OTH #1: Tristan Handy, Founder, CEO at dbt Labs -- A Modest Goal Turns Into A Unicorn
Literally, we we were in a hospital room with 2 beds, and my wife was in one, like, recovering and holding my newborn. And I was in the other bed, like, literally processing invoices in QuickBooks. Because, like, if I didn't, we couldn't make payroll. So, like, you do what you have to do.
Eric:Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.
Tristan:Right. Like and then and that.
Eric:That's what it takes. Right? Like, that's the price you pay.
Tristan:It's it's the price you pay. And you kinda don't know that that's what's gonna be involved at the beginning, but then you just you're faced with it and you're just like, well, this is this is what I have to do today.
Eric:Hello, and welcome to episode number 1 of the 1 10 100 show. My name is Eric Boggs, and I'm the creator and host of this thing. You probably already know me if you're listening to this, or maybe I'm on, like, episode number 2 50 or something, and you decided to come back to listen again from the very start. Either way, thank you for listening. My first guest is my friend Tristan Handy.
Eric:He's the founder and CEO at DBT Labs, a, data management tool, for data analysts and engineers. And as you can tell, Tristan started the business the way a lot of businesses start, in a really, really hard way. In his case, cutting paychecks, from a hospital room, right after his wife gave birth. So it's pretty wild to know that he's gone from that to now 100 of employees, over $400,000,000 in capital raised, and he's just knocking the cover off the ball. And the thing that I like the best about Tristan's story, is he's the same guy I've known for a very long time.
Eric:I hope you enjoy this project. I hope you enjoy this first episode. I think it's really good. Thanks again for listening. Tristan, my friend, how's it going?
Eric:Oh, it's going okay. It's, it's fun to use podcast as an excuse to catch up. So I should tell everyone that we're recording this the Friday before Christmas. Where does this day find you, physically and mentally?
Tristan:Oh, well, that's it's I'm glad you separated those. I, I'm still in my home office, outside of Philadelphia, and I have a bunch of meetings to do today. But, I'm I'm I'm struggling to keep my brain on task. I am, looking forward to a a holiday break that is is spent at the Chesapeake Bay and, going and collecting firewood and and having a a fire in my fire pit outside. Yeah, man.
Eric:Collecting firewood. You're speaking my language, brother. So Tristan, has the, unique honor of being a 3 time 1 by 10 by 100 champion. We actually worked together at Mhmm. Argyle Social, which we don't need to talk about that.
Eric:That was a inch I don't know. Maybe we should talk about that. RJ metrics and now DBT Labs, whether you're the founder and CEO, and you've raised a kajillion dollars, and you're just knocking the cover off the ball. But you didn't start there. So Mhmm.
Eric:If if you could take us back to the earliest of early days of,
Tristan:Fishtown Analytics. Yeah. And I have to credit you with a lot of the, you know, giving me the courage to to step out of my own and do the thing. You were just getting started with with I don't know. Maybe you'd started RevBoss, like, a year or 2 ahead.
Tristan:And
Eric:Yeah. It might not have been called RevBoss yet.
Tristan:Yeah. I I don't know. But but, you you you were in the this like period of oh my god this is awesome and, everyone should do it. And you infected me with that that spirit and I was like well if Eric can do it then maybe I can do it too.
Eric:Yeah. I I should say that that spirit comes and goes.
Tristan:Yeah. Yep. But but, so so really, like, there's a lot of stuff happening in, you know, I I consider myself first and foremost a a data practitioner. I've used that skill set in a lot of different ways over the course of the last, I don't know, 20, 25 years. But, Yeah.
Tristan:That that's that's my core skill set, and and in the, like, 2013 through 16 time period, there's a lot of change going on. Data was moving to the cloud, and, companies early adopters were trying to follow on on that journey. And oftentimes, they were doing that very poorly, and so I thought that I knew how to do it better. And I didn't actually wanna create a technology company. I wanted to create a a services business that would enable me to just, like, work with a bunch of customers that I thought were cool and that I liked.
Tristan:I work out of my home office, which was, like, very, a novel thing back in 2016, and and control my time a lot more. I I'm sure that you've experienced this, but, working at venture backed companies can tend to take over your life.
