Everything's a Fad (Including This Podcast) — with Benn Stancil
Benn Stancil built Mode Analytics, spent a decade in the data trenches, and now writes some of the sharpest, funniest essays in the data world. On The Test Set, he talks about the cultural shift from Nate Silver to Rick Rubin why AI might kill the analytics dashboard, and what happens when a thousand startups all build the same thing. Plus: boy bands as a model for collaboration, and why the best creative work starts with cheating.
Episode notes
Benn Stancil joins Michael Chow and Wes McKinney in Times Square to talk about the rise of vibes over data, the content-ification of software, and why Silicon Valley's gold rush might produce more industrial waste than gold. They also get into the creative process behind Benn's Substack, the future of BI, and the joy of just doing things.
- Why the modern data stack was basically big data 2.0
- The cultural flip from Nate Silver to Rick Rubin
- Gas Town, tar pits, and the AI startup zero-sum game
- Software is becoming content, and that changes things
- Benn's creative process: Lorde lyrics, Codenames, and cheating
- The boy band as a model for small-team collaboration
- BI is (mostly) dead, and vibes might replace SQL
Hosts & guests
