Maarten Masschelein

Maarten Masschelein joined Collibra, a data governance company, in 2010, at a time when the role of chief data officer did not exist, he wrote on the Soda blog. Organizations struggled to understand what was going on with their data, and the tools for managing data quality were antiquated. He is now co-founder and CEO of Soda, a data quality company in Brussels, Belgium.

Seven Years at Collibra

Masschelein studied IT and commercial sciences at KU Leuven and Vlerick Business School, according to FIMA. He spent seven years at Collibra, including two years in New York City, New York, then returned to Brussels in January 2018 and founded Soda that April, according to Innoviris, the Brussels research agency. Tom Baeyens joined him as co-founder at the end of May 2018. Baeyens, who came from Alfresco, JBoss and Red Hat, serves as CTO, according to Tech.eu.

Catching Pricing Errors for Expedia

"At Soda, we are all about innovation," Masschelein told Innoviris. "We propose or develop solutions that do not exist yet, which means that we are engaged in a permanent process of innovation, in close collaboration with our customers and prospects." One early customer was Expedia, whose main pricing algorithm relied on 200 real-time data sources; Soda helped it identify and correct errors in that data.

In 2021, Tech.eu reported, Soda raised €11.5 million in a round led by Singular, with seed investors Point Nine Capital and Hummingbird Ventures participating.

Selling to International Clients From Brussels

He has argued for building in Brussels and selling abroad from the start. "Brussels is the perfect international city for a company like ours. Just two hours from Paris, Amsterdam and London and eight hours from New York," he said. His one tip for other Brussels founders is to think on an international scale from the beginning: "While the quality of research in our country is exceptional, our client base is international."