<p>About Pete Hunt</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwhunt/">Pete Hunt</a> is the Chief Executive Officer at <a target="_blank" href="https://dagster.io/">Dagster Labs</a>, the company behind the open‑source data orchestration platform Dagster and its commercial Dagster Cloud offering. Rising to prominence in the early 2010s, he became known as one of the early leaders of the React.js project inside Facebook and as a key engineering voice at Instagram during its hyper‑growth period. Today he is widely regarded as an influential figure at the intersection of data platforms, infrastructure, and developer experience, helping teams modernize how they build and operate data‑intensive systems.</p><p>Previously, as Head of Engineering and then CEO at <a target="_blank" href="https://dagster.io/">Dagster Labs</a>, Hunt helped guide the organization from its early identity as Elementl, founded in 2019, to a commercial data orchestration leader with the launch of Dagster Cloud and the introduction of Software‑Defined Assets in 2021. After joining the company in early 2022, he assumed the CEO role in November 2022 and has since focused on turning Dagster’s open‑source traction into a scalable business with a repeatable go‑to‑market motion. Under his leadership, Dagster Labs has grown into a well‑funded, small but highly specialized team shipping infrastructure that supports thousands of data assets across modern data stacks.</p><p>His career highlights include a formative stretch at Facebook beginning around 2011, where he was a founding member of the React.js team and helped drive its transformation from an internal experiment into one of the most widely adopted front‑end frameworks in the world. After the Instagram acquisition in 2012, Hunt became the first Facebook engineer embedded into Instagram, led the instagram.com web team, and built Instagram’s business analytics products as the company scaled to hundreds of millions of users. In 2014 he co‑founded abuse‑fighting startup Smyte, serving as CEO for roughly four years until its acquisition by <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> in 2018, where he then worked on Trust & Safety and infrastructure during a period when the platform handled hundreds of millions of daily active users. Across these roles he has consistently operated at the point where new infrastructure—React, Instagram’s web stack, Smyte’s anti‑abuse systems, and now Dagster—becomes robust enough to support global‑scale products.</p><p>Outside his operating roles, Hunt has built a durable reputation as a conference speaker and educator, giving talks at events such as OSCON 2014 on how instagram.com works and sharing practical lessons on React, data platforms, and engineering leadership. Through long‑form interviews and podcasts, he documents the transition from individual engineer to founder and CEO, making him a widely referenced voice for engineers moving into executive roles.</p><p><em>Hey—Thanks for reading this. I mean that. There's a lot of content out there competing for your attention, and you spent some of it here. I hope it was worth it. Even better, I hope it prompted you to think about something differently enough that you'd share it with someone who'd get something out of it too.I started this podcast because tactics never stuck with me. What stuck were stories — business biographies, autobiographies, the decisions people made and why they made them. The principle only clicks once you know the story behind it.</em></p><p><em>So I built the thing I wanted to read. Every week I have two conversations with people who build in technology and product. Then I write the essay I wish I could find — one that puts you inside the conversation, through my eyes. What caught me off guard. What I kept thinking about after we hung up. Where the principle actually lives once you strip away the jargon.</em></p><p><em>I make this for myself first. If you read the way I do, you’ll want it too.</em></p><p></p><p>Subscribe to The Way of Product</p><p></p><p><em>PS — If you want to pitch coming on the show, or you know someone I should talk to, shoot me an email at </em><a target="_blank" href="mailto:[email protected]"><em>[email protected]</em></a><em> with "January752" in the subject line so it gets past my filters. I'm not optimizing for famous guests. I'm optimizing for interesting conversations, even from people who aren't LinkedIn influencers.</em></p> <br/><br/>Get full access to The Way of Product w/ Caden Damiano at <a href="https://www.wayofproduct.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_4">www.wayofproduct.com/subscribe</a>