Tanagram Updates: December 2024
I spent November focused on hiring and building. On hiring, I've shifted to looking for a cofounder more so than hiring a first employee. I think it'll be valuable having a thought partner helping me figure out the market, interpreting customer feedback, and coming up with product designs (along with building the product as well). I did a few days' work trial with one candidate earlier this month (who I've decided isn't a good fit), and I'm currently talking to three other people. I'd like to bring someone on by the end of the year, ahead of the PearX program that I'm starting in January.
Somewhat relatedly, I participated in On Deck's 23rd cohort earlier in the month and had a fantastic time. I'd heard mixed things ahead of time, but we had an incredible cohort of people and I've had a great time getting to meet everyone during the initial week and the weeks since. One of my cofounder candidates came from that cohort.
On product development, I've changed directions away from "GoToDef across services" to exploring ideas related to data lineage, at the suggestion of my friend at Undisclosed Design Partner who was lukewarm on the former and much more interested in the latter. We think there's an opportunity to extend data lineage with static code analysis to increase lineage coverage and bridge the gap between data engineering and product engineering. We've spent the past few weeks building towards a sales demo and fixing bugs as they arise.
In December, my focus remains on hiring and building. I'm also opportunistically looking for a second design partner to help me generalize/avoid over-indexing what I'm building. An ideal candidate for this would be a staff engineer or engineering manager/leader responsible for internal frameworks/platforms, technical policies, or developer productivity at a company with ~1000 or more engineers. If you or someone you know might fit the bill, please reply and let me know.