Daily Harvest’s Brad Klingenberg on How Data-Driven Personalization is Driving Food Creation

Data and the power it wields has made its way into every industry over the last decade. From entertainment to real estate, all the way to the fashion industry, companies leading their industries are using data to create uniquely personalized digital experiences.

Brad Klingenberg is the Chief Algorithms Officer at Daily Harvest, the direct-to-consumer brand that helps stock your home with fresh, plant-based foods. Brad leads the data team and is charged with using data and algorithms to create meals Daily Harvest customers will enjoy and keep coming back for. 

On this episode of The Data Chief, Brad and Cindi discuss the importance of aligning your customers’ wants with business value to create unique experiences, and how to go about sourcing data to get the desired outcomes. Brad also dives into his previous work at Stitch Fix, and provides insights on how to scale data teams and foster a data culture. Enjoy!

Main Takeaways

• The personalization promise to customers: Customers aren’t giving you their data for free. They’re doing it so your business can get to know them in ways that make sense, and to use that information to create more personalized experiences for them. When the customer trusts what you’re going to use their information for, you have an opportunity - and obligation - to create a unique experience that is both beneficial for the customer and the business.
• Tools to solve data bias: It’s quite easy for biases to be introduced into your algorithms through the data that is used. While there is an emerging set of tools to help diagnose and evaluate data bias, it’s a hard problem to solve, and one that requires getting to the root - the data itself. Everything starts with the data you have. Data teams need to put an emphasis on the diversity in their data to recognize gaps and biases.
• Building a data-driven culture: Never before has it been more important for companies to champion a data-driven culture. Leaders need to lead by example in this shift. At the same time, data functions have a special role to play in helping companies reason with uncertainty, understand measurement and experimentation.

About Brad

Brad Klingenberg is the Chief Algorithms Officer at Daily Harvest, the direct-to-consumer brand that helps you stock your home with clean, delicious food built on real fruit + vegetables and ready in minutes. Brad leads the data team and is charged with using data and algorithms to tailor the Daily Harvest experience to individual food values and taste preferences through the co-creation of food and digital personalization.

Prior to Daily Harvest, Brad was the Chief Algorithm Officer at Stitch Fix, where he oversaw a team of more than 140 data scientists and engineers. As the leader of the Algorithms team, Brad was responsible for developing and improving the core algorithmic capabilities that leverage data to power Stitch Fix.

Brad has also served as an advisor/consultant for Candidate Labs, Udacity, Opendoor.com, and Netflix. He currently lives in Boulder, CO with his family and holds a PhD from Stanford University, as well as a Bachelor of Science - Master of Science dual degree from University of Colorado at Boulder.

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The Data Chief is presented by our friends at ThoughtSpot. Searching through your company’s data for insights doesn’t have to be complicated. With ThoughtSpot, anyone in your organization can easily answer their own data questions, find the facts, and make better, faster decisions. Learn more at thoughtspot.com. 

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For full show notes and more, go to thedatachief.com.

Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.