Building an Engineering-First Company: Dataminded’s Founder Story with Kris Peeters
Jan 29, 2026
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Kris Peeters & Pascal Brokmeier
Kris Peeters reflects on building Dataminded: engineering culture, autonomy, scaling teams, and lessons from 11 years of growth.
In this season finale of The Data Playbook Podcast, the tables turn: Kris Peeters (Host & Founder of Dataminded) is interviewed by Pascal Brokmeier (guest from the Episode 2 and former colleague).
Kris shares the real story behind 11 years of building Dataminded - from the stress of having zero customers, to landing the first project, to scaling from a small team to a company with a leadership layer. We dive deep into what makes an engineering-first culture work: autonomy + responsibility, raising (and protecting) the hiring bar, learning from mistakes, and why timeless engineering practices (Git, CI/CD, testing, monitoring) still matter, no matter the tech hype cycle.
If you’re a data leader, data engineer, engineering manager, or founder, this episode is a practical playbook on building a company (and a culture) that can survive and scale.
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