Shows
Database SchoolScaling DuckDB in the cloud with MotherDuck CEO Jordan TiganiIn this episode of Database School, Aaron Francis sits down with Jordan Tigani, co-founder and CEO of MotherDuck, to break down what DuckDB is, how MotherDuck hosts it in the cloud, and why analytics workloads are shifting toward embedded databases. They dig into Duck Lake, pricing models, scaling strategies, and what it really takes to build a modern cloud data warehouse.Follow Jordan:Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/jrdntgnLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantiganiMotherDuck: https://motherduck.comFollow Aaron:Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis Database School: htt...
2025-12-111h 05
The Tech TrekBuilding Infrastructure Startups: Why Everything Takes Longer Than You ThinkJordan Tigani, CEO and cofounder of MotherDuck, knows what world class infrastructure looks like. He spent years building Google BigQuery before taking those lessons into the startup world. In this episode, he breaks down why building infrastructure products is fundamentally different from typical SaaS and why founders who don’t understand that difference are in for a painful surprise.What You'll LearnThere are no shortcuts in infrastructure. You can’t just wire together existing open source components and call it a product. Real infrastructure requires contributing meaningfully to the...
2025-11-0432 min
PodQueueThe Death of Big Data and Why It’s Time To Think Small | Jordan Tigani, CEO, MotherDuckA founding engineer on Google BigQuery and now at the helm of MotherDuck, Jordan Tigani challenges the decade-long dominance of Big Data and introduces a compelling alternative that could change how companies handle data.
Jordan discusses why Big Data technologies are an overkill for most companies, how MotherDuck and DuckDB offer fast analytical queries, and lessons learned as a technical founder building his first startup.
Watch the episode with Tomasz Tunguz: https://youtu.be/gU6dGmZzmvI
Website - https://motherduck.com
Twitter - https://x.com/motherduck
Jordan Tigani
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani
Twitter - https://x...
2025-10-1759 min
ThrivecastFrom BigQuery to MotherDuck: Reinventing the Data Warehouse with Jordan TiganiIn this episode, we chat with Jordan Tigani, co-creator of BigQuery and now CEO of MotherDuck, a next-gen, serverless analytics platform built on top of DuckDB. Jordan walks us through his journey from leading engineering and product at Google to building a lean, developer-first company that’s challenging the assumptions of modern data infrastructure. We explore his pivot from enterprise-heavy go-to-market models to a bold product-led growth (PLG) approach, his views on usage-based pricing, open-source collaboration, and what AI hasn't done for the data world—yet.Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Castbox, Google and YouTube.
2025-07-1247 min
Hard SoftwareHard Software Episode 9: Is Big Data Dead? with Jordan Tigani, CEO @ MotherDuck This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.bem.ai
2025-04-2258 min
North Star LeadersBreaking Barriers with Jordan TiganiAre you wasting the power of your own laptop? For years, we've been conditioned to think that serious computing happens in the cloud while our local machines sit idle. But what if that’s outdated thinking? In this episode of the North Star Leadership Podcast, Jordan Tigani, CEO and co-founder of MotherDuck, joins Lindsay Pedersen and challenges conventional wisdom on cloud computing, marketing, and leadership. He shares hard-won lessons from his time at Google, the reality check he got in the startup world, and why scaling a company is as much about people as it is about technology.
2025-04-1527 min
Infinite Curiosity Pod with Prateek JoshiBuilding MotherDuck to a $400M CompanyJordan Tigani is the cofounder and CEO of MotherDuck, a data warehouse platform based on open source database DuckDB. They've raised $100M in funding from amazing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis, Madrona, and Altimeter. He was previously the CPO at SingleStore and spent 11 years at Google before that. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Harvard. Jordan's favorite book: The Master and Margarita (Author: Mikhail Bulgakov)(00:01) Introduction(00:08) Founding of MotherDuck(01:12) The Philosophy of Shipping Products at MotherDuck(05:02) Founding Story and Identifying the Market Opportunity(10:57) Building the F...
