Summation with Auren Hoffman

Alex Dalyac, co-founder and CEO of Tractable AI, joins World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman.  Tractable offers artificial intelligence to help people repair, protect & sell their vehicle & home. Auren and Alex dive into the mechanics of building an AI product in insurance, how to build a successful data co-op, and the challenges startups face when going global. They also explore the journey of...

Jonathan Levin, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Chainalysis, joins World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Auren and Jonathan dive into the importance of understanding transactions on the blockchain, how challenging it is to establish a data co-op, and what it’s like to build a data company in crypto. They also chat about how data companies are misunderstood and can’t be viewed from the SaaS le...

Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court litigation expert, co-founder of SCOTUSblog , and professor at Harvard Law School joins World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman.  Auren and Tom dive into approaches to Supreme Court advocacy and data’s role in legal decision making. They also cover the Google v. Oracle case and its impact on technology for years to come.  World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph. For more...

Julia Galef, co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, host of the podcast Rationally Speaking , and author of The Scout Mindset joins World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman.  Auren and Julia explore building a scout mindset as defined in Julia’s new book, why embracing being wrong is important and tactical approaches to shifting your mindset. They also cover how entrepreneurs approach risk and...

Dan Doctoroff, Founder and CEO of Sidewalk Labs and former CEO of Bloomberg joins World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Dan was also formerly the Deputy Mayor of Economic Development for New York City during the Michael Bloomberg administration and Managing Partner at the private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners.  Auren and Dan dive into how cities are formed and how they can leverage data about...

Richard Haass , President of the Council on Foreign Relations talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Richard previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department,  was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan, and is the author of 14 books,  most recently of "The World: A Brief Introduction&qu...

Godard Abel , CEO of G2, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. G2 is a software marketplace, valued at $1.1B that helps people make software decisions based on peer reviews. Auren and Godard cover how G2 took on the very hard task of creating software categories, unintentionally built a hard-to-replicate, revenue-generating data product, and mastered the art of SEO. They also discuss why Ve...

Technology drives many transformations in how humans interact. Yet, very few people working in technology spend time studying the past. Niall Ferguson believes that we would better understand today's burning issues in technology if we thought about them with a historical framework. Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank within...

Dean Stoecker , co-founder and former CEO of Alteryx, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Alteryx is a $5 billion market cap data analytics automation platform. Alteryx knew that digital transformation would be driven by workers in every functional area of a business, from Sales Ops to FP&A to supply chain, and not just the PhD-trained statisticians. So they built a platform that allo...

Spotting talent is really hard. Identifying A-players can feel impossible. Peter Thiel has one of the best interview questions for identifying talent, “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” But Daniel Gross disagrees. Daniel believes easygoing questions like “What movies do you like to watch?” elicit more telling responses. Daniel Gross is the CEO of Pioneer, a reimagined ver...

Tyler Cowen , Chair of Economics at George Mason University, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Tyler is the host of the Conversations with Tyler podcast, blogger at Marginal Revolution, and author of several books. Auren and Tyler discuss how the last year drove the end of the Great Stagnation, society’s newfound appreciation for big business, why Tyler thinks economists’ use of data is...

Daniel Yanisse , CEO of Checkr, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Checkr is a $4.6 billion market cap dollar company automating background checks. Auren and Daniel discuss the legacy system for running background checks, why it was the perfect market for a startup, how Checkr approached channel partnerships and international expansion, and its recent shift to B2C. They also discuss Chec...

Sinan Aral , Professor of Management, Marketing, IT and Data Science at MIT, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Sinan is also the director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, founding partner of Manifest Capital, and the author of the book “Hype Machine”. Auren and Sinan discuss why social media networks are optimized to connect users with like-minded people, what creates viral...

Hayden Brown , CEO of Upwork, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Upwork is a $6 billion market cap workplace company. Auren and Hayden cover how the COVID-19 pandemic massively accelerated the freelance market, Upwork’s strategy to become the single destination for all work-related needs, and various other examples of successful marketplaces. They also discuss Upwork’s proprietary datase...

Glen Weyl is Microsoft Office of CTO Political Economist & Social Technologist, founder of RadicalXChange, and author of “Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society”. Glen is reimagining democracy with two revolutionary concepts -- quadratic voting and quadratic funding. Auren and Glen cover how quadratic voting and quadratic funding can revitalize collective decisi...

Will Marshall , co-founder and CEO of Planet, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Prior to Planet, Will served as a Scientist at NASA/USRA. Planet is a data business that operates hundreds of orbiting satellites that capture images of the entire world daily. Will and Auren cover Planet’s proprietary methods of building a dataset in space, how satellite imagery is used by numerous industri...

Byrne Hobart , Author of The Diff talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. The Diff is a top newsletter that covers inflection points in finance and technology. Byrne previously worked in data-driven equity research and online marketing. In 2020, Byrne published an article stating that airline loyalty programs are worth more than the airlines themselves. These programs have been key to the air...

Susan Athey , The Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford's Graduate Business School, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Susan serves as the Founding Director at Stanford's Golub Capital Social Impact Lab, using technology and social science to improve the effectiveness of social sector organizations, and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research...

Scott Stephenson , CEO of Verisk (NASDAQ: VRSK), talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Verisk Analytics is a $28 billion market cap data analytics company. Scott joined Verisk from BCG in 2001, was promoted to CEO in 2013, and doubled Verisk’s annual revenue to almost $3 billion since then. Auren and Scott discuss Verisk’s founding as a nonprofit, its role as one of the first InsureTech com...

Henry Schuck , CEO of ZoomInfo (NASDAQ: ZI), talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. ZoomInfo is a $17 billion market cap B2B data company and one of the only billion dollar data companies that have been created in the last 20 years. Auren and Henry cover ZoomInfo’s origination, how it differentiated itself in an already crowded market, best practices on building a contributory network, ZoomI...

Will Lansing , CEO of FICO (NYSE:FICO), talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Will previously served as the CEO of InfoSpace, ValueVision Media, NBC Internet, and Fingerhut and a partner at General Atlantic Partners, a global private equity firm. He also co-authored the DaaS Bible 2.0 . Auren and Will dive into data standards, the relationship between analytics and data companies, and how F...

Stephen Orban , GM of the AWS Marketplace, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Stephen previously served as the GM of the AWS Data Exchange and CIO of Dow Jones. He’s also the author of Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT . Auren and Stephen cover the launch of AWS Data Exchange, Amazon’s role as an industry-wide innovator, the advantages of Amazo...

Hilary Mason , CEO of Hidden Door and data scientist in residence at Accel Partners, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Hilary previously co-founded Fast Forward Labs, which was acquired by Cloudera, and served as the Chief Scientist at bit.ly. Auren and Hilary explore how data science has progressed in the past decade, the role of data science in an organization, and data ethics. World...

Jack Dangermond , founder and CEO of Esri, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman.  Esri is the global market leader in GIS and location intelligence with over $1 billion in revenue. Auren and Jack discuss Esri's history, its unique organizational structure, pioneering in a specific space, the relationship between software and geospatial data, and more. World of DaaS is brought to you by...

World of DaaS is a podcast for data enthusiasts, by data enthusiasts, where Auren Hoffman talks to business and technology thought leaders about all things data -  building it, acquiring it, analyzing it, and everything in between. World of DaaS will keep you up-to-date with the latest trends, best practices, and innovations to help you create the next great data business. Subscribe here and join...