nao Labs (YC X25)

wrapping up a 6mo project with a large client in the enterprise manufacturing space this week. we migrated materialized Snowflake views to a new dbt Labs project: - 322 staging files - 71 intermediate tables - 35 mart tables - 7 incremental tables I used the opportunity to lean into new AI code dev tools: - Anthropic's claude code within Cursor - nao Labs (YC X25) the client was ~18k person org. im proud of the rate at which we got things done despite the friction we faced in (2) areas. (1) our end product was affected by compromises on quality to appease the client who wanted things a certain way / didn't prioritize certain dev standards, in lieu of faster code deployments (lots of small things e.g. no lint checks in CI jobs, bypassed code approvals). a consensus on compromised quality is toxic to a project. It’s a silent agreement that discourages individual contributors from pushing a task closer to perfection, once they know their colleagues won’t be. It kills motivation. The collective end result is haphazard work and tech debt. (2) client-side analyst/engineers became defensive over recommendations and hard to work with. in these situations I try to stay firm on my position while being mindful / proactive addressing personal feelings at stake. work is emotional and people are sensitive. I think its better to have an uncomfy chat about feelings hurt than allow hidden resentments to fester eg 'im sorry you feel belittled by this choice....im pushing for X to achieve Y but can see how its causing Z and thats not cool'. vibes impact quality always learning. headed to asia for the next 2mo. stay tuned massive thanks to my consulting colleagues. (i wish you could add spotify songs to linkedin posts 😅)

🔥 💬 We’re launching Conversational Analytics in nao ! 🤖 ⚡️ We started nao with one simple goal: be the best tool to work on data with AI. Data teams spend a lot of time preparing data, but create value analyzing data and cracking business questions. Now with nao, they can do both in the same tool, with the same context and AI power: 💬 answer simple business requests 🕵️ deep-dive complex analysis 🚨 debug a data quality issue 📊 draw charts to share results visually If you want to give it a try for your data team, come say hi! 👋

🛸 We doubled the team ! 3 months ago it was just Christophe and I scribbling ideas in a STATION F board room. But we soon realised we needed more talented people to develop nao Labs. Welcome Semiha & Stanislas to our tech team ! With you we've got full speed mode unlocked 💥