My cofounders and I set out to create WEKA a decade ago because we recognized a pressing need to address a new breed of mixed big data and high-performance computing workloads moving into the enterprise. We also saw an opportunity to upend the data infrastructure industry status quo by developing a platform-based software solution that could move data quickly and frictionlessly across distributed data infrastructure environments, enabling new levels of speed, scale, simplicity, and efficiency.

A decade later, I’m extremely proud of what we’ve built. While I’ll stop short of calling ourselves seers, I think it’s safe to say we accurately predicted the urgency and criticality of a unified data platform solution that could provide the necessary infrastructure for artificial intelligence and generative AI, a step-level shift in computing that requires unprecedented amounts of data to be accessed and delivered at unprecedented speeds.

These days, hot AI startups are emerging by the hour, touting “cool” technology that can change the world. Some have real potential to solve big challenges for business and society or take human creativity and productivity to the next level, while others may turn out to be trial balloons the world isn’t quite ready for yet.

A big part of why WEKA has been so successful and why our customers love us is that our product—a unified platform solution that addresses modern data management challenges and supports performance-intensive compute and AI workloads with exceptional speed, scale, simplicity and efficiency—was perfectly timed to address a rapidly emerging need rather than simply being cool tech for the sake of being cool.

This is what the industry calls product-market fit. One of the best analogies I can think to compare it to is surfers looking to catch the perfect wave.

Finding the Perfect Wave

Building a successful product and company requires a clear vision, a sharp and enthusiastic team ready to execute, and, most importantly, a vision for a solution that meets a real market need and can provide iron-clad performance and reliability. Like most things in life, timing is everything.

If you know anything about surfing, you understand the rush of catching a wave. You get on your board, paddle out past where the waves break, and wait for a good swell you can chase down and ride. If you wait too long, the wave may pass you by. Start chasing too early, and the wave crashes on top of you, leaving you a bit disoriented and with a mouthful of salty water. Either way, you’re back at that same break, waiting again.

The beauty of surfing – and why it can be addictive – is when you manage to chase that wave down just right: your board engages the water in a fundamentally different way, you get yourself up on your feet, and you ride it back toward the beach. It’s a natural rush like no other. This rush is what it feels like when your product fits the market perfectly and at just the right time.

Timing is Everything

Let’s roll back the clock a few decades to when virtualization emerged to answer the IT industry’s call for more computing power. Virtualization allows you to consolidate multiple operating systems onto a single piece of x86 hardware—a concept previously unthinkable in the enterprise world—to run many more workloads than possible. This created a “do more with less” value proposition, which the whole industry quickly rallied behind. Although this technology was certainly cool, it also provided a service its creators knew was in demand and could capitalize on.

Many companies start with what may seem like a cool product concept and strongly believe in it, but company leaders haven’t truly assessed whether the idea is something the market needs immediately. I faced a similar situation earlier in my career, about 10 years after virtualization went mainstream.

Social media was the next big thing poised to devour the world at the time. By then, I had helped a startup, XIV, get acquired by IBM and spent several years after that working for Big Blue. But I missed the thrill of innovating something new, so when I spotted an opportunity to jump into the new frontier of social media, I pursued it.

I co-founded a company called Fusic and helped develop a very cool technology that can best be described as an early version of TikTok.

Given TikTok’s enormous success today, you’re probably wondering why I’m not a billionaire enjoying pina coladas on some faraway beach. We had a killer idea, cool tech and a super smart team. So why weren’t we successful?

The reason is simple: the timing wasn’t right. We didn’t have a product-market fit. Most content creators making Reels or TikTok videos use their own mobile phones to film themselves. When we were developing Fusic, front-facing cameras weren’t available yet. It wasn’t until the iPhone 4 launched in 2010 that selfies became possible, and social influencers and the digital content creator economy—key ingredients to TikTok’s success—began to emerge.

Net: We were too early to market and missed the wave.

When It All Comes Together

I’m extremely proud of what we’ve built at WEKA over the past decade and how well-positioned we are to help enterprises address their AI challenges today—and future-proof their data architectures to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

2024 was a banner year for WEKA, in which we became both a unicorn and a centaur. We could not have gotten here without the partnership of our earliest lighthouse customers. They trusted us with seemingly impossible data challenges and allowed us to battle-test and harden the WEKA Data Platform in the largest, most grueling AI and modern HPC environments on the planet.

Although I can’t predict all of what’s to come in 2025, I know with certainty that we are entering an extraordinary new era of intelligent innovation and human enlightenment—a new renaissance poised to profoundly impact humanity. We are incredibly fortunate to have created the right product at the right time to help the world’s most innovative companies navigate and capitalize on this paradigm shift.

While some may not believe data infrastructure is the most exciting technology, when I see how WEKA is helping customers overcome massive data challenges to unlock previously unthinkable innovations and discoveries, there’s no cooler market category I’d rather be in.


Ready to be inspired? Check out our customer stories to witness firsthand how WEKA is helping many of the world’s most innovative companies, creatives, and research teams accelerate the time to discovery, reduce the cost of innovation, and reimagine what’s possible in their industries. weka.io/customers/