Domino Data's Chris Yang on helping data scientists run AI

Domino Data's Chris Yang on helping data scientists run AI

Author: Unusual Ventures January 29, 2024 Duration: 44:49

Domino Data Lab was founded in 2013 and was one of the early innovators in the space known as MLOps. It delivers a unified platform for enterprises to build, deploy, and manage machine learning workloads and provides access to data, tools, compute, models across any environment. Domino enables ML and data teams to collaborate, ensure governance, and reduce costs at scale.

In this episode, Wei Lien Dang chats with Chris Yang, co-founder and CTO of Domino Data.

Join us as we discuss: 

00:00 Introduction to Domino Data Lab

02:04 The Origin Story of Domino Data Lab

06:58 Balancing Authenticity and Customer Feedback

10:52  Open Communication and Collaboration Among Co-founders

14:24 The Importance of Engaging with Users

16:19  Building the First Feature: Enabling Compute Workloads in the Cloud

22:42 Discovering Unexpected Use Cases and Features

33:20 The Importance of Choosing a Target Market

35:44 The Evolution of MLOps and the Current AI Wave 

Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.

Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures and leads investments in infrastructure software, security, and developer tool.  Wei was a co-founder of StackRox, a cloud-native security company prior to its acquisition by Red Hat. He can be reached at wei@unusual.vc.

Chris Yang is the co-founder and CTO of Domino Data. 

Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.


Behind every so-called overnight success in software, there's a long, often messy journey of finding exactly what customers need and how to deliver it. That's the central theme explored in Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast. This series is built for those in the trenches of early-stage software companies, from founders just starting out to leaders tasked with building something from nothing. Each episode moves beyond theory, offering grounded conversations with people who have actually navigated these challenges. You'll hear them unpack the real work of identifying a true market need, the nuances of early hiring decisions, and the practical steps of crafting a go-to-market strategy. Fundraising, often a opaque process, gets broken down into more understandable components. The focus remains consistently on the actionable and the specific, providing a kind of audio manual for the foundational phase of a business. Tune in for a candid look at the less-glamorous, critical work that separates an idea from a viable company, all brought to you by Unusual Ventures. This podcast serves as a resource for turning those initial concepts into a sustainable operation, one hard-won lesson at a time.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 53

Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
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