Another month, another team member to introduce. This time we sat down with Nicholas Vandrey. He recently joined Cachet as a Head of Data.
You’re not initially from here. How did you end up in Estonia?
My story is not the most common one. I grew up in Texas and at some point my family moved to Europe because of work. When I was younger, I lived with them in Scotland and then Norway for some time.
Actually, while I was in Norway, I met my now partner there. She is Estonian, and is the main reason why I ended up here! I moved to Estonia and started my studies in Business and Economics. Then it all went further, did my internship and started working.
Now, it’s been over 15 years. I am still here because there are so many things I like about living and working in this country.
Tell me more about your work experiences. Where did you start and what did you learn?
I started my career at Funderbeam (now called Venturebeam), where I stayed for five years. It was a remarkable place to grow, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I had there.
During my time there, I found my passion for data. At first my technical knowledge was limited and I did a lot of work on Excel. Soon, I started learning SQL to talk to databases which piqued my curiosity and took me further down the road to working with code. I started building things on my own, and each new project added another layer to my knowledge.
From there I joined Veriff in its early days and helped to scale the data team as the company grew. I stayed there for 5 years, and learned to scale data platforms to handle terabytes of data.
After Veriff, I moved to Pactum as Data Lead. I was responsible for data analytics and the data engineering side.
It sounds like Funderbeam really ignited your passion for data! What keeps that interest alight today?
Yes, it did. Because it was the first place that gave me the space to explore and define my path beyond my initial role.
I got to see there how data has so many layers to it. When I first started writing code, I really enjoyed it, and that interest has only grown since.
There’s joy in building and seeing it come to life. Data brings different elements together to give you a better feel of the full picture. As well, I like to deep dive into the data, and finding signals and solutions others miss.
Over the years I’ve had many different roles in data, each has exposed me to the challenges, both good and bad, that come with building a data-driven company. That’s why now, it’s the next logical step for me to take on leading a team at Cachet, where data is so core to our value creation.
You’ve always been part of startup culture. What draws you to these types of environments?
There's a few things that attract me to startups.
I like how startups usually are focused on building and creating new value rather than maintaining existing systems and products. The constant iteration and innovation is something that excites me.
Another aspect is that it is a good place to focus on impact through your every day work. In startups every role goes beyond its description and you’re focused on what the most crucial tasks are, even if they’re not in your direct remit of responsibility.
You joined Cachet not that long ago. How has the process been for you so far?
Honestly, it’s been a very positive surprise. I would even say, it’s been one of the most exciting first months I’ve had. Everything has gone smoothly and onboarding is going well.
I remember walking into the office on my first day and not feeling like the new person at all. You know, when you don’t know everyone yet, and it feels a bit awkward. Instead, everyone was friendly and welcoming. It’s also probably like that since the company is growing, so you get to meet and talk with everyone.
I like the small rituals each team has, like the marketing team going out for a walk after lunch. We also have team events, and just had summer days. It makes the company culture warm, people live the values and you can tell they care about each other. The team is sticking together, learning from mistakes and focusing on finding solutions.
Sounds like a great start! What are you focusing on in your role right now?
Work wise I have done the first steps. There are still some areas of business to understand but it’s all coming together.
The team already works well together. My role is to build it further so it supports the company's goals, and make sure our data products meet platform needs. We’re actively working on forming our data strategy and assessing how AI can fit into it.
So far with the team we have scoped down what can and needs to be done, the team is owning their projects and focusing on those. My task is to keep distractions off their plate.
Additionally, working with the product team together and building new products. There are many things we are working on that will elevate the value our data create for our partners. It has been great to collaborate with them and I see a lot of potential to grow together.
I would say, it's a nice amount of challenge, combined with the right environment and team members to embrace that challenge.
What do you think of Cachet’s mission? Do you feel like you’re aligning with it?
Actually the mission of Cachet influenced my decision to join the company. Safe to say it resonates with me a lot.
I first heard about the company back in 2019 from Hedi, just as things were taking off. The idea of human-centric insurance stuck with me and I’ve been curious how it works from a data and solution perspective.
So, I would say I feel passionate about what Cachet stands for and have a strong belief in it.
Because from a data perspective, I especially like the vision that people are in charge of their own data. That they decide how it’s used. That large corporations lose their claim to own the data we generated.
The concept, that your insurance outcome should align and follow on from your own actions, is such a powerful one. The challenge of taking on an old broken industry and changing it for the better, is one you can really get behind.
I like to say it is about “insurance as it should be.”
I am sure you hear a lot about AI in your role, has it changed your work or the way you approach it at all?
AI has posed quite a few opportunities and challenges for data teams.
One of the biggest changes is how consumers interact with data. Dashboards and ad-hoc requests now make up a much smaller proportion of the requests a data team gets.
AI has lowered the barriers for querying complex data sets and getting meaningful insights from them, so stakeholders will opt to ask an LLM to query the data for them rather than an analyst.
In principle, this is wonderful. Data teams can focus less on maintaining dashboards and serving ad-hoc asks.
In practice, this means the ability for agents to understand your business and data needs to be baked into the platform, or you'll get an agent confidently giving you the wrong answers at scale.
Now foundational concepts of data governance matter more than ever before, because the human analyst is less likely to be in the loop.
I heard that you’re talking at Tallinn Data Week, where you also talk about AI.
I’ll be attending the Tallinn Data week conference. Who doesn’t know about it, it’s from data people to other data people. Different professionals coming together, sharing their ideas and experiences.
The main event is on 19th October and I’ll be talking on the technical stage at 16:20. So if you’re around, come listen to my panel about ‘AI cookbook for data platforms’.
I’m going to talk about how you can build and integrate AI platforms with the change of AI. How consumers get data, what people can do with agents, patterns on builder side and consumer side, and how companies can leverage those tools for themselves.
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Cachet keeps on growing and is constantly hiring!
See current roles here.
