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One year into my career at Platfora, I’m reflecting on the growth of the team and what has made this  company successful so far. Since our official launch in October, we hosted our first house party last Thursday, and we loved the chance to finally show people what we’ve been up to. Our early access customers love the product and our interface is up and running, but in some ways, our work is just beginning.

Design is rarely given strong emphasis in an enterprise software company. Amidst the pressures of high performance software, the qualitative benefits of aesthetics, usability, and experience are often overlooked. I’ve enjoyed working at Platfora because in our conversations, users don’t take a backseat, they are front and center. We feel that well-designed products can make a difference in quality of life during the professional hours of a person’s day.

Joining-in as designer at Platfora, I was tasked with understanding our users and designing an immersive visualization experience for a fresh platform. Under the covers, Platfora’s technology is a beast of immense power. A key task of the design team is to turn that technology into a usable and accessible resource. Frankly, we must bring this technology to life in an experience that won’t make our users’ heads explode.

This company has tremendous potential to disrupt an entire industry. Though there are many players in the industry and our technology is powerful, our company is unique in other ways that sets it apart and primes it for success.

Solving new problems: Before now, older analysis tools have tried to solve the problem of big data by building narrow bridges to new database technologies. But these old world tools were not designed to work well together and a better solution is required. The interactivity of big data is new territory; it’s our job to bring that work to life.

Designing for impact: Our tools will be used every day to do real work and solve problems for businesses. The world of big data is growing rapidly and our impact will be felt quickly across the industry. There are a great number of opportunities to push the industry in new and better directions; we take this responsibility seriously.

Great minds, top of class: Platfora’s employees have an incredible amount of experience, which would be intimidating if they weren’t so nice. We all bring unique expertise and perspective to the table, but there’s an underlying respect and unpretentiousness that you don’t always see at Silicon Valley start-ups.

Rewarding curiosity: Knowledge sharing across design and engineering has been indispensable so far, a practice that will not slow down as we grow. Asking questions is respected and rewarded with explanations – deep answers lead to inspirational ideas.

And we love food: We host top notch meals and appreciate good coffee and beer but also have enlightened discussions of junk food on occasion. (So far no one has been forced to eat the canned haggis…)

If you’re interested to hear more about our company and our product, stay tuned. There is a lot more coming. If Platfora sounds like the kind of place you’d like to work, be sure to drop us a line.