Episode #321 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Gabi Steele, Co-Founder & CEO at Preql.

Building a company is hard and there is no “one right way” to go about getting started, especially when you are creating a new category. But, when I talk to founders like Gabi, there was always an emphasis on generating revenue from the start.

It’s a smart move, as you can obviously control your own destiny through any customer work that might seem more like a services play. But, in addition to being able to pay the bills by bootstrapping, you are also getting a tremendous amount of market research and exposure to the real world problems that your customers are trying to solve.

It was this approach that allowed Gabi and her Co-Founder, Leah Weiss, the ability to spin off and launch Preql as a stand alone product company and raise capital to grow it.

Preql is a no-code data transformation solution built for business users. Their technology’s core solutions help companies with data access, metric management, and data governance. The company has raised $7M from Bessemer Venture Partners.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* A deep dive into the world of data visualization and the career path into this field.

* Gabi background story including how her career got started at The Washington Post.

* Her experience at WeWork, where she met her co-founder, and the creation of the company’s Data Cult program… plus, how the portrayal in the WeCrashed series may have been under-dramatized.

* The founding of Raw Haus, a community connecting emerging talent across the art, design, technology, and entrepreneurial spaces.

* The background story of Preql and how they built revenue from its consultancy and spun out a product.

* The challenges of building a new category in tech and selling it to a business user.

* Hiring the company’s first sales leader.

* Lessons learned while building a product company.

* And so much more.