Startup Life: Unscripted is a TNG Media newsletter, as part of The Nudge Group, where we feature candid conversations with startup operators about their career journeys and experiences. If you received this email as a forward, you can read all our past interviews and subscribe right here.

Navigating Transitions: William Jiang's Shift from Electrical Engineering to Data Analytics

Welcome back to Startup Life: Unscripted! Today, we have the pleasure of chatting with Lead Data Analyst William Jiang. Originally from an Electrical Engineering background, he's now fully immersed in Data Analytics at Open, which provides embedded insurance for the largest and fastest-growing brands in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Key interview takeaways:

🔌 Transitioning From Electrical Engineering to Data Analytics: What sparked the change and how his past experience feeds into his current role.

🚀 Working at High-Growth Companies: He shares his experiences at Canva, Carsales, and now at Open, highlighting what's unique about these fast-paced environments.

📊 Making an Impact with Data: William discusses a specific project where his insights played a crucial role in decision-making.

💡 Managing the Startup Pace: William provides tips on how he handles the often chaotic startup world, ensuring he remains effective and sane.

Hey William, glad to have you here! You've got an Electrical Engineering background but now you're deep in Data Analytics. That's quite a leap! Can you share your story about how you ended up here?

Thank you for having me. From the outset, it seems like a leap. However, the two fields actually share a lot in common. Both are deeply analytical but also require a dash of pragmatism and creativity.

It’s funny you ask that, because most of my friends from Uni aren’t in Electrical Engineering anymore. They all fled to software/data or consulting. It’s also definitely influenced by the Australian job market skewing more services based vs. R&D/manufacturing based.

During the final years of University I sat back and did a bit of research on what my career options would be. I wanted to be in a field which was growing and would also use my strengths. I spent some time looking inwardly and these were the main strengths I came up with:

1. I have a weird love for numbers and finding patterns in them.

2. I enjoy meeting a variety of people and working together with them to solve problems.

3. I enjoy teaching others and distilling complicated ideas into simple to understand concepts.

4. I’m primarily a visual communicator.

So when it came time to choose, data analytics really stuck out to me as being a good option to make a career out of. That prompted me to get my first gig at Deloitte in their analytics practice and the rest is history!

I think finding the intersection between what you’re good at, long-term market demand and what you enjoy is key to a sustainable career.

So, you've spent your career at fast-paced, high-growth companies like Canva, Carsales, and now Open. What's the magic at these types of companies that keep pulling you back?

At smaller companies there’s just less layers between the decisions you make and your end users. I like the rapid feedback environment that it provides.

At a startup you are responsible for more than just a single cog in the operation - meaning there’s more room for you to shape your role and how you want to make an impact.

Also, getting equity in a startup is pretty nice. It makes you feel part of the story. Just don’t go in with the expectation of striking it rich!

You're part of the BI Team at Open and you're neck-deep in decision-making. Could you tell us about a project where your data wizardry was pivotal in steering the ship?

Our partnership with iSelect has just gone live about a week ago (at the time of writing). They are helping us reach more customers through our Huddle Insurance brand.

Post-launch, there was a huge need to see how the new partnership was performing. We simply didn’t have visibility on this.

Sensing this urgency from the business, I worked to quickly create a dashboard which maps out the customers funnel through to conversion.

This has given the Product team some insight into where the main levers we can optimise to drive higher conversions! Currently there are some updates that are getting shipped out because of what the data is telling us.

It’s cool seeing how your work can shed-led on a product and help navigate the company.

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You mentioned one of the perks of startups is the lack of red tape. Can you talk about an example when this speed and flexibility allowed you to accomplish something that might've been challenging in a more traditional corporate structure?

At Open, we all get pretty direct lines of communication with the leadership team. That means that you’re just able to align more tightly with them and deliver something that you know will hit the spot. Another plus is that you get way more visibility and you get to learn much faster from those that are setting the strategy for the company.

A couple of months ago, I was working on a project which involved some of the leadership team in a slack thread. I was pretty amazed at the level of involvement and the quick back and forth we had in that thread. I learnt a lot from that experience.

Startups are often described as a bit chaotic. How do you navigate this environment on a day-to-day basis? Any hacks or rituals that keep you grounded?

TL;DR - Be pragmatic + Embrace the constant feedback + Learn to disconnect and look after your health!

At times it can feel like there’s a million things going at once. There will always be work floating around, you can’t do it all!

It’s important to take a step back, prioritise what’s important and understand where to focus your energy. Tackling every single thing with your 100% will drain you quickly.

I’d also get into a habit of getting quick feedback on your work. Getting confirmation early on that your heading in the right direction will save you many many hours!

At the end of the day - work is not everything (*psst…even for the founders). Look after your health, eat some good food and get excited for the weekend!

Part of startup life is about wearing many hats. Besides data analytics, are there any unexpected roles or tasks you've had to take on?

Hiring, project management, events organising, doing some strategy work, creating a raffle and most importantly meme-making are all things I’ve had to do.

These crossover roles are fun + you can often provide a fresh set of eyes or a different take on things that are outside of your dom

You've had the chance to work on cool products and see your influence in them within days. Can you share an example when your contribution had an immediate impact on the product?

Back when I was at Carsales, I helped run the experimentation program. We helped suggest and gather ideas from others in the business to A/B test.

We saw an opportunity to simplify the “Contact Seller” form and also change the contact button at the bottom from “Email -> Message”.

We really didn’t expect this change to do that much as it was seemingly a very minor improvement. However, after running the numbers we found that it led to a pretty sizeable uplift in conversions. We were all pretty gobsmacked at how such a small change could lead to a sizeable impact!

Given your experience, what advice would you give to someone considering a career at a startup, especially in a data-driven role?

Be curious! I’d spend time understanding the drivers of the business. How does the business model work and why does it work? Put yourself in the shoes of a founder and ask questions to try to understand what really matters.

Also, before you start a project, understand what your stakeholder wants before you delve into it. Do they need some quick and dirty numbers? Or does it need to be very precise? Does it need to be in a dashboard? Can it just be in a spreadsheet? Sometimes some simple static numbers on a google sheet is all that’s needed currently. Understanding the scope will help you deliver more effectively and efficiently.

Heavily lean into the 80/20 rule. Ask yourself - “What is the MVP for this piece of work to be effective?” Unlike traditional big corps, startups move fast - so delivering quick and tactical insights are very common.

Another related piece of advice is, don’t be too caught up on tooling. Be flexible in your approach or as Bruce Lee says “Be like water”. At the end day you are here to create impact and influence decision making through data/insights. Whether that’s through google sheets/SQL/Tableau/ML models - that’s secondary! Don’t let your tools define how you solve the problem - let your problem define the tools you need.

Lastly, communication is underrated! Being structured, concise and persuasive is super important as a Data Analyst and in, well, life too.

Finally, looking forward, what excites you most about the future of data analytics in the startup world? Where do you hope your journey in this dynamic environment will take you next?

Well I think the hot topic is understanding how companies can integrate AI like ChatGPT/LLMs. It will be interesting to figure out what sort of efficiencies we can get - especially with all the customer interaction data insurance companies store. The fact that it can already do basic SQL and crack jokes is a little scary, however I’m adamant it won’t replace me just yet (at least that’s what I tell my manager!).

As to what’s next for me? In the future I’d love to be able to lead a team and create innovative data solutions that are at the core of how the business grows/retains customers. Insurance is pretty data-driven so I’m liking where I sit at the moment.

From the Startup Life team

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