Hunters and Unicorns

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Sales Leaders Playbook.   We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement.  By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:  Why engagement is critical   The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion   How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players  Today we are joined by Hash Basu-Choudhuri, General Manager of EMEA at Cribl. In this episode, we discuss Hash’s history in the observability industry, his experiences as first man on the ground opening up EMEA operations at Cribl, and the business plan he executed against to introduce the 18-month-old startup to a brand-new market and territory in 2021.   “Credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness are three things that I think will always stand you in good stead, whether you're in this business or any other business and I've never compromised on those three. You say what you're going to do and do what you're going to say. That's number one. Number two, it's the team, it's never about one man, it's about working together in unison and then, let’s be honest, it’s about the product.”  Taking us from the early days of cutting his teeth at Sybase – to joining Splunk in the middle of an economic crisis in 2008 – through to his current adventure at Cribl and the entrepreneurial drive that led him to this role, Hash opens our eyes to the change mindset required to succeed in the fast-paced Observability sector as we discuss the benefits of his deep technical background and the key drivers that push him to accept new challenges and continually reinvent himself in different areas of business.   With a variety of tools and techniques for propelling an upward career trajectory in the tech space, listen to this podcast to discover the foundations that enabled Hash to accomplish success as well as his strategies for building sustainable, repeatable, and high growth business. 

LIFE WORK ALIGNMENT | Culture Crunch - Corean Canty   Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: Why engagement is critical The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players Today we are joined by Corean Canty, Executive Coach, Workplace Well-being Expert, and Former COO with over 20 years of experience in the Media and Marketing space, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why we need to place wellbeing at the centre of our organisations to attract and retain top talent, bring out the best in our employees and maximise business outcomes. “Good company culture is life centred. We hear a lot about people first and human first and I am very much aligned with that but one thing I've recognized over many years is that, whether you're selling a product or a service, all businesses are in service of life, yet the people in the businesses usually end up last on the list.” Whilst many assume that wellbeing is a "soft" issue and not a management problem to solve, Corean draws our attention to the impact of the pandemic on company culture and how it created a power shift from employer to employee and a new perspective of wellness in the workplace. Thanks to the pandemic, employees are now in the driving seat and employers need to be flexible, listen and talk to their people, and identify how to make their organisation a more appealing place to join and stay. Citing the U.S. Surgeon General’s new guidance around strengthening workplace well-being, Corean takes a deep dive into why mental health and comprehensive wellbeing strategies need to be a top priority in contemporary workplaces and offers advice to leaders on how to create space for feedback and collaboration with their workforce to drive change, increase retention and positively impact performance. In relation to her experience of hyper growth industries specifically, Corean highlights the need for business owners to address the “pace and pain gap” and harness the power of pause - the pressure to hit financial numbers may tempt many leaders to focus only on the balance sheet, but Corean believes that the key to peak performance is, paradoxically, a long and restful pause. She encourages leaders in organizations large and small to embrace the cyclical nature of business growth and incorporate time for reflection into their strategy to avoid burnout, diminishing returns and employee attrition. With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to this podcast to discover Corean’s strategies for supporting and facilitating a contemporary workforce, diminishing unconscious bias, and increasing productivity through communication, understanding and flexibility.

Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: - Why engagement is critical - The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion - How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players Today we are joined by Harsha Jalihal, Chief people officer of MongoDB, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why we need to focus on the human element in this age of technology to increase productivity, reduce attrition and create better business outcomes. “Every business problem in any company boils down to human behaviours. It's why so many CEOs and C level execs talk about how much time they spend dealing with people issues. Especially here at a MongoDB, we've got all the other raw material - we've got a great product, we've got a great business model, we've got all the things we need to run a successful business - when problems arise, it always boils down to human behaviour and that understanding of human behaviour is what we bring to the table. My goal is to get managers to learn how to do that well so they can then make decisions more independently and not rely on HR to tell them what to do.” Sharing key leadership lessons with us in this interview, Harsha explains the ongoing cultural challenges being faced by organisations in the tech space due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. She describes how the melding of people's personal and professional lives has resulted in the development of a new leadership paradigm and emphasizes that the skills required for a future in tech are actually human skills: e.g. communication, empathy and cognitive thinking. As technology continues to change at an accelerated pace, Harsha believes that the key to good company culture is educating leaders and managers to understand human behaviour and set the tone from the top down. Outlining how high growth environments can have both positive and negative impacts on company culture, Harsha offers advice to forward thinking leaders on how to embrace change whilst preserving core company values. “A lot of leaders, particularly in companies they have built or seen grow from ground up, tend to want to protect the culture, sometimes at all costs, and that's not necessarily a good thing. For me, it’s not about protecting it, it's about keeping the conversation about culture front and centre in your business strategy conversations.” With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to discover Harsha’s future-proofed solutions to increasing revenue and productivity by bringing culture and core values to the centre of your business conversations.

Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: Why engagement is critical The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players Today we are joined by Jenny Kang, talent partner at Battery Ventures, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a dispersed digital world and find out how leaders can move beyond ticking the diversity checkbox and ensure they are achieving their goals of elevating DEI and creating better workplaces. “I think that most companies that have a true commitment to diversity and inclusion understand that diverse workforces and diversity of thought and experiences lead to more innovation, stronger company culture, higher retention, and better business outcomes. But I think that we still need to hone that message correctly and we still have work to do to engage the market in the right way in terms of how we approach candidates and how we position these values.” These days, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are at the forefront of hiring conversations, however, while many businesses are working toward equity and inclusion, minorities continue to face challenges in the tech industry. As someone from a diverse background who has transitioned into tech from a seemingly unrelated industry (before starting her career in executive recruiting, Jenny was a defence attorney), Jenny has first-hand experience of how the unique perspectives and experiences brought to the table by a diverse workforce can generate product innovation, better decision making, and stronger teams. Offering strategies and tangible steps for business leaders across the tech landscape, Jenny talks us through how to drive real inclusion and diversity by redefining hiring profiles, taking a multithreaded approach to recruitment and being openminded to people from non-traditional backgrounds. Emphasising the need for authentic communication and genuine commitment to core company values, Jenny’s number one tip for leaders across all industries is that in order to infiltrate company culture, demonstrate a genuine commitment to DEI, and introduce new behaviours, change must come from the top-down. Listen to discover how to demonstrate DEI mindfulness in your hiring process and why promoting these values throughout your organization is the only way forward. Jenny provides vital advice to help you connect and engage with a dispersed workforce as well as a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture and propel business growth. The information contained herein is based solely on the opinion of Jenny Kang. This material is provided for educational purposes to cover industry or sector trends, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity.