Eric:It's it's a different vibe, I'm sure. Mhmm. So from what I remember about your founding story was it started as an email list. Right?
Tristan:The okay. That that is not untrue, but I I don't know if it was, like, quite as central as as you're making it. I did so I I I had a newsletter that I curated, while at RJ metrics. I I ran marketing at RJ. And, we built it up to, like, 6,000 people.
Tristan:And as I was leading our J. Patrick's, the there was nobody that was, like, able to take over this this newsletter. And so I said, well, why don't I keep writing this and you folks can have a a sponsorship? And so that's that's how we arranged it. The the newsletter kept going out, and they kept getting their logo out in front of a bunch of people, and it it that has grown to several tens of thousands of of readers now, and I I continue to write it to this day.
Tristan:Yeah.
Eric:I was I was gonna say you still write every word of it.
Tristan:I am joined by, my my awesome con co contributor, Jason Ganz, who runs our our developer experience team.
Eric:Who who were your first clients
Tristan:at Fishtown Analytics? There were 2 there's one company actually that you originally introduced me to, UserVoice and, yeah. Right?
Eric:So I'm interviewing Rich, in a couple of weeks. You are not.
Tristan:He's now onto an another company, I think.
Eric:Yeah. Fathom. Like, also Yeah. Knocking the cover off the ball. Is that right?
Eric:Yeah. I mean, it's it's a wonderful product anyway. Shout out, Rich. We'll talk to you soon.
Tristan:And then the other one was a company called Contactually. But both of them, I knew from prior relationships. I think that a lot of times, consulting companies get their like, get, like, meaningfully all of their business through relationships. For Yes. For us, it was just, like, the first two, just enough to pay me a very modest salary, and my cofounder Drew a very modest salary.
Tristan:And and then we had time to kind of figure out where to get the rest, and and really, I did, you know, our customer funnel was all based on, on marketing. I was I don't honestly enjoy, the earliest. I I actually have come to enjoy the later stages of sales process, but I don't like the process where it's like, hi. Will you spend 30 minutes with me so that I can tell you why I'm smart and you should spend more time with me?
Eric:Yeah. You you're good at it. You would be good at it, but totally totally fair that you don't don't enjoy it. So you and Drew got your first couple clients. How long before you realized that you you had something?
Eric:It was really,
Tristan:it was really, I think, client number 3. I can't remember if it was 3 or 4. But it was, a company called Casper. I still sleep on only Casper mattresses to this day because I'm so appreciative for their their business. It was honestly a pretty short project for us, but, they were by far the the biggest and, like, most connected, team that we had worked with.
Tristan:Casper at the time was kind of hot shit in New York Tech, and Yeah. They had a data team of, like, 10 or 12 people, and they had a big problem with their data stack at the time. And we took the train up from Philadelphia, and, over the course of a week, we rebuilt a lot of, what they were doing, and we used our very nascent open source product, DBT, as a as a part of the solution. And they learned to use it and loved it and ended up referring a bunch of other New York tech communities at the time, like Kickstarter and Venmo and I don't know. There's this, Lightspeed Commerce, a bunch a bunch of early, early users came from that.
Tristan:So y'all I
Eric:mean, those are some pretty good names for Mhmm. 2 dudes working out of spare bedrooms in, you know, the Philadelphia suburbs. Yeah. Right? So clients 1 and 2, personal network.
Eric:Clients 3 plus, all referrals. And Yep. At some point, you transition from that to raising $400,000,000 from some of the best investors on the so I I guess, like, walk through that. Help help me understand that transition, and then I I just kinda have some more kind of personal related questions,
Tristan:to
Eric:that experience.
Tristan:Oh, it was so, we had not thought that there was a business to be built around DBT. It was a very kinda like weird product. It was, a product built to do data work, but it was it had a completely different understanding of the personas who did data work. And so it it felt like maybe there were only a couple dozen of us who would actually find this interesting. So we open sourced it, and and, yeah, there was, like, a nice little early user community, and that was cool.
Tristan:But we we installed anonymous instrumentation in the in the open source product, and we could just, like, watch the usage go up over time. And every single month, it grew by exactly 10%. Like, it was kind of freakish how consistent the growth was.
