Data Lineage – Tomas Kratky, MANTA

This is texturung TV. Hey everyone, welcome to another text drug TV interview. I am really happy to have on today Thomas.

Krakke and I mispronounced that because I don't have that slow vac accident and I apologize for Thomas. Yeah, we try. Welcome.

Welcome to techstroke TV. How are you? Just thanks for inviting me and doing great.

Just really exciting about this this discussion interview. great, so Thomas I mentioned you were the founder you are the founder CEO of manta. Why don't you let's start here.

What what is meant to give us a little background maybe a little of your own background as well? absolutely, we'll be happy to so my background very simple I was years ago developer engineer data engineer consultant working for a lot of larger Enterprises back in Europe And Manta was one of the projects we did for at least breakdown. It was very small utility, but it started as a project for one of the customers we had back then in 2012 or 11 in finance Back in Black and then over time as we did use again and again to Be realized wow, actually there is value.

There is something we can do not only here for project we can do something globally. We can help all Enterprises out there not just couple companies with headquarters in Czech Republic and that's how the story started basically as a project for for a customer. And what did the project do?

Actually Manta is I mean the easiest thing how you can visualize what Manta is is to imagine a Google map. So Manti is a Google map of your data environment. You see flow of data, as you know, like like journey of data from Source systems to dashboards and reports.

You see every transformation of data. You see every movement of data every calculation. It can be in your SQL scripts.

It can be in your reports. It can be in your ETL LT Transformations. It can be Excel sheet.

You also transform data in your extra sheet so you can be everywhere and you see all of it step by step starting in your Source systems like invoicing system or CRM system and ending up in your dashboards and reports. So like journey of data visualize visualized as a as a Google map. So that's the easiest way how to imagine what mental does Absolutely, and of course.

Life matter why don't we do a little background on that? Actually there is of course, like everyone knows Manta this beautiful creatures, but there's also a plan called menta and it's here. I really love it.

It looks like real Manta. Like the animal and it's a beautiful plan. So, I mean it's everywhere in my life.

I got it. Okay. Matt is everywhere.

and Thomas you were since you came to found man to you you were working in Prague for the company when they you I guess you helped originally. Write the project or start the project. Yes, you best restroom.

I mean the the whole story is even more complicated. I'm also University teacher historically. I was teaching at two universities back in Brock and then we had like something small very very small.

and we had very good relationship with two with two major technical universities back in Prague doing a lot of research together, you know, like students doing like Master thesis and bachelor's diseases and there was an idea. Um, maybe we can combine these together and maybe we can use the research and maybe some like Government funding that's used for research and we can combine it with this idea. That's actually super nice, but we have no money to develop a real product.

We can combine these two things together and we can create something even better and we did so I think it was 2013. We want our national competition. As a combination of a research at University and like a small company and combined together.

We spent next three years working on a product to be very super lucky to get funding from government and European funds. It was really really amazing how we were able to start and stop using this so it's you know, like This University thing it can change a lot and it in my life. Excellent.

Love it. Just I don't know if we you mentioned it and I missed it. But what was the time frame for the family of manta and So that's actually very good question.

As I mentioned we built something for a customer around 2012 in 2013. We won the national competition and the University. Industry research project started and in second half of 2016.

We were ready to like start the company. So by let's say 2016 Manta was founded as an independent entity. As a spinoff from the IT services company, I was working for back then.

So starting with 2017. We were fully independent five six seven people something small and selling to mostly US Financial companies. Got it.

Absolutely. It just we are super excited to announce that like a month ago more or less. We were able to close a series B funding.

It was a big big moment for us. We have raised certified Millions from multiple investors for stay ebrd Bessemer Venture Partners sap and plenty of other smaller parties, but it was a really big milestone for us. So everyone at mantis excited right now and there are thinking like, um, what's the best way how to use the money absolutely.

Well, first of all, congratulations, you know, certainly we are seeing Market changes in fundraising and availability of money and the cost of money and you know with inflation and the war and everything. Covid so, you know, congratulations to you and the team and those are some great investors to have as well. That's something yeah very well.