2025-01-1649 min
The Ravit ShowMyths of Big Data, Small Data MovementWhy is Small Data important in the world of Big Data? How are powerful machines helping us? I chatted with Jordan Tigani, Co-Founder & CEO of MotherDuck at Small Data SF to learn more about it.
Thanks for sharing great insights, Jordan! I enjoyed Small Data SF and all the amazing sessions!
#data #ai #smalldatasf #theravitshow
2024-11-0111 min
The MAD Podcast with Matt TurckThe Death of Big Data and Why It’s Time To Think Small | Jordan Tigani, CEO, MotherDuckA founding engineer on Google BigQuery and now at the helm of MotherDuck, Jordan Tigani challenges the decade-long dominance of Big Data and introduces a compelling alternative that could change how companies handle data.
Jordan discusses why Big Data technologies are an overkill for most companies, how MotherDuck and DuckDB offer fast analytical queries, and lessons learned as a technical founder building his first startup.
Watch the episode with Tomasz Tunguz: https://youtu.be/gU6dGmZzmvI
Website - https://motherduck.com
Twitter - https://x.c...
2024-10-2459 min
Techs on TextsEpisode #8: Jordan Tigani on The Analytical Language of John Wilkins by Jorge Luis BorgesJordan Tigani, duck herder and renowned "database person," gives us the gift of "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" by Jorge Luis Borges. We talk about about the potential of language, the limits of language, compression, sloppy ontologies, LLMs, what thing the universe is, simulated annealing, our vague comprehension of what embeddings are, and why it's unfortunate that there's no way to not sound pretentious when talking about Borges.A few notes and links related to the conversation:Read "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins". It's quick!The Wikipedia article about the essay is pretty good...
2024-09-221h 25
The Joe Reis ShowJordan Tigani - Why Small Data is Awesome, DuckDB, and MoreJordan Tigani is back to chat about why small data is awesome, data lakehouses, DuckDB, AI, and much more.
Motherduck: https://motherduck.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jrdntgn?lang=en
2024-09-0554 min
AI + a16zAI, SQL, and the End of Big DataIn this episode of AI + a16z, a16z General Partner Jennifer Li joins MotherDuck Cofounder and CEO Jordan Tigani to discuss DuckDB's spiking popularity as the era of big data wanes, as well as the applicability of SQL-based systems for AI workloads and the prospect of text-to-SQL for analyzing data.Here's an excerpt of Jordan discussing an early win when it comes to applying generative AI to data analysis:"Everybody forgets syntax for various SQL calls. And it's just like in coding. So there's some people that memorize . . . all of the code base, and s...
2024-08-3033 min
Data Science Deep Dive#52: In-process Datenbanken und das Ende von Big DataIn dieser Episode sprechen wir über die in-process Datenbank DuckDB, die im Juni Version 1.0.0 erreicht hat und einen innovativen Ansatz verfolgt. DuckDB wird direkt aus dem Code heraus gestartet und benötigt keine Berechtigungen oder User-Management, was an SQlite erinnert. Außerdem beleuchten wir die These, dass die "Big Data" Ära vorbei ist, warum das so ist und was das eigentlich mit DuckDB zu tun hat.
***Links***
DuckDB: https://duckdb.org/
MotherDB: https://motherduck.com/
Blog: Big Data is Dead by Jordan Tigani https://motherduck.com/blog/big-data-is-dead/
Fragen, Feedback und Themenwünsche gern an podc...
2024-08-0141 minData Science Deep Dive#52: In-process Datenbanken und das Ende von Big DataIn dieser Episode sprechen wir über die in-process Datenbank DuckDB, die im Juni Version 1.0.0 erreicht hat und einen innovativen Ansatz verfolgt. DuckDB wird direkt aus dem Code heraus gestartet und benötigt keine Berechtigungen oder User-Management, was an SQlite erinnert. Außerdem beleuchten wir die These, dass die "Big Data" Ära vorbei ist, warum das so ist und was das eigentlich mit DuckDB zu tun hat.
***Links***
DuckDB: https://duckdb.org/
MotherDB: https://motherduck.com/
Blog: Big Data is Dead by Jordan Tigani https://motherduck.com/blog/big-data-is-dead/
Fragen, Feedback und Themenwünsche gern an podc...
