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Chris Mathew

Enthusiastic about the intersection of Data Science and Business.

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About

Hi, welcome to my corner of the Internet! I'm a graduate from the University of Waterloo, Canada where I studied Mathematics and Accounting. I am interested in using the power of data and software to solve real business problems. I started out as a huge Excel nerd, but I've gradually broadened my skillset to address the complexity and size of today's business problems. In my spare time, I work on random projects, try to pick up skills, watch basketball, poorly attempt to play basketball, and take walks.

Projects

Low-code PDF Extraction

"Pdflow" is a low-code solution to build text extraction sequences for PDF files. When I was a Staff Accountant at KPMG, I built several VBA programs that involved reading text from PDF documents (partnership returns, corporate documents, etc.); I finally decided to build a tool that would help simplify the process of building the extraction sequence itself.

The web app for Pdflow is built using MeteorJS + React. AWS Lambda is used to partition large extraction jobs. Text extraction is performed via the Tesseract OCR Engine. Image pre-processing (grayscale, otsu threshold) is used to improve the accuracy of the extraction. Developers can also utilize the Pdflow API to integrate flows into their own apps. To accomodate Tesseract, I built a Docker image which gets uploaded to AWS ECR and then deployed to Lambda.

Pdflow has over 50 users consisting of students, educators, business owners and civic data analysts. Although Stripe integration is included in the app, my users seem more than happy making use of my generous free tier 🥲.

pdflow

ERP System

"Gourd" was built by me as an internal ERP system for our start-up, Intelline, before transitioning to Quickbooks. While most sane people would have used an existing ERP application to run their business, I was determined to improve my web dev skills while building an useful, tailored internal tool for our company.

Gourd includes modules for: recording/tracking tasks, expenditure management, accounting and budgeting. It also has integrations with Tableau (analysis) and Google Drive (uploading/downloading supporting documentation).

gourd

Stock Project

I started this project with my friend Tobias after listening to a lecture at UW about stock price reactions to earnings releases. This project scrapes various sources (Yahoo Finance, Tipranks, Questrade, etc.) and tracks daily/intraday metrics on stocks from the following markets: CSE, TSX, TSXV, NASDAQ, NYSE. A scoring algorithm is continuously run, sending us notifications of what to buy/sell.

The scoring algorithm is quite naive at the moment. I am considering using a supervised learning algorithm (likely an ensemble) to help build a model between the metrics I track and stock performance.

As this is a private project, I am limited in what I can share. Below is an architecture chart to give you an idea about how it works; I have also provided links to a repo with a very small section of the source code and a cropped screenshot of our documentation in Sphinx.

pc-flow

ML Projects

I have linked a few Colab notebooks above containing ML projects I've worked on/learnings. I'll continue to add to this repository over time.

  • Housing Regression: predict median house values in California districts
  • MNIST Classifier: accurately classify digits from MNIST dataset
  • Moons Classifier: grow a Random Forest using an ensemble of Decision Trees

Other

  • Pdflooper: Automates batch PDF page insertion/deletion/replacement (demo)
  • Autorun: Send jobs to a remote computer without having to set up a server
  • Cir: Tool to document/explore graph relations between circuit components.
  • This Website: built with NextJS, React, Typescript

Experience

Co-founder | Intelline Inc. | Jul 2021 - Present

  • Intelline builds ultra-efficient industrial generators that can run on any fuel type.
  • Core Team: myself (CFO), Jason Young (CTO), and Kyle Faller (CEO)
  • Company Highlights (at time of writing):
    • Accepted into YCombinator's W19 batch
    • Raised 1.5M+ USD in dilutive/non-dilutive funding
    • 28M+ USD in signed LOIs
    • Set up facility in Waterloo, Ontario
    • Completed build of in-house engine test cell
    • Successfully tested custom piston-mounted valvetrain
    • Completed design/fabrication of custom engine block
    • Hired/on-boarded several co-ops
  • Responsible for the following:
    • Financial Reporting: design + implement financial controls, set up company chart of accounts + policies, perform day-to-day JEs + adjusting JEs at period end, prepare FS per ASPE and US GAAP
    • Tax Reporting and Planning: prepare T2 Return for CCPC, Delaware Franchise Tax Return/1120 Return for US entity, prepare HST and T4 Information Returns, set up intercompany fee mechanism to ensure compliance with transfer pricing guidelines, prepare T661 for SRED
    • Banking and Finance: prepare "data room" for govt/VC/angels, set up CAD/USD chequing + credit facilities, cash flow management, monthly budgeting
    • Strategy and Governance: set up company admin/IT infra, building IP/rollout strategy, contribute to mission, vision, values
    • HR Management: develop Health and Safety Policy and Program, assist in hiring/onboarding procedures
testcell-1testcell-2

Staff Accountant | KPMG | Jan 2017 - Jun 2021

  • Prepared working papers and US corporate/partnership tax returns (US 1120, 1120-F, 1065, state returns, etc.)
  • Developed circular flip partnership models that accounted for s731 gains and s734 depreciation
  • Built asset classification and depreciation converter to allow US tax team to automatically convert assets from GDS to ADS depreciation
  • Developed WP that uses PowerQuery and VBA to automatically calculate daily CG/ordinary income and generate client PFIC statements for a fund
  • Various rotations in FI Audit, US Personal Tax, Canadian Personal/Corporate Tax

Quant Developer | Scotiabank | Apr 2016 - Aug 2016

  • Created Strategy Code Generator using Excel VBA and Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) functions that allowed trading team to quickly add strategy tags to Bloomberg for the team to book trades under
  • Developed Portfolio Analytics tool using a combination of Excel VBA and Bloomberg Add-ins to allow team to compare the performance of their own Multi-Asset Growth fund to other funds and indices on the market, as well as calculating a range of useful summary statistics on selected indices (i.e. min/max return, average return, Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, Information ratio, auto-correlation etc.)
    • The tool helped the team to compare indexed values, rolling returns, and drawdowns while allowing for dynamic control over index point, date range, and any number of indices for comparison
  • Utilized Python, SQLite and historical options data to create NAV valuation tool that allowed team to calculate theoretical daily NAV figures for unique investment strategy developed by the team

Education

  • Bachelors of Mathematics (BMath), UWaterloo
  • Masters of Accounting (MAcc), UWaterloo
  • CPA Candidate (Passed CFE, experience pending)
  • YC W19