In this episode, we dive deep into the story of how Datadog evolved from a single product to a multi-billion dollar observability platform with its co-founder, Olivier Pomel. Olivier shares exclusive insights on Datadog's unique approach to product development—why they avoid the "Apple approach" of building in secret and instead work closely with customers from day one.

You’ll hear about the early days when Paul Graham of Y Combinator turned down Datadog, questioning their lack of a first product. Olivier also reveals the strategies behind their iterative product launches and why they insist on charging early to ensure they’re delivering real value.

The second half of the conversation is focused on all things AI and data at Datadog - the company's initial reluctance to use AI in its products, how Generative AI changed everything, and Datadog's current AI efforts including Watchdog, Bits AI and Toto, their new time series foundational model.

We close the episode by asking Olivier about his thoughts on the topic du jour: founder mode!

If you're interested in how a company scales multiple products, validates ideas in real-time with customers, and strategically approaches AI, you won't want to miss this episode.

▶️ Listen to 2020 Data Driven NYC episode with Oliver Pomel:    • Fireside Chat with Olivier Pomel (Fou...  

DATADOG
Website - https://www.datadoghq.com
Twitter - https://x.com/datadoghq

Olivier Pomel
LinkedIn -   / olivierpomel  
Twitter - https://x.com/oliveur

FIRSTMARK
Website - https://firstmark.com
Twitter -   / firstmarkcap  

Matt Turck (Managing Director)
LinkedIn -   / turck  
Twitter -   / mattturck  

LISTEN ON:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7yLATDS...
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

00:00 - Intro
01:35 - Launching Datadog in New York
03:02 - The French tech ecosystem
04:12 - Reflecting on Data Driven NYC 2020
05:13 - What is Datadog?
07:35 - Building a platform
18:59 - Datadog's approach to product development
27:03 - How Datadog Validates New Products
28:45 - Deciding on what products to build
32:30 - The role of AI in Datadog’s vision for the future
38:45 - LLM Observability
44:30 - How Datadog applies AI in its products
53:33 - Handling Billions of Data Points: The Infrastructure Behind Datadog
59:20 - Olivier's take on "Founder Mode"