Barry McCardel

McCardel spent years at PalantirPalantirPalantir is a U.S. enterprise software company founded in 2003 that provides data and artificial intelligence platforms including Gotham, Foundry, Palantir Apollo, and AIP, serving government and commercial organizations. The company went public through a direct listing in 2020 and now trades on Nasdaq under the ticker PLTR.Open the full entry, where he led teams working at the intersection of product development and real-world impact, and where he met Caitlin Colgrove and Glen Takahashi, with whom he later co-founded Hex.⁠[1][2][3]

He also served as senior director of operations and strategy at TrialSpark.⁠[2]

In 2020 McCardel co-founded Hex with Colgrove and Takahashi, serving as chief executive, with Colgrove as chief technology officer and Takahashi as chief architect. Hex is a platform for collaborative analytics and data science that brings SQL, Python, R and no-code workflows together in notebooks and lets users publish projects as interactive data apps.⁠[3][4][5]

On October 20, 2021, Hex Technologies announced a $16 million Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from existing investor Amplify Partners as well as Data Community Fund, Geometry, Operator Collective, Tokyo Black, Vandelay Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital, bringing its total funding to $21.5 million.⁠[4]

McCardel said in the announcement, “We're on a mission to help everyone do more with data, together.”⁠[4]

On March 22, 2022, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry announced that its Growth Fund had led Hex’s Series B round, with Databricks, Snowflake and Hex’s existing investors participating; a16z partners Sarah WangSarah Wang (a16z)Sarah Wang is a venture capitalist and general partner on the growth team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). She joined a16z in 2019 and leads growth-stage investments in AI, enterprise applications and infrastructure, having invested in companies including Character.AI, Wiz, Cursor, Temporal and Exa.Open the full entry and Matt Bornstein wrote the announcement.⁠[5]

On May 18, 2023, the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel released the video “Getting a Competitive Advantage with AI,” hosted by Stephanie Smith and featuring McCardel as co-founder and CEO of Hex.⁠[6]

The video discussed building personalized experiences from schema, code style and project context, powered by embedded AI, with chapters on “Where is the moat? Where is the competitive advantage?”, the data advantage, constructing prompts, what increases completion rates, and the value of data.⁠[6]

On May 28, 2025, Hex announced a $70 million Series C round led by Avra, with participation from Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry, Redpoint Ventures, BoxBoxBox is an American enterprise software company founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie, Dylan Smith and others, headquartered in Redwood City, California. It provides cloud content management, file sharing, collaboration, e-signature and AI content-processing tools, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015 under the ticker BOX.Open the full entry Group, Snowflake Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Amplify. Sequoia Capital has backed Hex since 2023.⁠[3][7]

McCardel said at the time that “there's an infinite demand for insight” and that “traditional BI tools just aren't built for that at all.”⁠[3]

In March 2026, on the Newcomer podcast hosted by Eric Newcomer, he described Hex as “CursorCursorCursor is the trading name of U.S. AI coding software company Anysphere, Inc. and its namesake coding tool. Founded by Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger, it began as an AI-native development environment forked from VS Code and later shifted toward agent-centered coding. Its November 2025 Series D valued the company at $29.3 billion post-money; on August 14, 2026, SpaceX completed an all-stock acquisition at an implied equity value of $60 billion, making Cursor a wholly owned subsidiary.Open the full entry for data.”⁠[1]

Hex: Official website: https://hex.tech (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

X: Public account: https://x.com/barrald (opens in a new window).⁠[6]