“I had a pretty good sense of how to build and run teams successfully, but the MongoDB experience helped me see how granular that process can be, how you can recruit, develop, and execute on a day-to-day basis based on the playbook that can really unlock fantastic results. I spent about three years at MongoDB under their leadership and it propels the way I look at running sales organizations and most importantly driving great business outcomes for companies.”  - Marjorie Janiewicz Hunters and Unicorns shares the playbooks from leaders, founders, executives and investors from high growth technology companies.   In this special edition series The 33 CXOs we investigate the greatest success story in the history of software sales. Discover how thirty-three sales execs from one organisation, BladeLogic, became CXOs in the world’s 100 fastest growing technology companies. We uncover the stories and playbooks of the most prolific sales leaders in the industry.  Today we are joined by Marjorie Janiewicz, Chief Revenue Officer at Foursquare. In this interview, we discuss Marjorie’s evolving mission and vision as she leads Foursquare’s global go-to-market strategy as well as her incredible career trajectory working with word-class innovative software companies and how she has risen through the ranks to become the deeply respected enterprise software sales leader that she is today. “The playbook we've been talking about in practice is an enterprise playbook. It is designed to extract bigger business value, to justify premium. So as a CRO deploying the playbook to attack very large accounts in financial services, retail, all the way to sales cycles in government public sector, I think the playbook had given me the foundation to understand the steps in the sales process, how I think about how customers are buying, and how I think about mapping our sales motion to it. The playbook gave me the foundation and empowered me to know that I could do this.” Marjorie learnt and mastered the playbook under the tutelage of Dev Ittycheria and Carlos Delatorre during her time at MongoDB. We discuss the incredible impact that MongoDB had on Marjorie’s career and how the ground breaking methodology and principles of change management gave her the blueprint she needed to channel her appetite for disruption into a successful career leading transformational SaaS initiatives. Offering advice and guidance to current and future leaders, Marjorie discusses the key challenges facing tech businesses today and highlights how the ongoing evolution of the playbook has provided business owners with more visibility and tracking capability than ever before. Providing strategies and guidance on how to lean into the methodology during times of change, Marjorie also puts forwards her views on the topic of inclusion and diversity in the tech space and draws our attention the playbook’s capacity for unlocking the talent pool via training and enablement and accelerating the career paths of diverse individuals. “Sales is a profession, like anything, it's a craft you can master, and I think more than ever, thinking about the economy and the world we live in, it’s just a wonderful place for anyone that has smarts, hunger, and an appetite to excel.” In this vodcast you will discover:  Marjorie’s journey to embracing change - how the playbook provided foundations for Marjorie to become a well-rounded CRO The fundamental mechanics of the playbook and how to adapt the methodology to fit different industries and customer profiles Diversity and inclusion – the playbook’s capacity to unlock the talent pool The effects of the current recession on the software market and what changes we should look out for With over twenty years of international software and SaaS sales experience, Marjorie is a true builder. Her customer first orientation and collaborative approach to scaling has enabled her to bring different organizations together towards one sales motion, deliver value to customers, and drive ongoing improvement. We discuss Marjorie’s journey to embracing change as well as her plans for the future and excitement for the next phase of growth at Foursquare. This wide-ranging discussion is essential listening for those with an interest in sales strategy, as well as anyone with a passion for the technology space.

Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: Why engagement is critical The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players Today we are joined by Go-to-Market Strategy and Operations leader Eugenia Chiang, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out how a work environment centred around diversity, equity and inclusion can inspire teams, improve recruitment and retention of talent, and foster innovation. “Through acceptance, you can gain awareness so you can drive change in behaviour. Companies with tangible DEI practices are more likely to have higher performing teams and better company results. Furthermore, much of the changing behaviour in society also aligns with tech's ethos in challenging status quo and creating a better future for all of us, and that's another way where tech can also play a role in that societal change as well.” Providing eye-opening statistics and examples relating to racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, Eugenia draws our attention to the need for cultural evolution in the SaaS sector and offers tangible steps for business leaders to start embracing a DEI growth mindset. With over fifteen years of experience in leading diverse teams and defining organisational vision across high profile, high growth companies in the tech space, Eugenia has witnessed first-hand the challenges associated with protecting and propelling DEI in this ever evolving fast-paced sector. Whilst the competitiveness and high-performance of this industry naturally lends itself to an acute focus on company culture, Eugenia reminds us that improving DEI is not a one-day task and that in order to create positive cultural changes, we need to address our own deep-rooted biases, outlook and habits before trying to impact societal or systemic issues. With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to this podcast to discover Eugenia’s strategies for creating a sense of community and belonging in your workplace, whilst inspiring your team and peers to achieve their full potential. The work may be challenging at times, but the rewards—both for business and for your employee culture—are well worth the effort.

