Zero Prime Podcast

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Mashrabov, the visionary CEO of Higgsfield AI. We journey through Alex's impressive career, beginning with his time at Yandex where he witnessed the early implementations of neural networks. We explore what ignited his entrepreneurial spirit and delve into the stark contrasts between the Russian and American educational landscapes.

Our discussion then moves to Alex's experiences in building generative AI products, starting with AI Factory, which focused on innovative face animation technology and strategic planning for mobile devices. We also examine his time at Snap, where he addressed the challenges of balancing scale and cost. Finally, Alex highlights Higgsfield AI's groundbreaking approach to efficiently training text-to-video models. He discusses the common challenges organizations face when scaling models and allocating resources and emphasizes the importance of rapid experimentation in AI development.

Highlights:
[01:07] - Alex discusses his time at Yandex and what gave him the confidence to leave and become a founder
[03:29] - Differences between American and Russian educational systems and how Yandex leveraged these differences for recruitment
[06:57] - Alex describes what he built at AI Factory and his experiences on the Snap team
[10:10] - Alex shares the engineering efficiencies he introduced at Higgsfield AI
[14:03] - Exploring how experimentation influences the AI stack
[15:52] - Alex talks about Higgsfield’s architecture and world models
[21:32] - We delve into Alex's views on copyrighted material, deep fakes, and other ethical challenges of generated video
[26:20] - Alex outlines the long-term vision for Higgsfield AI

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👉 Data Council 2025 brings together the brightest minds in AI and data, featuring no-BS technical talks from industry leaders at Databricks, Perplexity, Replit, Datadog, DeepMind, and more. Join us for 3 DAYS of 100+ deep-dive talks, workshops, and our signature office hours where you can meet your AI & data heroes in person.

Tickets are selling out fast, buy yours today!

Pete interviews Lindsay Pettingill, CEO & Founder of Iggy. Iggy allows users to quickly understand physical locations to make better investment and management decisions. Lindsay gives us an overview of Iggy, how working at Airbnb informed founding Iggy, what neighborhood data is, and what the long term vision for Iggy is. Check it out!
Highlights:
[1:20] What does Iggy do?
[5:20] How did your experience working at Airbnb inform founding Iggy?
[10:06] Neighborhood data
[13:22] Iggy’s long term vision (Wikipedia for places)
[14:50] Insights for founders from a founder

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👉 Data Council 2025 brings together the brightest minds in AI and data, featuring no-BS technical talks from industry leaders at Databricks, Perplexity, Replit, Datadog, DeepMind, and more. Join us for 3 DAYS of 100+ deep-dive talks, workshops, and our signature office hours where you can meet your AI & data heroes in person.

Tickets are selling out fast, buy yours today!

In this episode, I interview Eric Sammer, the founder & CEO of Decodable. Eric was previously an engineering manager at Cloudera, and before that the founder of Rocana, an early observability company that was sold to Splunk. Eric has an amazing perspective on the architecture of data systems based on his years of experience in the field. We chat about his thoughts on the opportunities and challenges specifically around streaming data.
Highlights:
[1:45] - Eric's start in ad-tech, which led him into the high-volume data world plus his experiences at Cloudera working on Avro, Parquet & Impala - an alternative to Hive & Presto
[4:45] - Eric's opportunistic path to starting a company as an engineer
[7:15] - Lessons learned while building his first company, Rocana, which was sold to Splunk in 2017, plus insights on the right way to find product-market fit
[10:50] - Eric's thoughts on why the time for streaming is now and how the use cases have surpassed fraud, waste and abuse + his tech stack of choice (Debezium, Kafka & Flink)
[14:55] - How streaming fits in the operational data landscape (OLTP)
[17:10] - Eric's thoughts on the value in streaming analytics (OLAP) and how ML models might get bigger benefits from streaming than dashboards do
[22:20] - Preview of the Streaming Data track @ Data Council Austin '23 where Eric is the track host

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👉 Data Council 2025 brings together the brightest minds in AI and data, featuring no-BS technical talks from industry leaders at Databricks, Perplexity, Replit, Datadog, DeepMind, and more. Join us for 3 DAYS of 100+ deep-dive talks, workshops, and our signature office hours where you can meet your AI & data heroes in person.