So funny story. Is that series a we did it in the middle of covid pandemic so clearly I'm trying to raise money whenever just the word is falling down. So sometimes you got a big one.

Everyone's zagging right and That's the way it is. So, you know for our audience Thomas as I mentioned to you off camera it fairly technical audience and they you know, they everyone gets excited with big numbers. Of course in 35 million is a lot of money, but in terms of what does it mean for them?

What do you what does it mean for Manta? What do you you know? No One's Gonna Hold Your Feet to the fire.

This is an audit. But you know, what? What will These funds be used for?

That's a very good question. Maybe if I may I will answer lit in a little bit longer way. So first thing is what we can all see around us when it comes to daytime data infrastructure.

It's really crazy. I mean for most companies Even like very traditional companies existing for 50 years last five to ten years. It's like explosion of complexity.

That's one of the key reasons why I was so obsessed with mankind starting the company because there was nothing for data Engineers out there to help them deal with that complexity. That's why the the map idea just you know, otherwise you are completely lost and things when it comes to complexity are getting worse every single day. We have new and new technologies.

We mix 50 70 different Technologies to build what we call a data pipeline or data stack when we talk about larger Enterprise. It just hundreds of technology. Sometimes even thousands of data pipelines or tens of thousands of data, but we just really really difficult to navigate.

And as I said, we are moving faster and faster. And there is nothing to control this ecosystem and that's why series B was so critical for us. We were very successful so far with c-series series a we were able to like develop very very good technology to navigate the existing infrastructure and help like many many companies very large companies out there to actually get visibility and if I'm a data engineer, Really really terrified that if I change one column in one table and my top executive report will break because there is a dependency.

I don't see we want to remove this fear from lives of data Engineers out there and why Series be so critical for us because now we see as I mentioned complexity getting even higher you have tons of new technologies. We need to support them very well. So we are talking about technology like databricks.

For example, we are talking about technologies that are just very creative yesterday or two days ago and tomorrow, they will be used as part of modern data stay by first 10 15 20 100 companies. So that's one big part what we want to achieve with the money to Support these very very young less much Technologies and help more companies using them. That's one part.

Second part that even more critical when you think about data today, everything is so fragmented. You have silos everywhere. I'm not and not like just with data but also with metadata.

If you think about who understands data in the company, you typically have like five six or 10 different silos with different information about data you have and everyone is trying to integrate everything together. And that's very difficult and also. coming from let's say dark ages of integration where every vendor was so obsessed with like hiding apis and not integrating with others.

You see the market like very slowly discovering how critical it is to have an open ecosystem. So mental is one technology can mend us solve everything. No, and that gives you a man.

So what now? What about your data? Privacy Solutions how they can use them.

What about your data quality Solutions how they can use them. What about your data engineering? Cdci Solutions or testing Solutions how they can use the map should everyone develop.

That or should we somehow integrate us? An industry, but we have no standards. Right?

It's one of the issues really killing us and big part of the money. And the reason why we raised is we want to level up this integration ecosystem menta was open since day one, but that's not enough. We need to help others to be open too.

And for now we are doing it by really integrating with everyone and everything we can in data space. We are working or helping other companies to Define standards. Just we are involved in every possible way you can imagine but the ultimate goal for us is to integrate across the whole data management stack and by doing so we'll be able to help every single data professional out there because otherwise that map is hardly available.

If you are not data engineer or data architect and not using mental directly. But there are many other people in the company who would benefit. From better visibility but they can't because integration is not there and that's a big big task for us.

I think not only for us there are other companies trying to do the same. It's just very hard. I love it.

Thomas, you know we didn't tell people and that's why I want to thank you for coming on. I know you were feeling a little under the weather. But you know what when the going gets tough the tough get going right?

That's true. We didn't tell people where we're had to get more information the mental website. com.

That's the easiest. com is the easiest and the best. Absolutely.

Hey, we're about at a time. I want to thank you for coming on as I mentioned. You know, what don't wait till the next time you raise money.

Come on you what's going on with with matter? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was real pleasure to be here our pleasure to have you on Thomas.

Perfect Thomas Kentucky found a CEO of manta here on Textron TV. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back.