Eric:Yeah.
Tristan:And that was not through sales and marketing. Like, we were a consulting business. We were just, like, working with clients every day. But in the background, we get to watch this chart go up. And so over time, we invested more in it.
Tristan:We would, like, kind of steal from the consulting revenues and, like, invest in, software engineers writing open source code, and over time, like, that clearly didn't scale because it's it's it's like the math on that, like, paying people to write open source code, like, doesn't work forever. And so we we felt like we needed to you know, in 2019, we had a 1,000 companies using DBT, and, we had, like, 4 software engineers writing the code, and and we were just like, this this is kind of breaking. Yeah. And so we we had to do something different.
Eric:Yeah. Yeah. How how did that and during this time, your well, I guess this might be, you're having kids. Right? Mhmm.
Eric:And it's all just like this swirling, you know, success and challenges and everything else. Like, where were you, like, emotionally during that time? Was it all just high high highs? Like, we're absolutely gonna kill it, or did you feel like you were hanging on by a thread? Like, what do you remember from that time being the the leader of the business?
Tristan:I'll say 2 things. 1 is that, it is it is wonderful when you get to a place where you can start talking about work life balance to or, I mean, we wouldn't use those terms, but we we we talk about it as work hard and go home. But, it's it's so great when you can get there because you've had to pay for the privilege to get there. Like, I, you know, my my daughter was born Valentine's Day 2018, and, I was, like, literally, we we were in a hospital room with 2 beds, and my wife was in one, like, recovering and holding my newborn. And I was in the other bed, like, literally processing invoices in QuickBooks.
Tristan:Because, like, if I didn't, we couldn't make payroll. So, like, you do what you have to do. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Right.
Tristan:Like, and then to that.
Eric:That's what it takes. Right? Like, that's the price you pay.
Tristan:It's it's the price you pay. And you kinda don't know that that's what's gonna be involved at the beginning, but then you just you're faced with it, and you're just like, well, this is this is what I have to do today. Yep. And then the other thing what was the other thing? Tell me your original question again.
Eric:Where were you emotionally?
Tristan:So the line was very consistent up into the right, which is cool, but that masks all of the stuff that goes on beneath the surface that is horrifying. There were client conflict makes me, like, deeply, yeah, it produces all kinds of emotions. There was there was one instance where a customer didn't pay invoices for a little while and, like, was kind of transparent with us about, like, we'll we'll get there, we'll get there, and then they, like, shut down the business. And we we had, like, invested months months of I was like, look. If you knew this was coming, then why didn't you tell us earlier?
Tristan:Yeah. That so that kind of stuff happens. And but then there's also the, like, you know, there were 1 or 2 employees over the the journey that, turns out they were delivering work that was not up to my personal standards. And sometimes it takes a little while to find out about that because, like, the client doesn't really wanna email the CEO and say, like, your person is doing work that I'm
Eric:The the CEO is often the last to know in my experience. It's like everybody knows but you because whatever. You got a
Tristan:million people. And so that's, like, deeply upsetting because you're like, oh, I'm I'm not living up to my commitments in this this relationship that I I care about. And so, you know, both of those are, like, deeply emotional experiences in in different ways.
Eric:Yeah. Yeah. And they're inescapable. And you also don't know that you were, like, signing in blood to take on an endless fire hose of those situations, over the course of of building or running business.
Tristan:Yeah. You're the umbrella. You try to protect everybody else from all of that.
Eric:Yeah. Yeah. And you can't let them see a sweat. Mhmm. I wanna change gears.
Eric:I remember we'd had a conversation. I remember where I was standing, and I was standing in my yard picking tomatoes, like, during the COVID whatever time. And you and I were talking on the phone, And, I think you'd maybe just raised I think you just raised your 2nd round of capital. Would I be picking tomatoes on the East Coast around that timeline?
Tristan:When would Yeah. Yeah. It was August, I think Yep. 2020.
Eric:Yep. That's totally when it was. And, you spoke about something that really stuck with me. I mean, I can't remember the exact words, but I'm gonna paraphrase it. It's kind of like, I don't know, man.