Tickets are selling out fast, buy yours today!

In this episode, I have the pleasure of hosting Spencer Kimball, a former Google engineer turned tech entrepreneur, and now the Co-Founder & CEO of Cockroach Labs. Spencer shares his journey from working at Google to creating his project, Viewfinder, which eventually led to the birth of CockroachDB. Spencer discusses his advice for founders as they approach the challenge of starting a company, finding co-founders, and more. We also delve into the decision to change CockroachDB's licensing to protect it from being monetized by other companies.
Highlights
[00:00] - From Google engineer to tech entrepreneur, Spencer shares his journey and the birth of his project, Viewfinder. He reveals the dream that sparked his desire for more than just a tech job at Google.
[01:02] - The struggle to find a suitable database for Viewfinder led to the creation of CockroachDB. Spencer discusses the need for a scalable, transactional, and open-source database that didn't yet exist.
[03:24] - Passion and belief are key to weathering the ups and downs of a startup. Spencer shares how a founder's vision can drive the company forward despite inevitable disappointments.
[08:53] - Finding the right co-founder is crucial. Spencer shares his advice, emphasizing the importance of shared experiences and mutual respect.
[13:09] - The need for a database that could handle rapid growth and complexity was the key insight behind Cockroach Labs. Spencer discusses how this need led to the creation of CockroachDB.
[18:40] - To protect CockroachDB from being monetized by other companies, Spencer explains the decision to change its licensing. He also discusses the challenges of balancing open source with business needs.
[20:59] - The story of Elastic serves as a cautionary tale. Spencer shares how Amazon exploited Elastic's open core business model, leading to a reevaluation of Cockroach Labs' own model.
[21:53] - The Business Source License (BSL) at Cockroach Labs provides a time period of protection from direct competition. Spencer explains how it reverts to a pure open source license after a certain term.
[26:01] - Quantum Round (Rapid-fire questions)

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👉 Data Council 2025 brings together the brightest minds in AI and data, featuring no-BS technical talks from industry leaders at Databricks, Perplexity, Replit, Datadog, DeepMind, and more. Join us for 3 DAYS of 100+ deep-dive talks, workshops, and our signature office hours where you can meet your AI & data heroes in person.

Tickets are selling out fast, buy yours today!

In this episode, I chat with Jordan Tigani, the dynamic engineer-founder of MotherDuck who previously led Google's BigQuery team and headed up product at SingleStore. Jordan shares the inspiring origin story of MotherDuck, which emerged from the overlooked analytics' long tail, focusing on serving small users in data analytics. Our conversation delves into thought-provoking topics such as the conundrum of big data, bridging the gap between unstructured AI data and traditional data structures, the impact of scale-up data warehouses on customer decisions and MotherDuck's relationship with the open-source DuckDB. Tune in to uncover more gems from the founding story of one of the hottest data infrastructure startups in the market today.
Highlights:
[00:45] - Jordan shares his “aha” moments working at Google BigQuery that gave him the inspiration to start MotherDuck
[3:14] - Jordan digs into where we’re at in the era of data evolution and whether big data is still an issue
[6:14] - We discuss how data and compute requirements are shifting with the rise of AI & ML
[8:15] - Jordan shares the significance of scale up vs. scale out and how it impacts user experience and the speed of development
[12:52] - We explore MotherDuck’s relationship with the open source project DuckDB and how they work together
[15:45] - Jordan talks about the user progression from DuckDB to MotherDuck
[18:20] - Quantum Round

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👉 Data Council 2025 brings together the brightest minds in AI and data, featuring no-BS technical talks from industry leaders at Databricks, Perplexity, Replit, Datadog, DeepMind, and more. Join us for 3 DAYS of 100+ deep-dive talks, workshops, and our signature office hours where you can meet your AI & data heroes in person.

Tickets are selling out fast, buy yours today!