2024-08-0141 min
DataFramed#221 [Radar Recap] The Future of Programming: Accelerating Coding Workflows with LLMsFrom data science to software engineering, Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as pivotal tools in shaping the future of programming. In this session, Michele Catasta, VP of AI at Replit, Jordan Tigani, CEO at Motherduck, and Ryan J. Salva, VP of Product at GitHub, will explore practical applications of LLMs in coding workflows, how to best approach integrating AI into the workflows of data teams, what the future holds for AI-assisted coding, and a lot more.Links Mentioned in the Show:Rewatch Session from RADAR: AI EditionNew to DataCamp?Learn on...
2024-07-0245 min
Office Hours with Tomasz TunguzOffice Hours with Jordan Tigani: Modern Data Architectures01:55 Big Data is Dead06:41 Ease of Use08:54 Hybrid Architecture10:30 Audience Question: LLMs for Onboarding?12:55 Hybrid Architecture Enables New Software Design16:58 DuckDB & ETL19:24 Duck Puns22:07 Duck Community24:32 Summary
2024-05-0625 min
Zero Prime PodcastE22: From BigQuery to Motherduck: The Journey of Jordan TiganiIn 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 o...
2024-04-2521 min
The Preset PodcastDesignated Driver Episode #2 • MotherDuck / DuckDBIn this episode, we hang out with MotherDuck founder and CEO Jordan Tigani over a beer (and/or a kombucha). Learn all about what makes DuckDB/MotherDuck an emerging winner in the space, and a great pairing with Apache Superset.
2024-04-1825 min
MLOps.communitySmall Data, Big Impact: The Story Behind DuckDB // Hannes Mühleisen & Jordan Tigani // #202Prof. Dr. Hannes Mühleisen is a creator of the DuckDB database management system and Co-founder and CEO of DuckDB Labs. Jordan Tigani is co-founder and chief duck-herder at MotherDuck, a startup building a serverless analytics platform based on DuckDB.MLOps podcast #202 with Hannes Mühleisen, Co-Founder & CEO of DuckDB Labs and Jordan Tigani, Chief Duck-Herder at MotherDuck, Small Data, Big Impact: The Story Behind DuckDB.// AbstractNavigate the intricacies of data management with Jordan Tagani and Hannes Mühleisen, the creative genius...
2024-01-091h 08
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 707: The Where, When, and How of AI with Theory Ventures, Open AI, MotherDuck and LaminiSaaStr 707: The Where, When, and How of AI with Theory Ventures, Open AI, MotherDuck and Lamini Hear the latest insights on AI from leading VC Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures Theory Ventures, joined by Jordan Tigani, Founder and CEO of Mother Duck Maggie Hott, GTM at OpenAI, and Sharon Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Lamini. Together they discuss the new architecture for building Software as a Service (SaaS) applications with data & machine learning at their core, moderated by Tomasz. The focus of the episode centers around the transformative role of data, which has become an i...
2023-12-1231 min
Drill to DetailDrill to Detail Ep.111 'Making Analytics Fun, Frictionless and Ducking Awesome' with Special Guest Jordan TiganiMark Rittman is joined in this final episode of the current series of Drill to Detail by returning guest Jordan Tigani, Co-Founder & CEO at Motherduck to talk about the journey from big data to small data and bringing hybrid cloud execution to DuckDB.Big Data is DeadTeach Your Duckdb To FlyAnnouncing Motherduck: Hybrid Execution Scales Duckdb From Your Laptop Into The CloudDrill to Detail Ep.64 ‘Google BigQuery, BI Engine and the Future of Data Warehousing’ with Special Guest Jordan Tigani
2023-09-0748 min
Founded & FundedMotherDuck's Jordan Tigani and DuckDB's Hannes Mühleisen on partnerships and commercializing open-source projects This week, Madrona Partner Jon Turow brings us a story about a great partnership forming between two people, who had never even met, when they each find themselves on a mission to focus on what it is they do best. You'll hear from Hannes Mühleisen, creator of the DuckDB open-source project, and Jordan Tigani, the database leader who saw an opportunity to commercialize it, about the lightning-bolt moment that led to one of them flying halfway around the world to meet — how does this happen and how do they set their partnership up to be the foundation of a r...
