Tristan Handy is the Founder and CEO at dbt Labs, a cloud-based data management platform that has raised over $400M to date, and was last valued at $4.2B in 2022. Dbt Labs has grown from just three companies using its free tool in 2016 to an ecosystem of 30,000+ enterprise users. Before founding dbt Labs, Tristan was the VP of Marketing at RJMetrics and the Director of Operations at Squarespace.
–
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- Dbt’s explosive growth
- The strategic pivot from consulting to a software company
- Unexpected strategies for building a tech category from scratch
- The critical moment: Why and when dbt Labs sought venture funding
- How to drive commercial adoption after open-sourcing
- Two things every founder CEO should do
- Much more
–
Referenced:
- Amazon Redshift: https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/
- Bob Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjmoore/
- Crossbeam: https://www.crossbeam.com/
- dbt Labs: https://www.getdbt.com/
- Drew Banin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewbanin/
- Jerry Colonna: https://www.reboot.io/team/jerry-colonna/
- RJMetrics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJMetrics
- SeatGeek: https://seatgeek.com/
- Steve Ritter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-ritter-69495210/
- Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/
–
Where to find Tristan:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristanhandy/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/jthandy
–
Where to find Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
–
Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
- This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:56) The critical oversight in data analysis
(05:41) Becoming an “accidental founder”
(07:04) Inside the unique decision to start a consultancy
(08:17) The game-changing principle behind dbt Labs’ rapid growth
(11:20) Finding dbt Labs’ first customers
(15:52) Consulting's hidden scalability
(17:25) How dbt Labs created a new category
(21:03) The anti-demo strategy
(23:59) Community hacking: the Slack group that changed everything
(26:00) The open source philosophy
(27:39) When growth went exponential
(28:49) How consulting engagements shaped the roadmap
(30:02) Fundraising only when “things started to break”
(32:40) Consultancy superpowers: the hidden advantages
(34:04) Pivoting from consulting to software
(40:00) Key monetization strategies
(48:56) Why “begrudging” CEOs can be successful
(51:02) Advice for finding PMF: “It’s not a playbook”
(51:59) Lowering your standards is a hack
(53:30) Navigating emotional overwhelm
(54:25) Every CEO needs a coach