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P. 84
ENTREPRENEURS
Business Intelligence
for Dummies
Dean Stoecker’s software, Alteryx, can turn almost anyone into
a data scientist, and turned him into a billionaire.
BY NOAH KIRSCH
un Tzu meets software in mid- Excel. Plug in some numbers, select the in Connecticut. There he met Libby
August at downtown Denver’s desired operation—say data cleaning or Duane Adams, who worked in the firm’s
Crawford Hotel. The floors are linear regression—and presto. Stamford office. Seven years later, the
Sterrazzo. The chandeliers are ac- There are applications in every in- pair founded a data company of their
cented with gold. And Dean Stoecker, dustry. Coca-Cola uses Alteryx to help own, which they cumbersomely named
the CEO of data-science firm Alteryx, restaurants predict how much soda to Spatial Re-Engineering Consultants
has summoned his executives for the order. Airlines use it to hedge jet fuel (SRC). A third cofounder, Ned Harding,
annual strategy session he calls Bing prices. Banks use it to model deriv- joined around the same time; Stoecker,
Fa, after the Chinese title of The Art of atives. Data analysis “is the one skill who came up with the idea, took the
War. “Sun Tzu was all about how you that every human being has to have lion’s share of the equity.
conserve resources,” says Stoecker, 62. if they’re going to survive in this next
“How do you win a war without going generation,” says Stoecker. Alteryx’s
into battle?” numbers support that forecast. The
Stoecker knows something about company, based in Irvine, California,
conserving resources. He cofounded generated $28 million in profit on TORTOISES AND HARES
Alteryx in 1997, when the data-science $254 million in revenue in 2018, and Dean Stoecker waited 22 years after found-
ing Alteryx to hit a personal net worth of
industry scarcely existed, and spent a Stoecker expects to hit $1 billion in $1 billion. Is slow and steady the way to go?
decade growing the firm to a measly annual sales by 2022. “In July 1999, Jay Walker set a record by
$10 million in annual revenue. “We Stoecker grew up the son of a tin- passing $1 billion in net worth within one
year of founding Priceline. He broke a mark
had to wait for the market to catch up,” kerer. His father built liquid nitrogen
set a year earlier by Global Crossing’s Gary
he says. As he waited, he kept the busi- tanks for NASA before quitting his job Winnick. Neither man is on The Forbes
ness lean, hiring slowly and forgoing to sell “precut” vacation homes in Col- 400 today. That’s a good reminder for the
speedsters of our time, Groupon’s Eric
outside investment until 2011. Then, orado. He made them himself. “It was
Lefkofsky and the
as “big data” began eating the world, literally just him nine months of the Facebook mafia,
he raised $163 million before taking year, and he would cut wood for 50 to set some
cash aside.”
Alteryx public in 2017. The stock is buildings,” Stoecker recalls. As a teen-
up nearly 900% since, and Stoecker is ager he joined his father, and by the Years to
$1 Billion
worth an estimated $1.2 billion. time he arrived at the University of
Eric Lefkofsky, Groupon 2.5
“People ask me, ‘Did you ever think Colorado Boulder to study economics,
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook 4
it would get this big?’” he says. “And I he was able to pay his own way.
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway 19
say, ‘Yeah, I just never thought it would After graduating in 1979, Stoecker
Henry Ford, Ford Motor Co. 23
take this long.’” Alteryx makes data sci- earned his M.B.A. from California’s
John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil 25
ence easy. Its simple, click-and-drop de- Pepperdine University, then took a sales
sign lets anyone turn raw numbers into job in 1990 at Donnelley Marketing SOURCE: “SPEED TO WEALTH: CLOCKING HOW LONG IT
TAKES TO HIT A BILLION,” SEPTEMBER 21, 2011.
charts and graphics. It goes far beyond Information Services, a data company
80 | FORBES ASIA DECEMBER 2019 / JANUARY 2020
