Why I Bet My Career On Sigma

The first time I saw Sigma, I was standing in my kitchen during Snowflake Summit. It was still virtual back then, and I was trying to make lunch while watching sessions on my laptop. I saw one labeled “BI platform” and thought, Hey, I like BI. Might as well click in.

This was the old Sigma, the pre-workbook version, and I remember thinking, Okay, this is basically Excel online. Cool. And then I moved on. A few months later, Sigma reappeared. I was working as a consultant, and we were being introduced to Sigma as a new partner solution. This time I was impressed. 

It was easy. It was intuitive. It just made sense. But what really stuck with me was something simple: built-in pivot tables.

At the time, I had a client who kept saying, “I just want a pivot table. I’m going to download this into Excel.” And I remember thinking: Why am I spending all this time building visualizations if they’re just going to ignore them?

Seeing Sigma create something so simple and so meaningful sparked a curiosity that quickly turned into obsession.  

I’d spent years chasing moving targets, constantly building complicated hacks just to fulfill requests that started with an innocent-sounding “could you just…” but ended up eating the better half of a day. Seeing Sigma create something so simple and so meaningful sparked a curiosity that quickly turned into obsession.  

From trying to break things to helping build them

Like many builders, I learn best by trying to break things. So I started pushing every edge of the product—clicking on things, testing weird use cases, capturing screenshots of everything I didn’t understand or that felt off. I put it all in a long Google Doc and sent it to our partner manager.

A few days later, I got an email: Jason Frantz, Sigma’s co-founder, wanted to read my doc.

They’re not trying to replicate other tools. They’re trying to solve this differently.

That blew me away. Not just because someone responded, but because of how they responded. Jason and the team didn’t just want to fix the problem. They wanted to understand what I was trying to do. What I was solving for. Where I was getting stuck.

That was the moment I realized: They’re not trying to replicate other tools. They’re trying to solve this differently.

It was the beginning of a real feedback loop. Before when I'd given feedback to other platform's developers, it felt like the response was “Thanks, we'll add it to the black hole backlog.”
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With Sigma, I was collaborating with a team that deeply cared. And once I experienced that? I couldn't go back.

Why I joined now

From then on, I was all in on Sigma. I started spending my nights and weekends helping people use Sigma. Between founding the Sigma User Meetup, writing blogs, and answering questions on the community page, Sigma was my unofficial side gig. 

I jumped at an opportunity that felt less like a career change and more like a natural continuation of what I was already doing.

Eventually, I wanted to do more. And when the timing was right, I jumped at an opportunity that felt less like a career change and more like a natural continuation of what I was already doing. Now I get to do it full-time as a Product Evangelist, and I couldn’t be more excited to move from “they” to a “we”.

What I’m doing as Product Evangelist

Now that I’m officially part of the team, I’m focused on helping folks use Sigma to create real impact with their data. I’m here to help refocus the conversation from features to practical solutions that fit the way people actually work and support real decisions.

I’ll be writing regularly, presenting at events, and collaborating with folks like you who are pushing the data world forward.

My goal is to surface the “why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner” lessons. You shouldn’t have to fight your tools to do great work. 

Let’s fix that. 

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