A Company is a Collection of Systems

When Olivier and his co-founder launched Datadog in 2010, they didn't write a single line of code for the first six months—despite having backgrounds as engineers. Out of the gate, they have made it their mission to listen to customers and understand what problems they can solve for them. Fast-forward a decade: Datadog is the essential monitoring platform for cloud applications and a true DevOps pioneer. The company IPOed in 2019 and its market cap now exceeds $27B. Olivier shares why he thinks of companies as a set of systems, how to push forward even when VCs tell you no, and why he's still subscribed to all Datadog support emails.