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Welcome back to the Klaviyo Data Science podcast! This episode, we dive intoâŚ
Starting from scratch
Weâve talked about a lot of aspects of data science on this podcastâââbuilding software features, conducting research, learning new methods and skills, recruiting new membersâââbut thereâs one weâve always avoided: building a new team from the ground up. A large reason for that is personnelâââwhile your cohosts may be intrepid, they are not experts in this area.
This month, we bring on two people who are: Eric Silberstein and Ezra Freedman, who founded the Data Science team at Klaviyo. We draw on their wealth of experience, knowledge, and lessons learned the hard way while founding a young team.
As you might expect, these lessons extend beyond data science teams in particularâââwhether youâre founding another team or starting a new business, or looking to join a team in its early stages, you might be able to learn from our discussions, such as:
- How setting concrete goals is key for a new team
- How to think about your first hire, and your next five
- How to steer a team through large organizational changes while maintaining its culture and essence
âWhen you view the world, do you think of it as âif-thenâ statements, or do you tend to think of it as some sort of function to optimize? Our team needed both.â
- Eric Silberstein, VP of Data Science
Read the full writeup on Medium!