Eric:We just got lucky. Like, this business was going to exist. Like, the Mhmm. The world was moving in this direction in terms of data and job function and whatever. And you said something to the effect of, like, I don't know, man.
Eric:We just have to be standing there, and we just got sucked into this, like, vortex. And, like, the market just pulled us into existence. And, I really love hearing deeply talented and smart people like you talk about the role that lot plays in their success, in the growth of their business.
Tristan:Yeah. I I still I still totally agree with that with that line, but I would add, like, a little bit of nuance. I think that, yep, people often use that is it Teddy Roosevelt that talked talked about, like, being in the arena? Yes. Yeah.
Tristan:The, is it I think oftentimes, the the the thing that people use that quote to, to to talk about is, like, when people are critical of people who are trying to build things, it is a it is a defense mechanism. It's like, well, why don't you get in the arena and see how you do? And okay. Fine. Like, I don't whatever.
Tristan:I'm I don't, stress too much about when people, are critical of of me. But, I think that the the entrepreneurial journey is it's so important to be in their the arena because you never know what is going to happen when you get there. It's a little bit like the NFL any given Sunday. Like but in order to have that any given Sunday thing true, like, you have to be on the field. Mhmm.
Tristan:And so oftentimes, I think that we are we don't encourage enough people to start companies, without knowing what the future holds. Like, I think that people should start companies because well, rather, I think that people should start companies with kind of a baseline, like, here's my plan, and it's pretty, modest. And it like, the the target for my plan is, like, I should be able to pay my own salary. Yeah. Like, that that is actually a great plan.
Tristan:Like,
Eric:you said, have a
Tristan:business that Brian Yeah. That no one can take away from you. Yeah. And then you you get in the arena. You see where it goes from there.
Tristan:And, yeah, like, certainly, luck plays a role in the industry context that might allow you to become, like, ginormously successful. But there's also a tremendous amount of skill in navigating figuring out when that happens and all of this other stuff.
Eric:So Yeah. Without a doubt. I may mention this, but it's it's holiday time. Every, you know, Harry Potter movies for us are like a Christmas like, they're Christmas movies in our house. I don't know.
Eric:Maybe they're Christmas movies for everybody, but there's a we watch one the other night. There's a quote where, I guess Ron is like, we have to make a plan or whatever. And Harry's like, when have our plans ever actually worked? We show up and everything goes to shit and we figure it out. And it's like, you know what?
Eric:Like, tattoo that on my arm because that is literally, business building and the life of a of a founder, like big, big or small company because it's just like, yeah, man. It just you get in the game, you play the game, it changes constantly, and you just gotta be good at rolling with the punches and making the moves that you need to make. So,
Tristan:we now have, I can't remember, 525 employees, something like that. And, one of my biggest growth periods over the last couple of years is, like, understanding how critical planning is at larger stages because, otherwise, you have all these people wandering around underutilized and also not really clear on, like, what direction is that the company is going in. And I was I've spent so long in the earlier stages that I didn't really understand this problem, and I was always, like, why don't they get it? Like or if they don't get it, like, why don't they ask me? Or do this kind of stuff.
Tristan:And and, so now the way I think about it is we actually need a very clear plan, and then my job is to disrupt the plan. Is to, like, find out ways to to do better than that.
Eric:Yeah. That that's, that's a great framework for the the founder guy that could scale up to the hundreds of employees CEO role. Right? Because, like, you you have a founder brain. Like, you will always have a founder.
Tristan:Yeah. I'm I'm quite bad at the, like, let's make damn sure that we can execute on exactly this plan. That's that's not how my brain works.
Eric:Yep. Yep. Let me let me change gears a little bit. You got 100 of employees. You're doing really well.
Eric:You got global brands paying 1,000,000 of dollars a year to use your your your software. You made a comment not that long ago about how now that you're the, you know, the big, gorilla in the category, you've got all the starts throwing rocks at you. And it wasn't that long ago that you were throwing the rocks. Like, how has that transition been for you? And it and it does, I guess, relate to, like, the founder the founder brain.
Eric:And, yeah. I don't know. How how does it go from being the plucky upstart to being the the guy stating off the attacks from the plucky upstarts?
