Why I Joined Sigma Computing

I recently joined Sigma Computing to build its research team, making a move that was unusual in a few ways. To start with, though startups born out of research are ubiquitous, research teams at startups are unusual. Sometimes graduate students or other researchers ask me about Sigma; so I thought sharing my reasons for joining Sigma might have useful bits for others.

I had essentially three reasons for joining Sigma Computing. The first was Sigma’s vision: empowering business users to make better decisions based on analysis of their data — available to them at ever-larger scales thanks to shrinking storage costs enabled by cloud computing. Technically, combining the strengths of spreadsheets and cloud data warehouses is a no-brainer, but getting it right is challenging. I was quickly drawn to Sigma’s vision and roadmap because they were very well aligned with my research and what I wanted to do next. Aligning one’s work with the product — the source of revenue — is always helpful, but it is critically important for industry researchers who want to grow.

The second was the chance to lead a founding research team that’s being built ground up to shape a rapidly evolving product through research. Frankly, lots of stars need to be aligned to get an opportunity like this. And over the years, I had developed strong ideas on how research should be done and how research teams should be built and run, based on lessons I’d learned at corporate and academic research labs. Here was the opportunity to walk the talk under challenging yet propitious circumstances.

The third — and perhaps the most important — factor was Sigma’s people. Every conversation I had with them, from investors to founders and the CEO, was not just insightful but also made it clear that they had both the courage and a working theory of their convictions — always a great sign. Topics varied from the future of Sigma to data semantics, programming by demonstration, visualization recommendations, Orhan Pamuk, and Karl Popper. Life is short, and you definitely want to work with interesting people. Leadership matters and so does working with confident, competent people who have high expectations while giving you full support and setting you up for success.

Since joining, I’ve talked to many people across Sigma teams and read customer surveys and interviews along with support-call transcripts in a quest to understand the workflows and needs of our users. One big overarching question is: what should data analysis be optimizing for? Data exploration and insight discovery are important, but they matter only in improving decisions. Consider these user questions: how can I best use my $100K marketing budget? Where should I form new partnerships to maximize revenue growth? What should I do to reach next quarter’s sales goal? A current research project I’m particularly excited about is extending Sigma to be an intelligent end-to-end decision-support system that helps business users make better decisions, going beyond conventional predictive analytics through, for example, interactive what-if data experiments.

Creating a multibillion-dollar company means solving big problems, no matter what. However, you can solve big problems only by working together, coalescing around the same goals with maximum focus. The research team we’re building at Sigma Computing will do exactly this. I look forward to an exciting future —we’re hiring at all levels.

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