How to Bypass a Free Trial and Start Delivering Value through Open-Source Solutions with Soda
Hashmap on Tap Ep. 128
“Data observability is more about giving users the ability to analyze why a certain problem happen. . . The metrics you monitor are one piece of information, but there can be a lot more.”
— Maarten Masschelein Co-Founder of Soda
Maarten Masschelein joined us recently on an episode of Hashmap on Tap to tell us more about his company, Soda — how they got started and their plans for the future. Maarten is co-founder and CEO at Soda, a Belgium-based open-source data observability and monitoring platform for the modern data stack. They will help you address data quality and data trust, two significant issues. Prior to founding Soda, Maarten spent a number of years with Collibra as one of the first five employees.
So how does one go from Collibra to starting their own open-source data observability tool?
Maarten was one of the first five employees at Collibra and the first employee in the go-to-market organization. At the beginning of any software startup, you have a few employees doing all of the work. Each member of the team plays a pivotal role in the direction of their product as you quickly broaden your skillset. Maarten was fortunate to learn a lot from the team and founders of Collibra while learning various roles during his six years there. After six years, the question that prompted Maarten to start his own project was “How can I apply myself from what I’ve seen and learned?”
There is a lot to learn from how a startup operates, especially one that has been as successful as Collibra has been in these early years. Maarten found that the way teams are organized and their dynamics were a key takeaway over the specific roles and responsibilities. His mindset shifted because of Collibra to see that data management as a solution that solves many different problems and use cases instead of just a technology.
How would Soda be set apart from others?
One thing that Maarten has noticed from software companies over the years is that they are difficult to start using or make it difficult for the technology to help you immediately. There’s traditionally a lengthy commercial process involving demos and RFPs, but using the software happens after the software is purchased. Maarten saw this as an inefficient process when there are components that can provide immediate value to an individual user. This is why Maarten and his co-founder Tom, decided on an open-source approach. Anyone can start using Soda’s open-source offering today, integrate tools, and contribute code. This approach allows users to get their hands on the technology, removing risks by not providing a small trial-type service.
How does a community play into shaping a new startup like Soda?
Soda has a fantastic open-source community. Software engineers and developers love contributing to open-source projects because it helps them create a more public profile. It helps them help other people while they can play with the technology and implement it in their own organization. As part of their growing community, Soda also has a fantastic Slack community. Contributors and their community add to the depth of Soda and demonstrate the diversity of use cases that it can be applied.
Where is Soda today?
The team at Soda is about 40 strong, spread across Europe and the US. This team has been initially focused on the open-source capabilities and making sure that they had a simple, easy-to-pick-up solution that provided a solid foundation for a framework of quality and reliability management in organizations. Data scientists are looking to add capabilities to their data platform and self-serve capabilities. Soda provides a flexible and simple solution that data scientists can immediately put to use.
As the team continues to grow, the team at Soda is looking to make it even easier for their community to contribute to the framework.
Listen to the episode to hear more from Maarten about his perspectives on data observability and about Soda and their open-source community.
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