We love data explorers and their discoveries

Although we’re still in stealth mode, we couldn’t resist penning a Valentine’s Day love letter to celebrate the data explorers who have changed the world. Their discoveries have transformed health, science, commerce, and society. And they're the inspiration for our founding WisdomAI, with an overarching goal to give everybody data superpowers.

Data explorers have powered human progress for millennia

History is filled with renowned philosophers, physicists, and scientists who at their core were data explorers; all of whom changed the course of history with their insights:

• Hippocrates is known as the “Father of Medicine” because he moved humankind from relying on superstition to relying on empirical evidence back in ~400 BC. He recorded both symptoms and outcomes to identify patterns in diseases, acting as perhaps the world’s first data explorer.
• Sir Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler will be celebrated forever, but their work on theories of gravity and laws of planetary motion respectively was built on observations by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. He meticulously observed the planets and stars in the 16th century, his explorations leading to Kepler's and Newton’s discoveries and the dawn of modern science.
• Florence Nightingale is best-known as the founder of modern nursing, but her biggest contribution was using statistical analysis to improve public health. She collected soldiers’ mortality data during the Crimean War (1853-1856) and discovered more deaths were due to poor sanitation than battle wounds. Thanks to her investigation, hygiene practices improved and life expectancies increased.

We could celebrate dozens more historical figures - many equal parts scientists and data scientists - who all drove immense breakthroughs by diving into the wonderful world of data.

Today data explorers power the world of work

Many of the world’s leading companies and leading operators have transformed their businesses with data. Three examples that inspire us:

• Amazon is building one of the most advanced logistical operations in history. Starting with the insight that customers will always want vast selection, low prices, and fast delivery, Amazon has engineered every decision around driving to those goals. Consider the supply chain and distribution complexity involved in selling and then delivering more than 200 million products over the course of 2023's Prime Day!
• Genentech turns data into life-saving solutions. Investing heavily in R&D, they leverage advanced data analytics and bioinformatics to accelerate drug discovery and development. And their groundbreaking work in personalized medicine, especially tackling cancer, is all built on exploring and analyzing complex biological data. With everything focused on improving patient outcomes.
• Netflix is reinventing how to use data to predict what content will be successful. Making up the specifics, they can predict that a supernatural show spearheaded by a 19-year-old red-headed Romanian protagonist will resonate with urban audiences in South-East Asia. And, given the theme of this blog post, we all recommend Moneyball (on Netflix here) celebrating the role of data explorers in unearthing hidden gem talent in professional baseball!

We’ve seen the power of data explorers at work ourselves

We all started working together at Rubrik, the leading data security company that Soham co-founded, where we learned firsthand about how data insights could fuel rapid growth. When the world shutdown during the pandemic in 2020 and the dynamics of customer acquisition changed overnight, we turned to our data teams to figure out our plan. Thanks to their insights, we reinvented our Go-To-Market approach and successfully maintained our momentum. In addition, we created an analytics team dedicated to engineering productivity, digging in to understand what distinguished the best performing teams among Rubrik’s 500+ person engineering organization. Overall, we evolved from being heuristics-based to relying on analytical insights to guide us.

But there are too few data explorers at work today

Every great operator knows the value of data in shaping smarter decisions. They know that the real MVPs of their companies are the often unsung heroes who turn insights into action. However, these operators are also painfully aware of today’s talent gaps: there’s just aren’t enough data professionals who possess the coding chops of an elite engineer coupled with the analytical acumen of a top-tier statistician. Too many executives have to wait in long queues waiting for analysis support and too many lower-level employees have to fend for themselves. Dashboards sometimes help, but are generally inflexible and disjointed. Therefore, there’s a massive mismatch between almost infinite demand for data analysis and severely limited supply of the professionals who can meet this demand.

With WisdomAI, we want to turn everybody into a data explorer

Our goal is to democratize data insights, empowering everyone in an organization to use data to make better decisions. By harnessing the power of cloud-base data warehousing and the latest advancements in LLMs, we’re fast making this vision a reality. Imagine a world where dialogues with data are as easy and rich as conversations with colleagues. Where every employee can discover valuable insights without the long waits for data analyst availability or the constraints of static dashboards. A future where data drives decisions, better.

Here’s a short sneak preview of what WisdomAI offers to our customers:

In the months ahead, we’re excited to more publicly unveil WisdomAI’s product capabilities. And, along the way, we’ll continue to use this blog to celebrate great data explorers and their transformational work.

A Happy Valentine’s Day to every data explorer out there, past, present, and future!

Soham, Kapil, and Sharvanath

WisdomAI Co-Founders

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