Why Being a Data Engineer Makes You a Better Early-Stage Investor

The Plumber’s Edge

I started my career on Park Avenue before moving downtown to Wall Street.

I wore the suit. I built models. I lived in Excel, grinding out discounted cash flows and leveraged buyout scenarios for companies that had been around for decades. It was a world of knowable metrics. We had historical data, P&L statements, and balance sheets. Our job was to interpret that past to project a plausible future.

We were financial storytellers, armed with spreadsheets.

Then I saw the wave coming.

It wasn’t just “tech” as a sector. It was the rise of machine learning and the realization that data, not code, was becoming the world’s most valuable asset. The models I was building felt archaic. They were based on human intuition and quarterly reports, while new models were emerging that could ingest the world’s information in real-time and find patterns no human analyst ever could.

I knew I couldn’t just analyze this new world. I had to build in it.

So I left. I taught myself to code. I dove…