Tristan:We we do have some of that, and, I think that it's it's funny. The there's, the upstarts that I actually think they're not adding to the conversation appreciably, and then there's the ones that I think that they are. Like, I you know, there was this period where, there was a there was a competitor that we had back in, like, 20 18 or so something like that. And, they they said, DBT is too hard to use. It's built for too technical of an audience, and they built a really nice gooey, and and, you know, kind of replicated dbt functionality, but but made it, like, a little bit easier to use.
Tristan:And that that created so much stress for me at the time. I was
Eric:like
Tristan:They're right. They're they're right. And, you know, we responded to that pressure Yeah. And built a bunch of product and made DBT easier to use. And and so I you know, there's the way that I experience this stuff, and then there's the way that our team experiences this stuff.
Tristan:Like, our our team is I think this is normal. You know, you see competition and the the tendency is to like, your blood pressure increases and, either you have the optimists who's like, oh, we're gonna crush them, or you have the pessimists who are like, oh my god. We're gonna we're gonna die. And I think the right answer is actually just, like, we need to continue to make consistent forward progress Yeah. And do what we do really well and and be responsive enough when people introduce, like, true improvements.
Tristan:I think the thing that I have had to learn that has been frustrating is that you I really used to appreciate the fact that no one gave a crap what I said publicly. And and so, like, I I really you know, I used my newsletter to to, like, constantly just, like, say whatever I thought.
Eric:Yeah.
Tristan:And and now that we have a a bigger presence in the market, I have to be a a little more judicious about
Eric:Yeah. Gotta think before you speak. Just a just a tiny bit.
Tristan:Just a little bit.
Eric:Yeah. Just a tiny bit. Lot lots riding on what what you have to say. Well, what what what's next for y'all? Like, what's coming up?
Eric:What are your plans for 2025?
Tristan:There's a lot happening in our space. You know, AI is is important, and it's gonna change a lot of, the the ways that people use our our product. Also, there's this, like, big disruptive trend, that that's gonna be very geeky, and I don't know that we wanna get, like, too deep down it, but but it's called open table formats, and there's an open table format called iceberg. And it's really, like, disrupting the way that, people think about databases and this, like, many 1,000,000,000 of dollars market of, like, analytical compute. So it's gonna be interesting times.
Tristan:I you would appreciate this. I I often feel like I'm living in the middle of a HBS case study. So maybe maybe one day, I can be involved in in writing that.
Eric:Yeah. You could you can write the DBT case study in the school, often in their dad's footsteps, and just not read the case study but talk about it anyway.
Tristan:Yeah. Right. They they can have Chegg GPT summarize the case study.
Eric:Exactly. Yeah. That that looks totally like my brand. Like, I wanna sit on the row. I wanna acknowledge acknowledge that I haven't prepped, but I'm just gonna talk because, like, that's just how I roll.
Eric:Anyway, Tristan, thank you, man. This is really great, really fun.
Tristan:It's awesome. Thanks for having me.
Eric:This is just great to hear hear all this. My customary wrap up, for this is some music recommendations. So, I don't know if you got anything prepped, but, yeah, what do you listen to these days?
Tristan:So so, honestly, I stopped I, handed over all of my, like, own DJing abilities to Spotify a couple years ago. And now, basically, when I'm working, if I'm not in a meeting, I'm constantly listening to lofi's lofi chill hop. And Spotify just, like, has an infinity stream of this, and it's like the soundtrack of my life.
Eric:Yeah. I'm I mean, I remember that back in the day. Like, that was, like, just what you listen to. Yeah. While you're working.
Eric:Well, I'm glad to hear that that hasn't changed. You haven't you certainly haven't changed either. I've known you for a long time, and even with all the success that you're experiencing, it's good to know that Tristan Handy is still Tristan Handy. Hell yeah. Well, we can leave it there, man.
Eric:Thank you. Awesome. Good to see you. Yep. Likewise.
Eric:Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the 1 10 100 show. I'm your host, Eric Boggs. Thank you to our production team of Rachel Velasquez and Danny Chu. Research team, Benjamin Rogerson and Heiney Blargwood. Screaming in the intro and outro provided by the Boggs children, Thomas, Catherine, and Barbara.
Eric:We'll see you next time.