Hunters and Unicorns shares the playbooks from leaders, founders, executives and investors from high growth technology companies. In this special edition series The 33 CXOs we investigate the greatest success story in the history of software sales.   Discover how thirty-three sales execs from one organisation, BladeLogic, became CXOs in the world’s 100 fastest growing technology companies. We uncover the stories and playbooks of the most prolific sales leaders in the industry. In this episode we sit down with Graham Moreno, Regional Vice President, Central, Southeast, and LatAm at Grafana Labs to take a look back at his incredible career trajectory and discuss how his early indoctrination in the Playbook community at MongoDB shaped and influenced his leadership style today, enabling him to recognise the huge opportunity presented by Grafana Labs and play an incremental role in scaling this company from 30 to 1000 employees in just three and a half years. “They had almost $5 million in revenue. No salespeople, no customer success people, it was a team of very extraordinarily talented engineers and I just remember sitting at a bar with Raj and saying, " I think there's the opportunity to do something really amazing here." And he was like, "I do too, but I'm not a sales guy." After a couple of months, I joined and it's really been incredible.” Founded in 2014 by Raj Dutt, Torkel Ödegaard and Anthony Woods, Grafana Labs has not only experienced overwhelming growth in recent years, it has also been recognized for the second year in a row as one of America’s best start-up employers. We ask Graham to guide us through his experience of scaling the hiring process from the bottom up at Grafana Labs and how he implemented structure in the early stages of development using the foundations of Playbook methodology to create a successful growth strategy based on both repetition and continual evolution. Offering advice and guidance to current and future leaders, Graham insists that it’s not only the Playbook but the people and culture of Grafana Labs — which fosters transparency, autonomy, and accountability — that has proven to be the cornerstone of the company. No matter how big the organization gets or how fast it scales, leaders are dedicated to prioritising culture above revenue, staying true to company values and building long lasting relationships to improve communication and cultivate trust and respect. “With experience and maturity, I have learned to communicate a lot more effectively because as we've gotten bigger, it is so important that even if you disagree, you're able to do it in a way that is opening up a productive conversation and I don't think I was always awesome at that early on. I've had an opportunity to evolve - if you look at the most effective selling teams at Mongo and Grafana, it's the teams where customer success, engineering, and marketing are all onboard and working together and there's a really good environment in terms of how we're sharing knowledge and what we're able to bring to our customers as a result.” In this vodcast you will discover: The framework that enabled Graham to scale the Grafana Labs workforce from 30 to 1000 employees in record time How to maintain high performance throughout your career by surrounding yourself with astonishing talent and learning to accept feedback How to scale the hiring process through periods of rapid growth How to protect the culture of an organisation as it scales Graham Moreno understands exactly How to build a sales force to stand the test of time. We discuss key challenges and accomplishments from Graham’s journey at Grafana Labs and what he believes to be the core ingredients needed for a company to reach unicorn status. This wide-ranging discussion is essential listening for those with an interest in sales strategy, as well as anyone with a passion for the technology space.

Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: - Why engagement is critical - The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion - How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players Today we are joined by Chelsea Krakowski, innovator of people at AuditBoard, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out how a work environment centred around communication, feedback and core company values can inspire teams, deliver customer success, and foster innovation. “We make hundreds of decisions every single day from the way that we choose to bring ourselves to work in the morning, the approach to the work, the communications, and also those really big decisions. It's all of it. I hope that that framing it through that mindset empowers individuals who may not feel like decision makers, to know that they're having a meaningful impact on shaping the culture - if everyone's shaping the culture, it creates an accountability and a responsibility for everyone to be making decisions every day that help move the culture in the direction that we want it to go.” Throughout her career, Chelsea has helped to scale global organizations and transform them from the inside out by unleashing the potential of their employees. In this podcast, she offers advice to forward-thinking leaders on the importance of developing a human-centred culture that treats employees as valued individuals who are respected, empowered, and trusted. As technology continues to change at an accelerated pace, Chelsea offers a holistic look at creating a desirable workplace culture and highlights the need for innovation and transformation of culture-building strategies in modern tech organisations. Whilst leaders play a vital role in defining the culture they want for their company; Chelsea explains how workplace culture is the result of everyone's behaviour. She has witnessed first-hand how participation drives a strong sense of ownership and encourages leaders in this space to ask for continuous feedback from their teams, welcome new ideas from employees and embrace failure to create an environment of open communication, inclusivity, and progression. With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to discover Chelsea’s future-proofed solutions to grow revenue, engage remote teams, and innovate the people space.

