Hi, I'm Bill. I like to build, create, and share.
My Current Journey
I'm taking a high growth sabbatical. I'm working in 3 domains:
- Family
- Building Hyperlint and writing for Learn By Building.
- Advising and investing in companies in startups in the data, AI, and machine learning domains and doing some small consulting engagements.
My Past Journeys
I was founding PM and product management lead at Anyscale, an open source software unicorn that delivers a platform for building and running LLMs. I helped us grow from ~10 to 115 during my tenure. I built the initial PM team, the first version of our product, and our initial go to market, sales, and sales engineering functions.
Prior to Anyscale, I was an early solutions architect (and subsequently an early PM) at Databricks. While at Databricks:
- I was product manager for the first version of Delta Lake.
- I wrote Spark: The Definitive Guide for O'Reilly Press; co-authored with Matei Zaharia. I helped us scale from 80 people when I joined, to over 1300 when I left.
Prior to Databricks, I created SparkTutorials.net as a way to teach others the basics of Apache Spark. I was also creator of Data Analysis in Python with Pandas for Udemy and co-creator of, and first instructor for, Python for Data Science as a part of UC Berkeley's Masters of Data Science Program.
In 2016, I graduated with Master’s in Information Management and Systems from the UC Berkeley School of Information.
Prior to getting my master's degree, I worked at another high growth company called Procore ($PCOR). I was an early employee (< 40) and the first sales development representative. During my time at Procore, I worked as a sales development representative, a sales representative (closing a deal for our software to manage construction of the largest skyscraper in Mexico at the time), and was responsible for sales operations.
Prior to Procore, I started my career in various commission-only sales roles and customer support roles. I sold roofs door to door for the Premier Roofing Company.