I run MotherDuck’s AI strategy and manage its UI.

MotherDuck is a cloud-hosted DuckDB company. I joined because I believed almost all of the data stack ~ pipelines, BI, you name it ~ should be bundled with the cloud-hosted database, and DuckDB is the first database I’ve used that can actually pull that off. It’s fast and very fun to work with, and as a result, it has a cult-like following uncommon in the world of databases.

Agentic workflows fit perfectly with DuckDB and MotherDuck. Its hypertenancy gives every user, or agent, their own session-lived backend, so they can hammer the warehouse without stepping on anyone else. Dives and Flights, our two bundled agentic products, came straight out of that.

Highlights

• Led multiple teams of AI and frontend engineers (~12 total).
• Designed and developed the UI after MotherDuck’s 2023 beta release. In the process, migrated our Typescript/React stack from Webpack, MUI, and CJS to ESM, pnpm, TanStack, Radix, Vanilla Extract. In the process, I made the application surface & design system modular, which enabled us to build multiple apps, including new MCP apps using the same components.
• Dives, an agentic BI tool. Designed, built, and shipped in three weeks. Dives sat between Jupyter notebooks and full BI tools; it writes its own React and SQL and queries your database directly through Wasm. Customers loved the ergonomics enough to replace PowerBI, Omni, and Hex with it.
• Flights, an agentic data pipeline tool. Led product strategy, design, and implementation of the UI.
• Pricing redesign. Worked with the founder and leadership on a new pricing iteration that led to a large increase in revenue and minimal customer churn.
• Instant SQL, a new paradigm for writing SQL queries. Designed, built, and shipped. Applying Bret Victor’s Inventing on Principle: “There can’t be a delay, and there can’t be nothing hidden […] creators need an immediate connection to what they’re creating.”
• DuckDB UI. Designed and shipped the official DuckDB UI, built into the DuckDB CLI.
• Column Explorer. Designed, built, and shipped. The Column Explorer surfaces null percentages, unique values, top values, histograms, and time series for every column, so you don’t have to write boilerplate SQL just to get a feel for a dataset.

Instant SQL

Instant SQL applies Bret Victor’s principles of immediate feedback and deep observability to the antiquated world of writing queries. The talk is about SQL, but it’s as much about human attention, flow state, and getting good at something while having fun. it’s about twenty-five minutes, and the best outline of my worldview on design.

Column Explorer

The Column Explorer was MotherDuck’s first data visualization feature. It surfaces null percentages, unique values, top values, histograms, and time series for every column, so you never write boilerplate SQL just to get a feel for a dataset. Read about it here.

Selected design

I drew many of the meaningful product icons in the MotherDuck UI, fitting each into a 16×16 footprint so they stay legible in information-dense interfaces.