Deep Dive with Hive- William Chang, CTO & Co-founder of Canner
NAME: William Chang (張仲威)
1. Short Introduction of yourself and your startup：
Ans:
I’m William and I’m the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Canner.
I learned how to code in college and have since been fascinated with the power of coding. There is just so much you can do with coding. I especially enjoy research on distributed systems.
Since college, my friend Howard and I immersed in this crazy world of coding. We co-founded one web application after another and tried to solve problems we saw with coding.
After graduation, we co-founded Canner. Canner is a platform that helps enterprises unify the access of scattered and heterogeneous data sources and deliver value from data faster. We help the data team move faster with manageable access control and security.
2. What inspired you to develop your idea into a startup?
Ans:
Canner started as an open-sourced Content Management System (CMS) framework, called CannerCMS. During that time, we found that users spend most of their time preparing data before using our framework to show on User Interface (UI).
We believe we can help our users unify their data access and reduce their effort in preparing data and managing access control, so they can get to the part that is most valuable to their business faster.
3. What’s the biggest challenge you faced when starting a company and how did you overcome it?
Ans:
I find the challenges keep getting harder and harder every day. This world is changing really fast and you need to keep an eye on the movement of the whole ecosystem.
The biggest challenge I personally faced was changing my mindset from being a good developer to leading a good dev team. It took me some time to really see the issues of a team that keeps growing larger and larger. You’ll want your team to understand the vision, understand the priorities of items on the roadmap, and also be self-motivated enough to work together on their own.
I focus on three things:
- How they do things: we spent some time setting up the culture we want in our company to make sure everyone understands the core values.
- What they’re going to work on: we spent much time doing research and sharing our thoughts, vision, roadmap with everyone, so they’ll know where the company is going.
- Why they’re doing it: it’s important to share the problems your customers are facing with your team. The user stories need to be high level enough, so your team knows what the users really want and they’ll be more confident about the features they’re working on.
You’ll also want to make sure your team spends their time efficiently, meaning you have to protect them from any kind of noise. For example, your developer should not have to constantly deal with customers’ complaints directly.
4. What is your dream and aspirations for the company going forward?
Ans:
My dream is that Canner can one day be like Snowflake or Databricks, playing an important role in the architecture of many companies. What products or features they ship impact a lot of customers and partners in the ecosystem.
5. Who is your role model, or Which public personalities have you been inspired by in your startup journey?
Ans:
Stephen Hawking for his sense of humor, intelligence, and passion for his work.
NBA Star, Derick Rose, for his determination. Despite all his injuries, he still manages to come back every time.
6. What keeps you awake at night?
Ans:
Questions like “Am I missing anything in product positioning?”, “Could I do things any better to help my team?” keep me awake.
7. What is your motivation that keeps you going every day?
Ans:
The biggest motivation is my passion for data and my job.
8. What is your strategy when things don’t turn out the way you expect?
Ans:
I often find it helpful to talk to people, either those with experience or just outsiders. They often give you advice from different perspectives.
9. What is the biggest difference you see from the start of your journey to where you are today?
Ans:
My hair, obviously.
The biggest difference is that we now have a better team, advisors, and investors. We get help from many people along the way.
Also, I know myself better now. Founding a startup is a journey where you sometimes have to face the worst in you. Bad habits can come back, and default mechanism can kick in, but you know yourself better to keep pushing forward.