2023-04-2030 min
Software Defined TalkJordan Tigani on the death of Big DataThis week Brandon talks to Jordan Tigani, the founder of MotherDuck. They explore how faster and cheaper computing is changing the way we handle Big Data and making it easier to analyze. Jordan also shares his insights on DuckDB, and his vision for MotherDuck.
Show Links
Big Data is Dead
DuckDB
DuckDB Tutorial For Beginners
MotherDuck
Google Big Query
Contact Jordan
LinkedIn: jordantigani
Twitter: @jrdntgn
SDT news & hype
Join us in Slack.
Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com and we will send you free laptop stickers!
...
2023-04-1448 min
Yet Another Infra PodcastYet Another Infra Podcast - Episode 10 - Vitaly Gordon, Jordan Tigani, Kurt Mackey, and Guido Appenzeller discuss about the myths around company culture, public perception versus what’s actually happening, how culture impacts company positioning, ...Summary - Join Vitaly Gordon, Jordan Tigani, Kurt Mackey, and Guido Appenzeller in their insightful discussion about the myths about company culture, what the public sees about a company versus what’s actually happening, how culture impacts company positioning, and more. Follow them on Twitter:Vitaly Gordon - @vitalygordonJordan Tigani - @jrdntgnKurt Mackey - @mrkurtGuido Appenzeller - @appenzLinks:Yet Another Infrastructure Group - https://www.yaig.dev/
2023-03-2844 min
#DataOopsEpisode 26 : Big Data is Dead (DuckDB) / Data GouvernanceOn discute de l'article Big Data is Dead : de Jordan Tigani.
On discute des avantages de DuckDB.
Puis un on aborde la data gouvernance avec Fabien
2023-02-261h 17DatabaseEpisode 26 : Big Data is Dead (DuckDB) / Data GouvernanceOn discute de l'article Big Data is Dead : de Jordan Tigani.
On discute des avantages de DuckDB.
Puis un on aborde la data gouvernance avec Fabien
2023-02-261h 17ModélisationEpisode 26 : Big Data is Dead (DuckDB) / Data GouvernanceOn discute de l'article Big Data is Dead : de Jordan Tigani.
On discute des avantages de DuckDB.
Puis un on aborde la data gouvernance avec Fabien
2023-02-261h 17
Pipeline ConversationsQuestioning MLOps with Lak LakshmananThis week I spoke with Lak Lakhshmanan, who worked for years at Google on ML and AI projects and products at a senior level and he also brings years of experience working on meteorology and other scientific projects previously.
Lak brings a ton of experience to the table and it was interesting to hear his suggestions around when it is and isn't appropriate to bring the full set of MLOps tools to the table, for example. We also discussed the fundamentals of doing ML-backed projects as well as the teams needed to make those projects succeed.
2022-10-2753 min
The Analytics Engineering PodcastThe Personal Data Warehouse (w/ Jordan Tigani of MotherDuck)Jordan Tigani is an expert in large-scale data processing, having spent a decade+ in the development and growth of BigQuery, and later SingleStore. Today, Jordan and his team at MotherDuck are in the early days of working on commercial applications for the open source DuckDB OLAP database. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Jordan dives into the origin story of BigQuery, why he thinks we should do away with the concept of working in files, and how truly performant "data apps" will require bringing data to an end user's machine (rather than requiring them...
2022-07-0151 min
Monday Morning Data ChatWhat's Next for Analytical Databases? w/ Jordan Tigani (MotherDuck) - Special EpisodeJordan Tigani joins the show to chat about what's next for analytical databases.
Jordan needs no introduction in this area, having been a driving force in creating the space of modern analytical databases - he was the founding engineer for BigQuery, led product at Singlestore, working on something new at MotherDuck, among other massive accomplishments.
