How to Ask The Right Questions, with Bryan Hall
Asking the right questions is crucial to almost everything we do, especially in our careers. When it comes to data this is also true. Rather than collecting as much data as possible and then looking for the stories within, start by asking the right questions and then gathering your data.
On this edition of CTO Studio, our guest Bryan Hall will explain exactly why this approach is the most effective. Bryand and I will also talk about the due diligence involved with selling a company and how he made the hard decision to not be the CEO of his own company.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Why trying to figure it out on your own is a bad strategy for entrepreneurship.
- How did Gmail help keep email alive?
- Why to figure out your questions before writing down all your data.
- What are the differences between data science and machine learning?
- How do you know if you are ready to hire a data scientist?
- And so much more!
We start our conversation today by talking about Bryan’s origins: he grew up in Medara, California and went to college at UCSD. He fell in love with San Diego and stayed after graduation.
Down the road he had an idea for a startup and went to the Founder Institute to find a CEO. Specifically he was looking for someone who could outperform him in every aspect of the role of CEO. Originally he wanted to be his own CEO, but when he saw Al was better at everything from pitching investors to talking with people, Bryan changed his mind. He knew Al was a better fit as CEO so he put his ego aside and they became the co-founders of the company.
This company would go on to focus on email deliverability, a topic we talk about in-depth on the show today. Bryan explains what deliverability issues can crop up including wrong DNS entries or entries that are broken, a declining reputation from a handful of companies, the quality of the mail sent and making sure your customers have a good experience receiving your emails. He also tells exactly how the company helped their customers with any issues, spotting them before they became big problems.
Bryan’s career course changed later when they sold this company. The team part of the company went to Seismic as an acquihire, and the technology and product went to a different company because Seismic doesn’t work with email tech or products.
Which brought me to my next question: what was the due diligence involved in this two-part sale of the company? Bryan said the diligence piece of the acquihire was really just talking about how their team would plug into Seismic, what things Seismic was looking for, their vision and what working with the newly-acquired team would look like for the first year or two.
The diligence on the product side was much heavier, they went deep into the code and the data, explaining why they solved the problems they did and why they did what they did. They spent a lot of time with the acquiring company’s data team and development team, both before and for six months after the sale.
That sale to Seismic means today he is the Principal Architect for Data and Analytics for Seismic. Seismic is a solution-for-sales enablement, which means they handle all the content for big companies’ marketing and sales departments. Bryan gives more details on the show today, along with what he does on a day to day basis.
Next we dig into the topic of good questions and how that applies to your C-suite and your data. His advice is to tell your C suit about what is possible and what is not. Figure out what questions you want your data to answer. If you are starting from there you are starting with the right frame of mind. Help your C-suite understand that having data doesn’t mean anything, but by knowing what questions you want your data to answer you’ll add value to your business.
Lastly we touch on the discipline of data science (versus machine learning) and how they manage the hiring process at Seismic. You’ll hear those topics and more on today’s episode of CTO Studio!
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