Welcome to Culture Crunch.   We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement.  By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:  Why engagement is critical   The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion   How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players  Today we are joined by John Germinario, Senior Director, Head of People at PebblePost, to discuss his thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out how creating a culture that is centred around collaboration and cross-functional interaction can improve the workplace environment and lead to increased performance and retention.   “The best company cultures are ones where people feel like they can be collaborative at all levels of the organization. At a smaller organization it's a bit easier, but even at a larger organization when an entry-level person can rub elbows with the CFO and people feel like they're heard not only from a professional, but a personal perspective, I think that allows all of us to feel a level of family.”  Having previously served as Director, Human Resources at The Avon Company, now part of LG H&H Americas, John understands how to support rapid business growth via people programs. Bringing over 10 years of HR experience to our discussion today, he describes the strong relationship between culture and recruitment that comes into play during employee sourcing, selection, and retention and highlights the need for evolution and leadership development in order to overcome key corporate culture challenges facing employers in the tech space.  John witnesses first-hand how the culture around tech is changing as employee expectations evolve and has seen how a widespread, inclusive mindset and a more flexible approach to leadership can start by simply listening to employees, responding to their feedback, and making them feel heard. The tech industry is all about moving fast, testing everything, and innovating with the times. John believes that it is now essential for tech companies to apply that same work ethic to boost their cultures and processes to retain and attract talent.   The best investment you can make for your company is an investment in your team. Listen to discover John’s strategies for empowering leaders and improving company culture. Learn how to develop your hiring process by throwing outdated credentials out the door and expanding the talent pool to actively participate in inclusive recruitment and positively impact your growth rates. 

SPONSORSHIP AND ADVOCACY | Culture Crunch - Dalton Van Hatcher   Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: Why engagement is critical The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players Today we are joined by Dalton Van Hatcher, Chief Customer Officer at Felux and co-founder of Us in Technology, to discuss his thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why creating a culture that is centred around diversity and inclusion can improve the workplace environment and radically increase performance. “It starts with diversity of mindset. Having people from different walks of life and different experiences is a big part of that. Diversity is not just about race, it's not about skin colour, it's not about gender, it's beyond that, it's about diversity of mindset. So having people from lots of different walks of life is going to help you be creative and overcome better challenges.” Dalton started his career under the leadership of the legendary John McMahon and Dev Ittycheria as an SDR at BladeLogic. As an early employee, he helped build several multi-billion-dollar businesses and high-performance growth functions including IPOs at BladeLogic, Sumo Logic, and Fuze. He is now a board advisor for several tech companies and has helped Co-found a DEI Platform: Us in Technology helping underrepresented talent get into Tech. Addressing the massive pipeline problem of diversity and gender gap in tech, Dalton discusses the need for more understanding around the practices and the barriers that minorities and underrepresented communities face and how his company, Us in Technology, is working to close this gap whilst simultaneously coaching organizations to see past potential unintentional discrimination in their hiring practices. Whilst many companies are now being more intentional about ramping up their diversity and inclusion efforts, Dalton highlights key challenges preventing leaders from deepening their candidacy pool and achieving their goals. He provides guidelines for companies to consider when developing a successful workplace diversity and inclusion strategy and offers advice to senior leaders on the importance of externally increasing awareness by reaching out to marginalized communities as well as internally nurturing new workforces through their career progression and adhering to individual needs to enable people with varied skillsets to succeed. “Diverse teams outperform homogenous teams by 30%, so this is a business problem, it's not just a societal problem.” Listen to discover Dalton’s strategies on how to build and lead a diverse team in the tech industry and why driving DEI transformation is mission critical to early-stage start-ups. Learn how to develop your hiring process, deepen your talent pool, and actively participate in inclusive recruitment to positively impact your company culture and growth rates.