About

Jacob Adler is the Principal of Riverboat Consulting, LLC. He thrives in ambiguity.

One of his first projects as a data scientist at Caesars Entertainment was writing an algorithm to determine which participant in a marketing campaign would win a $1 million grand prize.

He started reading about transformers (what turned into LLMs) in 2019, then built a Twitter clone of ESPN personality Skip Bayless trained on his tweets. (It didn't work. No matter where a tweet started, it turned into a complaint about Dak Prescott or LeBron James).

He thrived at fast-moving startups, building out the data warehouse as first data hire at Dutchie, and later serving as Future's interim head of data amid a business model pivot.

He began consulting for startups in summer 2024 when old coworkers wanted to continue working together at their new companies. Initial projects were more traditional data consulting, but over time deal flow became so concentrated in AI that Riverboat now brands itself as an AI consulting firm.

There is still so much ambiguity in the AI space. In spring 2025, he used AI to troubleshoot database errors. By the end of 2025, he wrote 99% of his code agentically. Where will AI be this time next year?

Jacob has presented at the dbt Coalesce conference, "Navigating data consolidation after M&A" and written for the Locally Optimistic blog, "Reducing the Lottery Factor, for Data Teams".

Jacob graduated from The Wharton School in 2018 with joint concentrations in Statistics and Operations, Information, and Decisions (OID). He lives in Santa Monica, CA and enjoys playing beach tennis, poker and chess, and reading books about shipwrecks.