Quality

There’s a book I love; actually, it’s a family favorite for us, the Gómez|Leidich|Bonilla. It’s called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Not only does it narrate a beautiful story of adventure, but it also provides a deep and compelling philosophical argument that has greatly shaped my family and me. It follows the journey of four people, a father and son and an older couple, as they road trip the US on their motorcycles. The couple revels in the aesthetics of their motorcycle; they love the thunderous roar it makes, the sensation of the wind as it caresses their hair, and the rumbling under their legs. The father and son immerse themselves in the machine's inner workings; finding joy in the precise dance of pistons, the satisfying click of a perfectly timed valve adjustment, and the harmonious purr of an engine running at peak efficiency.

Through this contrast, Pirsig introduces us to a fundamental divide: the romantic understanding of the world—focused on immediate aesthetic experience and emotional response—and the classical understanding—centered on underlying forms, patterns, and rational analysis. But rather than arguing for the superiority of one over the other, he proposes something more profound. Both approaches are merely different ways of pursuing something more fundamental, something he calls Quality. Quality, in Pirsig’s framework, isn’t just a characteristic or a measurement; it is the primary force that precedes both our subjective experience and our rational analysis. It’s what we recognize when the motorcycle runs perfectly, whether we appreciate it for its sexy look or its well-tuned engine. It’s the excellence that exists before we divide it into “beautiful” or “efficient.” Quality is thus the point where subject and object, romantic and classical understanding, meet and dissolve their apparent contradictions.

Software

By now you may be wondering what this has to do with software and Querio. To understand that connection, we need to first look at how the same tension between classical and romantic understanding plays out in software development. I'll use my brother, Emiliano, and me as an example. He is one of the smartest, most rational and talented people I know. He “loves solving hard engineering problems” and has a deep appreciation and skill for the technical details. When he approaches a problem, it's all about the engineering elegance—the perfect architecture, the most efficient algorithm, the cleanest code structure. He’s been known to spend hours building plotting libraries from scratch instead of using an existing one because he sees an opportunity to make it more efficient, just as Pirsig and his son would lose themselves in the meditation of perfectly adjusting their motorcycle's valves.

In contrast to my brother's classical approach, I approach software with what Pirsig would call a more romantic perspective. I certainly respect the classical foundations—the architecture, the performance, the technical excellence. What truly drives me, though, is the elegance of the product itself, how seamlessly it fits into our users’ world. I find the greatest satisfaction in solving a hard problem with an elegantly simple solution.

Even though he is classical and I am romantic, we're both founders and, above all, care about the quality of the software we ship. We know that both sides are equally crucial, and the future of our companies depends on it. A quality product can only be built if tech and product work in harmony—if the architecture is solid but users can’t understand it, you’ve failed. If the interface is slick but riddled with bugs, you’ve failed. Anyone who’s created software knows this dance: the tension between shipping fast and building right, between user experience and system stability, between innovative features and maintainable code. The best software emerges when both mindsets are respected—when the classical attention to technical excellence meets the romantic pursuit of user value. Just as Pirsig’s Quality transcends both approaches to motorcycle maintenance, true quality in software transcends the divide between engineering elegance and product impact.

Data

Still, what does this have to do with Querio and, for that matter, with data? Funnily enough, the world of data struggles with the same dichotomy, perhaps even more starkly than traditional software development. On one side, the data analyst, scientist, or engineer understand the business through the data structures, SQL queries, and stats models. On the other hand, the marketer, salesperson, or executive understands the business through customer interactions, market trends, and business intuition. They’re both needed; you cannot measure progress without technical ability in data, but you cannot define progress without knowing a business and its customers.

That’s how we build at Querio. We care deeply about the classical and the romantic, the engineering and the product, the data and the business. We obsess over accuracy, ontologies, and agent architectures while ensuring that our data platform meets everyone at their technical level. Building the future of data products is not about choosing between technical sophistication and business accessibility—it’s about marrying those two ideas as the only fundamental way to achieve quality.

Just as Pirsig's Quality precedes the split between classical and romantic understanding, we believe the future of data products lies in unifying these perspectives. Like a well-maintained motorcycle that both purrs perfectly and turns heads, great data products must simultaneously satisfy both the engineer's need for precision and the user's desire for intuitive understanding.