Bill Dague
Head of Alt Data Research for Nasdaq / Quandl
I really appreciate the opportunity to lead a team, to work with different groups across the business, and to be able to collaborate with other business partners to get a product into a good place.
For William “Bill” Dague the opportunity to work at the intersection of finance and technology was appealing because he saw the potential for further innovation.
“I love to think about novel ways of approaching problems with a market solution,” said Bill.
Bill joined Nasdaq in 2014 as a software engineer intern, working on big data and cloud projects. Coming on full-time as a software developer, Bill eventually moved into data science, helping initiate the Nasdaq Machine Intelligence Lab, and then served as head of Alternative Data. He directed that unit until December 2018, when Nasdaq acquired Quandl, and he is now part of the Quandl team working on new data research.
“I have really appreciated the opportunity to lead a team, to work with different groups across the business, and to be able to collaborate with all of the other my business partners to try to get a product into a good place,” said Bill.
Launching new products is “a blast” because it’s rewarding to bring a product to market and have customers buy it because they find value in it.
One of the most educational experiences for Bill was going through a product development exercise, in which the team took a product idea and then brought it to market, and tested its usefulness by interviewing customers. Bill said that during a six-week period he spoke with more than 100 customers about how they use data, what they think of the idea, and what Nasdaq can do better.
“I learned a lot about how our customers think, and it opened my eyes to what it takes to solve market problems,” Bill said.