A founding engineer on Google BigQuery and now at the helm of MotherDuck, Jordan Tigani challenges the decade-long dominance of Big Data and introduces a compelling alternative that could change how companies handle data.

Jordan discusses why Big Data technologies are an overkill for most companies, how MotherDuck and DuckDB offer fast analytical queries, and lessons learned as a technical founder building his first startup.

Watch the episode with Tomasz Tunguz: https://youtu.be/gU6dGmZzmvI

Website - https://motherduck.com

Twitter - https://x.com/motherduck

Jordan Tigani

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani

Twitter - https://x.com/jrdntgn

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

LISTEN ON:

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7yLATDSaFvgJG80ACcRJtq

Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mad-podcast-with-matt-turck/id1686238724

00:00 - Intro

00:56 - What is the Small Data?

06:56 - Marketing strategy of MotherDuck

08:39 - Processing Small Data with Big Data stack

15:30 - DuckDB

17:21 - Creation of DuckDB

18:48 - Founding story of MotherDuck

24:08 - MotherDuck's community

25:25 - MotherDuck today ($100M raised)

33:15 - Why MotherDuck and DuckDB are so fast?

39:08 - The limitations and the future of MotherDuck's platform

39:49 - Small Models

42:37 - Small Data and the Modern Data Stack

46:47 - Making things simpler with a shift from Big Data to Small Data

50:04 - Jordan Tigani's entrepreneurial journey

58:31 - Outro