Around the age of 10, Katherine Matsudaira remembers taking apart her family’s toaster oven because she wanted to know exactly how it worked. Even though she couldn’t quite figure out how to put it back together, this curiosity for technology is still what drives her today.

Matsudaira now is the Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer of Decide Inc., a website that uses proprietary price and model predictions to tell consumers whether they should buy a product or wait.

Decide launched the first version of its website in late June 2011, predicting the prices of laptops, cameras and TVs. Matsudaira joined the company in November of that year after earning her tech-career pedigree at some of the top tech firms in the Northwest, including Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com, Delve Networks and SEOmoz.

Since her arrival, Decide, 32, has added more services and categories of products, most recently expanding from when to buy to what to buy, and adding product scores that are boiled down from various online reviews.

In her position, Matsudaira spends her days in conversation with other Decide employees, discussing trends, product strategy, what is going on in the company, and also making sure people are aligned in their tasks and goals.

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