The Uncle Who Gave His All

In the heart of a bustling corporate office, where numbers ruled and deadlines loomed, there was a man everyone called Uncle.

He wasn’t just any colleague—he was a mentor, a statistician with a PhD from the U.S., a mind sharp enough to dissect complex data, yet humble enough to let a younger teammate call him Uncle with affection.

But the corporate world is rarely kind to those who give their all.

The Excel Prison

Uncle’s days were spent wrestling with an outdated Excel-based marketing mix modelling (MMM) tool—a relic from the UK office, forced upon the Australia and New Zealand teams. It was slow, inefficient, and full of bugs. But it was all they had.

Stakeholders demanded precise media channel impacts—specific percentages for each channel’s contribution. But the tool wasn’t built for flexibility. If Uncle adjusted one channel’s impact, the others would shift unpredictably. He had to tweak Adstock parameters, diminishing returns, coefficients—back and forth, like a man trying to balance spinning plates while blindfolded.

Every project was a battle.

He worked weekends. He skipped lunches. He stayed late, staring at the screen until his eyes burned. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, the stakeholders were never fully satisfied.

"Too slow." 

"Not the contribution percentage we want to see." 

"Why can’t we get this faster?"

The complaints piled up. Some even went to his boss.

The Silent Suffering

Uncle never complained. But his body did.

After every grueling project delivery, he needed a half-day—sometimes a full day—just to recover. His boss saw this as weakness. "If he can’t handle the workload, maybe he’s not the right fit."

No one asked if he was okay.

The Friday Workshops

Amidst the corporate grind, there was one light—a young, passionate data scientist, who saw Uncle not as a slow worker, but as a genius trapped in a broken system.

Every Friday, they met in secret. No company approval. No official time. Just two minds—one seasoned, one brilliant—working to rebuild the MMM tool from scratch.

Uncle taught him step-by-step—how models should work, how parameters should interact, what a real MMM tool should be. The young data scientist coded, tested, refined. They dreamed of a day when marketing teams wouldn’t suffer like this.

But corporations don’t reward dreamers.

The Rainy Goodbye

The restructuring came like a storm.

When the email went out—"Role Redundancy"—the analytics team froze. The young data scientist locked himself in the bathroom, tears streaming. Twenty minutes later, he emerged, face wiped clean, pretending nothing happened.

That Friday, instead of their usual workshop, there was a farewell lunch. Rain tapped against the windows as they sat in silence.

Uncle’s voice broke first.

"I gave them everything. Everything. And all they did was complain."

He had two kids. A wife who hadn’t yet returned to full-time work. Now, no job. No security. Just a resume to update and a market that didn’t care how many nights he’d spent staring at the ceiling, wondering how it all went wrong.

The Fire It Lit

The young data scientist didn’t sleep that night.

Instead, he coded.

Furious. Relentless.

He would finish what they started. Not for the company. Not for the stakeholders who broke Uncle.

For him.

Months later, when Uncle had finally found a new job—after endless interviews, after the sleepless nights—he received a message.

"Uncle, I built it. The tool we dreamed of. No more Excel prisons. The contribution percentage can be easily adjusted. Just real, flexible, powerful MMM."

It was the first time in a long time Uncle smiled.

The Legacy Left Behind

Today, More Than Data exists because of Uncle.

Because the young data scientist learned the hardest lesson of all:

In big corporations, you are just a number. But in your own hands, you can build something that matters.

Every line of code in Minute MMM, every algorithm in Budget Optimizer, carries Uncle’s wisdom.

A great MMM tool should be:

• Easy to use (so no one burns out)
  
• Flexible (so no one wastes nights tweaking Excel)
  
• Accessible (so no one feels trapped)

Uncle taught him that.

And though he’s gone from that corporate office, his lessons remain.

In every model.

In every product.

In every tear shed in a bathroom stall, turned into fuel for something better.

Because some people don’t just leave jobs.

They leave legacies.

And the best way to honor them?

Make sure no one else suffers the same way again.