The Joe Reis Show

Shinji Kim, founder of SelectStar (acquired by Snowflake in December), joins the show to discuss the deal, the integration into Snowflake's Horizon catalog, and where data cataloging is actually headed.We get into the weeds on a claim Shinji makes early: in a few years, we may stop calling these things "data catalogs" at all. The category is evolving into an AI context layer, a living surface that combines metadata, semantic models, business glossaries, and ontologies, continuously updated by both humans and agents. Shinji walks through how SelectStar built toward this with semantic model management, MCP server support, and an AI agent that started serving data analysts and eventually answered business users' questions directly.We also dig into where data catalog implementations go wrong (spoiler: it's almost always adoption, not tooling), why marketing teams are an underrated ETL persona, and what it actually took to get acquired by Snowflake after three years as a premier partner.Plus: if Shinji were starting SelectStar today, what would she do differently? We talk about distribution in the AI era and how the startup playbook is mutating.Connect with Shinji:LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/shinjikim/

AI has completely inverted how we build and scale software, which begs the question: What exactly is a moat anymore? In this Freestyle Friday, recovering from jet lag and hiking through the beautiful hills of Salt Lake City, I’m breaking down a recent conversation with a VC friend about defensibility in the era of coding agents. I also look at this through Charlie Munger’s lens of "inversion" to figure out what isn't a moat anymore (spoiler: thin foundation model wrappers, "AI", and feature velocity are dead).I also dive into what is defensible today, from mission-critical systems of record like DuckDB and Postgres, to personal branding, to shifting SaaS pricing from per-seat to per-token.

Are vendors trying to lock down your data? In this episode, George Fraser breaks down why the "modern data stack" has evolved into "open data infrastructure". We discuss why data gravity is the most overrated concept in data management, how egress charges are often misunderstood due to poorly designed pipelines, and why companies must insist on having a true replica of their own data.George also shares his hands-on experience with AI coding agents, including how he manages his USTA tennis team with bots like OpenClaw and NanoBot.

Walking through Tokyo and breaking down the reality of the AI revolution.
In this Freestyle Friday from Shibuya Crossing, I look past the current AI hype cycle to examine the real bottlenecks of AI adoption. Is the current AI boom just a repeat of the dot.com bubble? Why is simply buying Copilot subscriptions for your team failing to move the needle?
Drawing parallels to the 40-year adoption curve of the electric grid, I discuss why most AI projects fail to get traction in the enterprise. Hint: it's not the technology, it's the organization. Plus, a look at the danger of firing employees before capturing their tacit knowledge, and how to actually rewire your business to be AI-native.

In this episode, I sit down with Bob Seiner, a true pioneer who has been working in data governance since before it was even called governance. We dive into why he calls BS on the trendy term "data enablement" and how his trademarked approach, Non-Invasive Data Governance, formalizes what organizations are already doing without beating employees over the head.We also unpack his latest concept, The Data Catalyst Cubed, and get into a fascinating discussion about the precarious state of data security in the age of LLMs and autonomous AI agents like OpenClaw. Plus, Bob shares some great war stories about building the T-DAN newsletter using Microsoft FrontPage back in 1997 and drops his best advice for standing out and building a personal brand in the noisy data industry.Where to find Bob:KIK Consulting: kikconsulting.com LinkedIn:   / robert-s-seiner-445313  Books: Non-Invasive Data Governance and The Data Catalyst Cubed