data activation

It’s been 10 years since the term “Customer Data Platform” was coined by David Raab, Founder of the CDP Institute. Needless to say, the definition of a CDP has evolved a lot, and slowly but surely, the beast that is the CDP has grown new heads – or components – each of which serves a specific purpose.   

Part of the confusion regarding what a CDP even means stems from the fact that companies that recognized the opportunity early have been pushing the CDP envelope by building or buying complementary solutions, while others are selling CDP components but calling themselves a CDP nonetheless. 

Segment, which was acquired by Twilio in late 2020, has been around since the early days. And so has their VP of Product, Kevin Niparko who’s been with Segment since 2015 and has had a front-row seat to how the CDP space has evolved over the last 8 years. 

In this episode, our host, Arpit Choudhury, and our guest, Kevin Niparko rapidly discussed his early days as a growth analyst at Segment followed by the key innovations that put Segment on the map. We concluded the episode by discussing the two underrated but extremely important components of the CDP – data quality and privacy.

I learned a lot while researching for this episode and my key takeaway was that the industry needs to focus less on what’s new and flashy and take a moment to acknowledge the innovations that enable most of what’s new and flashy. 

Fun fact: In late 2015, Segment launched its Warehouses product that let customers sync data to their own Redshift or Postgres database – long before the rise of the cloud data warehouse. 

P.S. A conversation about CDPs in 2023 is incomplete without shedding some light on the Composable vs Packaged CDP debate. 

If you prefer to read, here you go: https://databeats.community/p/the-evolution-of-the-cdp

We recently managed to bring together some leading minds in the CDP arena — not to fight or argue, but to find some common ground and put an end to the debate-turned-battle between the Composable and the Packaged CDP camps. 

Here’s the guest list:

• Boris Jabes from Census represents the Composable CDP camp
• Michael Katz from mParticle represents the Packaged CDP camp
• David Raab from the CDP Institute represents the neutral party that cares deeply about the category (he coined the term, Customer Data Platform, after all)
• Jacques Corby-Tuech, a RevOps practitioner, represents the end user or the beneficiary of a CDP
• Matthew Niederberger, a CDP consultant, represents folks who implement CDPs of all types

And some context on how we landed here:

At Human37, Glenn implements CDPs of all types for companies in Europe. And in my quest to grow this community (thank you for being a part), I talk to a lot of people — all types of stakeholders essentially.

And Glenn and I found one thing in common:

And we just wanted to change that.

We also think that this battle between Composable and Packaged CDPs is fruitless — it’s not helping anybody or adding much value. And we wanted to get people together who want to discuss more pressing problems in the data space.

Needless to say, we’re far from achieving that goal but this is a good start and we’re optimistic.

So, without further ado, welcome to Round 1 of the CDP Rapid Fire! 🥁🥁

In this round, I’ll deliver one statement at a time and each guest will respond with “I agree” or “I disagree”, along with some quick thoughts to support their stance. 

What’s really valuable here is that together, these five individuals represent all the stakeholders involved in buying, deploying, and deriving value from a CDP. 

Let’s get into it.