Dan Wulin's guest appearances

Dan Wulin

Data Journeys

AI at Work

Brian McFee

Kirk Borne

Andrew Ng

Drew Conway

Travis Oliphant

Fernando Perez

Emily Glassberg

Mike Tamir

Erik Andrejko

Chris Albon

Anthony Scriffignano

Laura Noren

Wes McKinney

Kate Strachnyi

Frank Diana

OwlTail

Dan Wulin is the Director of Data Science at Wayfair: an international e-commerce company specializing in home goods. Wayfair is a $5B company growing 40% year-over-year, with 10 million products and over 8,700 employees around the world. Their data science team is 80-people strong and growing fast, using econometrics to optimize prices, biostatistics to boost marketing, and computer vision to personalize product recommendations. Prior to joining Wayfair, Dan studied Math &amp; Physics as an undergraduate at Columbia University and, thereafter, received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Chicago. Coming out of school, he worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group for a year in Chicago before transitioning to Wayfair in Boston. In this conversation, we cover a wide-range of topics, including:  His childhood obsession with text-based multiplayer RPGs like Gemstone Dan’s roots in academia, how studying the physics of superconductors taught him (painfully) how to break down complex problems in simple ways How a misalignment of his problem solving approach with standard consulting frameworks at BCG led him to Wayfair Dan’s first major effort at Wayfair, project Athena, that saved the company millions of dollars on Google ad spending His passion for setting up Wayfair’s data science team to be successful, how teams within the organization partner, as well as who and how they hire The computer-vision-driven approach Wayfair takes toward measuring people’s creative taste on subjective things like furniture preference  Enjoy the show! Show Notes: https://ajgoldstein.com/podcast/ep11/ Dan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-wulin-02169a2a/ AJ’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajgoldstein393/

<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-wulin-02169a2a" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dan Wulin</a> is the Director of Data Science at <a href="https://tech.wayfair.com/category/data-science/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wayfair</a>: an international e-commerce company specializing in home goods. Wayfair is a $5B company growing 40% year-over-year, with 10 million products and over 8,700 employees around the world. Their data science team is 80-people strong and growing fast, using econometrics to optimize prices, biostatistics to boost marketing, and computer vision to personalize product recommendations. Prior to joining Wayfair, Dan studied Math &amp; Physics as an undergraduate at <a href="https://www.columbia.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Columbia University</a> and, thereafter, received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the <a href="https://www.uchicago.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of Chicago.</a> Coming out of school, he worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group for a year in Chicago before transitioning to Wayfair in Boston. In this conversation, we cover a wide-range of topics, including: <ul> <li>His childhood obsession with text-based multiplayer RPGs like Gemstone</li> <li>Dan’s roots in academia, how studying the physics of superconductors taught him (painfully) how to break down complex problems in simple ways</li> <li>How a misalignment of his problem solving approach with standard consulting frameworks at BCG led him to Wayfair</li> <li>Dan’s first major effort at Wayfair, project Athena, that saved the company millions of dollars on Google ad spending</li> <li>His passion for setting up Wayfair’s data science team to be successful, how teams within the organization partner, as well as who and how they hire</li> <li>The computer-vision-driven approach Wayfair takes toward measuring people’s creative taste on subjective things like furniture preference</li> </ul> Enjoy the show! Show Notes: <a href="https://ajgoldstein.com/podcast/ep11/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://ajgoldstein.com/podcast/ep11/</a> Dan’s LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-wulin-02169a2a/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-wulin-02169a2a/</a> AJ’s Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/ajgoldstein393/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/ajgoldstein393/</a>

#11: Dan Wulin: International E-Commerce, Price Optimization, & Home-Good Product Recommendations