Overview
🌳📊 I'm Michiel Mechelmans, founder of The Data Forest. The Data Forest is rooted in the belief that business can be a force for good. With over a decade of experience in data, we help to turn complex data into clear, actionable insights for leaders who want to move fast and make smarter decisions.
The Data Forest is about more than just another data company. We're proving you can build something between a business and an NGO. A model where Profit, People, and Planet thrive together. For every collaboration hour, we plant five trees. Not because it’s a nice gesture, but because we believe this is the kind of company the world needs. One that keeps building, growing, and challenging the status quo.
We’re not here to hit a number and stop. We’re here to make this impossible-sounding idea work. And maybe, you should be part of it too. 🌍💡
Career history
In the news
- Today we're at Natuur Futuur! 🌳 Come find Michiel Mechelmans and Lore Mechelmans on the exhibition floor if you're around, they'd love to talk data, nature and everything in between. See you there! 🌿
- The Data Forest 🌳🌳🌳 is calling. We need THE ONE who is able to deal with agents. A LOT of agents. Being a frontrunner in AGENTIC/GEN BI & AI we have now reached a new stage where we get insights directly from Microsoft & Anthropic on what's the next wave of intelligence coming at us. We're not looking for average people. We need people who think ahead and are not afraid to control the agents coming at us. We look for the 1's instead of the 0's. The Data Forest 🌳🌳🌳 is calling. Are you answering?
- When you start a startup, you are all the technical knowledge there is. Afterward, you hire a few exceptional people but you remain one of the largest technical contributors.👨🏫🤓 But now after a few years, those exceptional people you hired kept on learning and you yourself kept your main focus on hiring additional A-players without spending time in the technical depths. These weeks, in technical meetings, I witness my own push-out; with 15 years of experience in data, I’m just an average dude now in this company. My high
- The good old days. Most of the time you'll remember them when it's too late. This has been our past 12 months rollercoaster:🎢 -Grew from a 5 start-up to a 19 people scale-up.🚀 -We nail our work & If we fall short, we learn things at lightning speed. -We hire the best of the best. -We back each other immensily. -Our culture is reinforced with every hire instead of draining -There’s always a ton of people in the office -We suddenly have a partycomité organizing fridaydrinks, hackatons, team events -We have a beautiful office view at
- When starting The Data Forest 🌳🌳🌳, I launched our first mission on day #1: planting 100.000 trees by 2030. A rather “calculated” and “secure” target still coming forward from my corporate job as financial analyst. 📊 I only needed to be able to gather and manage a few people to reach it (however i'm probably downvoting it too much now - that part was a scary thought as well back then). However calculating that target backward to hours & people, It was a quite comfortable target for The Data Forest 🌳🌳🌳 to reach. Things have
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