#dataengineering #data #analytics
2022-06-041h 03
Software Engineering DailySingleStore with Jordan TiganiSingleStore is a multi-use, multi-model database designed for transactional and analytic workloads, as well as search and other domain specific applications. SingleStore is the evolution of the database company MemSQL, which sought to bring fast, in-memory SQL database technology to market.Jordan Tigani is Chief Product Officer of SingleStore and joins the show to talk through the architecture and engineering of the SingleStore platform.Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.comWork OS: To learn more and get started, go to softwareengineeringdaily.com/workosInflux Data: . To l...
2022-03-2946 min
Data Archives - Software Engineering DailySingleStore with Jordan TiganiSingleStore is a multi-use, multi-model database designed for transactional and analytic workloads, as well as search and other domain specific applications. SingleStore is the evolution of the database company MemSQL, which sought to bring fast, in-memory SQL database technology to market.
Jordan Tigani is Chief Product Officer of SingleStore and joins the show to talk through the architecture and engineering of the SingleStore platform.
Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
The post SingleStore with Jordan Tigani appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
2022-03-2942 min
Cloud Engineering Archives - Software Engineering DailySingleStore with Jordan TiganiSingleStore is a multi-use, multi-model database designed for transactional and analytic workloads, as well as search and other domain specific applications. SingleStore is the evolution of the database company MemSQL, which sought to bring fast, in-memory SQL database technology to market.
Jordan Tigani is Chief Product Officer of SingleStore and joins the show to talk through the architecture and engineering of the SingleStore platform.
Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
The post SingleStore with Jordan Tigani appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
2022-03-2942 min
Software Defined TalkJordan Tigani on data intensive applicationsBrandon interviews Jordan Tigani, Chief Product Officer at SingleStore. They discuss Jordan's experience at Google building BigQuery and how to use SingleStore to build data intensive applications. Plus, some good stories on caviar and marathon running.
Links
Google Big Query
A Return to the General Purpose Database
SingleStore
SingleStore Free Trial
Work at SingleStore
SingleStore Recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant
Contact Jordan
@jrdntgn
LinkedIn: jordantigani
Banner Photo CreditSpecial Guest: Jordan Tigani.Sponsored By:SingleStore: The Database for the Data-Intensive Era
2021-12-1452 min
HumAIn PodcastHow to Power Enterprises with Intelligent Applications with Jordan Tigani of SingleStoreHow to Power Enterprises with Intelligent Applications with Jordan Tigani of SingleStoreJordan Tigani is the Chief Product Officer at SingleStore. He was the co-founding engineer on Google BigQuery. He also led engineering teams then product teams at BQ. SingleStore powers Comcast with their streaming analytics to drive proactive care and real-time recommendations for their 300K events per second. Since switching to SingleStore, Nucleus Security converted its first beta account to a paying customer, increased the number of scans Nucleus can process in one hour by 60X, and saw speed improvement of 20X for the s...
2021-05-0537 minDrill to DetailDrill to Detail Ep.64 ‘Google BigQuery, BI Engine and the Future of Data Warehousing’ with Special Guest Jordan TiganiMark Rittman is joined in this episode by Jordan Tigani, Director of Product Management at Google for Google BigQuery, to talk about the history of BigQuery and its technology origins in Dremel; how BigQuery has evolved since its original release to handle a wide range of data warehouse workloads; and new features announced for BigQuery at Google Next’19 including BI Engine, Storage API, Connected Sheets and a range of new data connectors from Supermetrics and Fivetran.Modern Data Warehousing with BigQuery (Cloud Next '19)Modern data warehousing with BigQuery: a Q&A with Engineering Director Jo...
2019-04-2959 min
Google Cloud Platform PodcastBigQuery Under the Hood with Tino Tereshko and Jordan TiganiHave you ever wanted to know what powers BigQuery under the hood? Tino Tereshko and Jordan Tigani sit in front of the microphone with co-hosts Mark and Francesc to talk all about it! About Tino Tereshko Tino is the Big Data Lead for Office of the CTO at Google Cloud, focusing on building strategic relationships with the world's top Enterprises in the interest of sharing and accelerating technological innovation. Tino hails from the BigQuery team, where he solved difficult cloud-native product problems, enabled Googlers and customers, and built programs like BigQuery Pacific. In earlier years...
2017-09-1334 min