Daniel Tunkelang - The Founding Story of Endeca (edited)

Daniel Tunkelang is currently an independent consultant or, in his words, a 'high-class consultant' for technology companies. Previous to this, he was a data science and engineering executive who has built and led some of the strongest teams in the software industry.

Daniel studied computer science and math at MIT and has a PhD in computer science from CMU. He was a founding employee and chief scientist of Endeca, a search pioneer that Oracle acquired for $1.1B. He led a local search team at Google. Prior to this, he was a director of data science and engineering at LinkedIn, and he established their query understanding team.

Daniel is a widely recognized writer and speaker. He is frequently invited to speak at academic and industry conferences, particularly in the areas of information retrieval, web science, and data science. He has written the definitive textbook on faceted search (now a standard for ecommerce sites), established an annual symposium on human-computer interaction and information retrieval, and authored 24 US patents. His social media posts have attracted over a million page views.

Daniel also advises and consults for companies that can benefit strategically from his expertise. His clients range from early-stage startups to "unicorn" technology companies like Etsy and Flipkart. He helps companies make decisions around algorithms, technology, product strategy, hiring, and organizational structure.

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Episode Summary

"Well it started with pretty much the people that reached out to me were trying to persuade me to take full-time jobs and I'd say, Hey, I have a better deal for you. You could just have me one day a week"

—Daniel Tunkelang

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Endeca got started? Why did the founders reach out to Daniel?
2. The pros and cons of being an independent contractor versus a full-time employee 
3. What made Daniel interested in search?
4. Why Daniel became lost while working at Google

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

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