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About Me
Hi, I'm Nick Drake, a seasoned data and product leader with a passion for driving startup growth. With a proven track record of building high-performing teams and developing cutting-edge products, I've spent my career helping organizations make data-driven decisions that drive real impact. This site is a personal platform where I share a mix of my thoughts on data product development, innovation, and personal projects.
Work
Pacvue
VP of Data & AI Labs • Full-time • Nov 2021 - Dec 2023
Upon joining the company, my first priority was to unify the team of over 50 professionals made up of Data Analysts, Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and Data Product Managers, who were spread across Eastern Europe, India, and the US. To achieve this, I developed a comprehensive Product Engineering Handbook, which streamlined cross-functional collaboration and communication among these teams.
The next goal was to unify the data sets from Helium10 and Pacvue, which had previously operated independently in separate production environments without centralized data sharing or logic. This created silos of information and inefficiencies in decision-making. To address this issue, I designed and established Pacvue's inaugural data warehouse on Snowflake, as well as implemented a modern data stack that optimized business operations.
With our unified team and data in place, we were able to build on this foundation by creating innovative products and tools that leveraged our new data capabilities. I spearheaded the development of a robust data delivery and ML framework, which enabled efficient and accurate data analysis for critical business decisions and accelerated product development speed. This framework also served as a platform for building other products such as Market Tracker 360, a product that leveraged top sales information from Pacvue and long tail sales from Helium10.
As the core data work solidified, a small team of three, myself included, shifted our focus to exploring the potential of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in driving business growth. We dedicated half of our time to working on the AI Labs team, where we rapidly prototyped and tested products with customers. These prototypes included an Aspect-Based review sentiment analysis model using large language models, which enabled competitive analysis and new product opportunies. We also created an internal AI Data Analyst prototype that streamlined data analysis and reduced the time it took to answer critical business questions. Additionally, we built a Product Listing Page (PLP) generator that used AI to automatically create compelling product descriptions, images, and text for e-commerce platforms.
Marqeta
Dir of Analytics and Data Eng • Full-time • Mar 2018 - Nov 2021
I joined the data team at Marqeta when it was still in its early stages, with only a handful of us working together to establish the analytics department. My core work during this period involved leading the effort to migrate our existing data infrastructure into Snowflake and rebuild our reporting platform to support the inaugural customer-facing reporting API (Diva API) and external website reporting. This foundational work laid the groundwork for our future growth and enabled us to provide critical insights to our internal, customers, and partner stakeholders.
As the team grew, we made significant strides in deepening our understanding of Marqeta's data ecosystem. We conducted thorough analyses of all aspects of our business, including reconciling every dollar that had moved through our platform to ensure a successful S1 filing and IPO. Additionally, I expanded on multiple working projects, collaborating with our CFO to introduce company metrics, streamlining capabilities with our back office and operations teams through automation and better data, and supporting the launch of new products to ensure compliance and successful product launches.
comScore
Sr. Dir of Analytics • Full-time • July 2008 - Mar 2018
I joined comScore as a Junior Data Analyst right out college and spent over a decade growing my career, ultimately rising to the position of Senior Director. During this period, I had the opportunity to work on high-profile projects with major clients like Microsoft, where our metrics were leveraged as their internal KPIs. This experience allowed me to develop a deep understanding of the digital landscape and the importance of data-driven decision making.
As my career progressed, I took on leadership roles in analytics for mission-critical products, Search and then Video. Some notable achievements include developing an internal and external facing video data monitoring product with automated alerts, introducing OTT measurement to our flagship product through a household demographic composition-based attribution model, expanding mobile video measurement to key markets such as the US, UK, Canada, and Spain, and integrating YouTube partner reporting on mobile platforms into Video Metrix Multi-Platform. These efforts helped improve content producer monetization and provided a single measure of digital video consumption across devices.
Education
University of Pennsylvania
BS • School of Engineering and Applied Science • 2004 - 2008
Major: Materials Science and Engineering
Minors: Mathematics, Engineering Entrepreneurship