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Brett Hurt
CEO and Co-founder at data.world
Brett A. Hurt is the CEO and Co-founder of data.world, a data catalog platform designed to enhance data discovery and governance, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence. Under his leadership, data.world has become a Certified B Corporation and public benefit corporation, focusing on democratizing data access and fostering a collaborative open data community that includes over two million members, including many Fortune 500 companies.14
Hurt has a notable entrepreneurial background, having co-founded several successful companies. He was the CEO of Bazaarvoice, which became a leader in social commerce and was recognized as one of the top IPOs of 2012 by the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, he founded Coremetrics, a web analytics solution that was acquired by IBM for approximately $300 million in 2010.124
Educated at The University of Texas at Austin and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Hurt began programming at a young age and has maintained a strong focus on technology and entrepreneurship throughout his career. He is also involved in various philanthropic efforts through Hurt Family Investments, which supports numerous startups and venture capital funds.123
Brett Hurt's contributions to the tech industry have earned him accolades, including recognition as one of Goldman Sachs' Most Exceptional Entrepreneurs in 2022 and the Best CEO Legacy Award from the Austin Business Journal in 2017.12
Highlights
My latest article, informed by our many conversations with customers. An excerpt: "Carrying the analogy, the AI Context Engine is an expanded “frontal lobe”. LLM models are great at reading and synthesizing emails, documents, and textual material, so-called “unstructured data”. But they fail when navigating “structured” data, from spreadsheets to massive databases. Why? Because structured data resources demand an understanding of the relationships between data points. They demand an understanding of the context. Traditional data catalogs may have AI-powered features, but they can’t chat with structured data, effectively stranding even the most data-savvy enterprises at Level 2 on the climb to the AI summit.
Until now.
With contextual intelligence, businesses move beyond surface-level AI applications and unlock deeper, more transformative uses of the technology. In essence, context engines can elevate AI from a tool that simply processes information, to one that truly comprehends the unique world of a particular business, driving competitive advantage in ways that were previously unattainable."
If you aren't already reading "The Singularity Is Nearer" by Ray Kurzweil, you should be. This will be the defining book for this next critical decade of tech innovation and navigation (AI will affect every single industry.) The book dropped last night via Audible at 2am and is available on shelves today (virtual and in-store). His prior of this ilk, "The Singularity is Near", dropped in 2005 and had a profound impact on me, especially thinking exponentially (not an easy thing to do and still even hard for me to estimate where AI will be even just 10 years from now). Like many tech entrepreneurs, I read sci-fi since I was a young kid and grew up programming since age seven, so AI has been on my mind for the past four decades. Sci-fi tip - if you haven't re-read "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson recently, do it.
Our 14-year old son, Levi, and I have already been devouring "The Singularity Is Nearer". We'll probably finish it by the end of this weekend (I have a very time-consuming day job that I love as the CEO of data.world!) It is already blowing our minds.
I was lucky to meet Ray with our daughter, Rachel, when we were at TED2024 back in April. His talk on this book still hasn't dropped on TED.com but be on the lookout for that soon. There are many terrific new talks on the site, including the latest from Uma Valeti, MD.
