or R or something. 

We started Mode in 2013, and when we were out having our first fundraising conversations with VCs, and SQL was like, what in the world are you doing? You got a lot of skeptical looks. Now that's kind of the standard. 

The ELT philosophy became a big part of the early stages. Generally, there was a period where the modern data stack, and honestly probably before the term really emerged, there was a group of companies that all sort of saw things in the same way.

And we didn't really have a way to describe it, but this was a collection of similar tools, similar philosophies. I think there was some like community to it, not in like the traditional sense, but in the sense that most people knew each other. They all came from similar lineages, honestly.

How close was your co-selling relationship with a Stitch or a Fivetran or a Snowflake?

We weren't co-selling that much with them, partly because the companies were too small to really run reasonable co-selling motions. But there was a lot of soft co-selling. We leaned a lot on y'all [dbt Labs] as like validation of the general principles that we were trying to sell. It's like, look, there are these other companies that are doing this too. We all have these similar beliefs; this isn't just us coming up with some crazy idea. There's something real here.

I think there was a period where that was what it was. And honestly, it's almost the branding of it as the modern data stack was the point at which in your post, you referred to it as it basically became a meme. And I think that's essentially what it became. It got buzzy. A bunch of people wanted to put money into it; a bunch of people wanted to start companies around it.

And people started looking for all sorts of ways to basically plug into narrower and narrower swim lanes, like dozens really of other categories.

If you go to moderndatastack.xyz, I think it's 29 categories, something like that.

Maybe some of these things become, become super important. I don't know. But they were chasing an unproven problem, in my view. Whether or not Mode or ThoughtSpot succeeds, it will be decided by whether or not we’re able to build a successful product. We aren't also trying to prove that the market for BI exists.

Modern data stack is no longer being used as the technical descriptor, but it's used as like the description of a vibe.

If you're a CIO evaluating something like, is this modern data? No. I think it's a useful historical term in the same way “big data.” It's an era. We know what that means. But no CIO is like, “Hey, we need to go buy some big data tools.” And so I think it's the same thing. 

I agree with you that there's been a lot of marketing use of this term, but I tend to see that as a natural part of the process and that there are good things that come out of it. A little bit like how there was a ton of fiber laid as a part of the dot-com boom. Most of them didn't make it as companies, but in the process they created something of lasting value.

The dot-com boom is probably another big data / modern data stack era thing where “dot com” is ’t super descriptive.

I agree with you that, that we've done a lot of things that’ll be really valuable and make people's lives easier. And yes, there's a lot of stuff in your view of this, the analytics workflows, that’s better. No doubt. I think my question is the broader ambition of what the modern data stack aims to enable at these data-driven companies. Our ability to make way for smarter decisions, what data does and what the modern data stack and the tools that’d be a part of that do as a transformative and strategic effort that’s a necessary thing for every company to have.

And there's a real question in my mind as to whether that's true. Yes it will make the people who do analytics and reporting and those sorts of things better. It’ll make some companies better who do real data work, who are building prediction models for what I should watch next on Netflix, better.

But the way I'd frame it’s suppose that we went through some crazy boom in HR software. There's the modern HR stack where they all talk about things like how HR is going to be the strategic asset that you have to have in a business.

And there's a ton of companies that get built around things like making HR central to what you're doing. And it's a strategic thing and all that kind of stuff. At the end of the day, it may be like HR is just like a mechanical function that companies need, but it's not strategically that differentiating.

Typically, we end episodes asking what you hope is true of the data industry in 10 years. But given the past year, I feel like 10 years is hopelessly long. I want to shorten this. What do you hope is true about the data industry in five years?

I think this gets it, some of what we were talking about was like, it has a clear direction for where it's going, that there is this experiential vision of what this is going to create. Because I think a lot of the scattered bluster of the last few years has been because we've lost sight of that, or we've never really had it.

I think we had it for how it's going to improve workflows for practitioners. We never quite got there for how it's going to have the broader impact that we wanted it to. And I think if we can see that, that's not going to come from somebody dictating it from on high, it's going to come from everybody that we realize where this future is headed, and we can start to build in that direction.

I think that's when real progress ultimately gets made on it. The optimist in me says we will.

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