Data Duel began with the idea of exploring what is the right tool to do the job of data visualization – head-to-head.
Founders
Jacob Matson is the VP of Finance & Operations at Simetric, bringing IoT connectivity data into a single-pane-of-glass. He also does SMB analytics consulting via his agency, Elliot Point LLC. You can find him on twitter @matsonj (DMs open).
In his career, he lead the launch of Funko’s first B2C e-commerce play, Marvel Collector Corps, which grew from nothing to a $30mm run rate business line, including other licenses such as Star Wars, DC Comics, and Disney, and Funko’s flash sale site, Funko-shop.com (now Funko.com). He was a key member of the technology team supporting an IPO in 2017 as the business grew by more than 2,000% during his tenure. Previously, he was part of RoamBI (acquired by SAP), a business intelligence app for iPhone, and Verimatrix (acquired by InsideSecure), a content security provider for digital television services.
Outside of the office, he is happiest spending time with his wife Kristen raising his two children Olivia and Patrick in Everett, Washington.
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Nate Sooter is the Manger of BI Operations at Smartsheet, focusing on scaling and standardizing analytics across the organization. He has a passion for problem solving and loves working in the fast-paced SMB analytics space where data is messy, requirements are unclear and the organization is hungry for data.
After starting his career in sales, he recognized his true passion for Analytics and landed his first data position at Funko. In over his head, Nate was tossed into the data deep end and had to learn to swim. Eight years later, he’s swimming and teaching others how to do the same. Nate focuses on solutions that save people time by making data easy to find and digest – including a project at Smartsheet that continues to save more than 1,200 hours of manual data lookup per week on the sales floor.
Nate lives in Everett, WA with his wife Erica, daughter Bellamy and son Finn. When not with his family, he can be found on the golf course searching for his ball in that one stupid bush that’s down the right-hand side of the fairway.
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