2023 Annual Review: The Year of Intensity

2023 Annual Review: The Year of Intensity

The end of the calendar year presents us with a valuable opportunity to reflect on the year that was and plan for the year that will be. It's easy to glaze over the former and focus on the latter, but failure to reflect will eventually manifest as a failure to grow.

I started conducting a Personal Annual Review 9 years ago as a sophomore in college. It has been an immensely helpful exercise to which I would credit many of my greatest areas of progress. This annual exercise nurtures and develops sparks of inspiration, celebrates my uniqueness, helps me appreciate all the good in my life, tracks my personal growth, and allows me to strategically plan all the great and beautiful things I want my future to hold.

For the 2023 annual review, I will follow the template by Intelligent Change outlined in their “Best Year Journal” - a tool for setting relevant goals and having a fulfilling year ahead that I have been using.

Datacast Episode 130: Towards Accessible Data Analysis with Emanuel Zgraggen

Datacast Episode 130: Towards Accessible Data Analysis with Emanuel Zgraggen

Before founding Einblick in 2020, Emanuel was a postdoc in the database group at MIT and got his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University. He worked on various interactive tools for visual data exploration and analysis during this time. Most of them either influenced or are direct predecessors of Einblick.

Before coming to the US, Emanuel worked as a Software and Data Engineer for various financial companies in Zurich. He tried his luck as a freelancer building in-studio touchscreen installations for Swiss National TV and developing a Spotify clone that failed miserably.

Datacast Episode 129: Early-Stage Product Management, Product-Led Revenue, and Startup Monologues with Diana Hsieh

Datacast Episode 129: Early-Stage Product Management, Product-Led Revenue, and Startup Monologues with Diana Hsieh

Diana Hsieh is the Head of Product and Co-Founder at Correlated. She thrives on working with enterprise software startups. She was previously the first PM at infrastructure startups, including Cockroach Labs and Timescale. Before that, she was a VC at Norwest, focused on investing in early-stage enterprise software companies. Diana is always on the hunt for her next favorite coffee shop on weekends.

Datacast Episode 128: Building Trust with Founders, VC Funding for the Cloud, and The Next Platform for Data Apps with Jason Risch

Datacast Episode 128: Building Trust with Founders, VC Funding for the Cloud, and The Next Platform for Data Apps with Jason Risch

Jason Risch is an investor on the enterprise team at Greylock - investing in security, AI/ML, data, infrastructure, and developer tools. Before joining Greylock, he incubated ML companies at AI Fund and was a management consultant at McKinsey. Jason is a Bay Area native, graduated from Stanford, and when not working, can be found reading, hiking, playing Age of Empires, and cheering on Stanford Football.

Datacast Episode 127: Data Intelligence for Insurance Transformation with Heather Wentworth

Datacast Episode 127: Data Intelligence for Insurance Transformation with Heather Wentworth

Heather Wentworth is the Chief Data Officer of Accelerant, an MGA-enabling insurtech focused on improving how risk is exchanged across the insurance ecosystem. She is passionate about delivering innovative solutions and business models that improve business outcomes and drive revenue growth. She was nominated as one of the top 100 Insurance Innovators of 2022 by Lightico.

Datacast Episode 126: Vector Search Engine, Building An Open-Source Business, and Digital Technology Through The Lens of Language with Bob Van Luijt

Datacast Episode 126: Vector Search Engine, Building An Open-Source Business, and Digital Technology Through The Lens of Language with Bob Van Luijt

Bob Van Luijt is the CEO and co-founder of Weaviate, the business created around the open-source vector database Weaviate. Besides Weaviate, Bob frequently speaks on open-source, digital technology, software business, and business philosophy. He has spoken at 100s of events on the topics mentioned above all over the world, including a TEDx talk.

Datacast Episode 125: The Next Wave of Developer Platforms, Data Products, and Software Infrastructure with Sakib Dadi

Datacast Episode 125: The Next Wave of Developer Platforms, Data Products, and Software Infrastructure with Sakib Dadi

Sakib Dadi is a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners in their San Francisco office, where he primarily focuses on early-stage investments in developer platforms, data products, and software infrastructure. He has been involved with Bessemer’s investments, including Prefect, Coiled, Arcion, Periscope Data, Okera, Guild Education, and Sila Nanotechnologies. Before joining Bessemer, Sakib worked in product at Viagogo, an international marketplace for buying and selling tickets for live events.

Datacast Episode 124: The Open-Source Cloud Playbook, The Modular Future of Data and AI Infrastructure, and Meta-Learning as a VC with Casber Wang

Datacast Episode 124: The Open-Source Cloud Playbook, The Modular Future of Data and AI Infrastructure, and Meta-Learning as a VC with Casber Wang

Casber Wang is Partner at Sapphire Ventures. He focuses primarily on security, enterprise infrastructure, and data analytics.

He is on the boards of Huntress, JumpCloud, StarTree, Tetrate, Upytcs, and Zesty. For his work, Insider listed Casber as an Enterprise VC Rising Star Investor and as an emerging investor charting the industry’s future on the 2022 EVC List.

Prior to Sapphire, he was part of the technology investment banking group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he worked on a number of high-profile IPO and M&A transactions. He also spent time at Wish, a leading mobile commerce platform in North America and Europe.

Datacast Episode 123: AI Monitoring, Product-Oriented Data Science, and the Israeli ML Community with Itai Bar Sinai

Datacast Episode 123: AI Monitoring, Product-Oriented Data Science, and the Israeli ML Community with Itai Bar Sinai

With over 10 years of experience (Google, AI-focused startups) with big data and as the Chief Product Officer and co-founder at Mona, the leading AI monitoring intelligence company, Itai has a unique view of the AI industry. Working closely with data science and ML teams applying dozens of solutions in over 10 industries, Itai encounters a wide variety of business use cases, organizational structures and cultures, and technologies used in today’s AI world.

Datacast Episode 122: The Evolution of Data Visualization, Scaling Data Culture, and The Future of Data Transformation with Gabi Steele

Datacast Episode 122: The Evolution of Data Visualization, Scaling Data Culture, and The Future of Data Transformation with Gabi Steele

Gabi Steele is the co-founder and co-CEO of Preql, a no-code data transformation tool that empowers business users to model and manage their own metrics. She is also the co-founder of Data Culture, a data engineering and visualization consultancy. Previously Gabi led data visualization engineering at WeWork and worked on data storytelling at the Washington Post.