Thought Leaders in Big Data: Eldad Farkash, CTO of Sisense (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Where would you point entrepreneurs to look for new problems to solve a new startup to build now?

Eldad Farkash: If you’re coming from a scientific background, I would say focus either on deep learning or NPI. These would be the two major topics I would focus on if you’re a scientific kind of startup. If you’re trying to solve a problem by combining a stack together, I would try to start from the lower level. I would start looking around and see what hardware and what data sources are not existing yet and how do we tap into those data sources and make something meaningful out of that.

The startup world is very hard. It’s very cruel. You can build a solution very fast, but fast and simple doesn’t work with startups. It’s always a steep curve uphill. Usually, what many startups discover is that they build something to get a stack result and they end up with this technical death. I would say think long-term—at least five years. Build from something that you know will sustain and survive those quick technology changes and trends.

If you’re a young startup today and you think about Big Data and what you would like to solve, I would point you to the Internet of Things. It’s progressing in an amazing pace. I’ve seen a few concepts over the last six months and I was blown away. I haven’t imagined that there’s so much going on in there. Analytics is the foundation of the Internet of Things. It’s the stuff that drives everything. Look around you and try to see where data comes together with our daily lives because this is where the next order of magnitude of Big Data would come from. This is where established vendors don’t have a strategy yet. Most of them are focused on grasping the Hadoop landscape. They are not focusing on getting on to the lower level and trying to understand how the Internet of Things will look like. Whenever there isn’t any established vendors, it should be an opportunity for anyone who wants to build a Big Data company.

Sramana Mitra: That was an interesting discussion. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Eldad Farkash, CTO of Sisense
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