New Job!

I started my career in tech at Microsoft in 1997. I left in 2004 to join Electronic Arts. Large public companies were a great way to start a career with lots of people from whom to learn and overall business operations & acumen.

In 2008, I met my first founder CEO, Mark Pincus, who started a small videogame company with a big vision of bringing gaming to the masses (Zynga) and needed some help with growing the company and talent. With no knowledge of private companies, investors, venture capital, IPOs, or rapid scaling, joining as employee 130, I took the plunge into my first executive role and my first startup. Three years later, we were 4000 employees in 20+ locations around the world, going through the largest IPO since Google. A couple of quarters later we stumbled and learned about having to lead through a scale-down.

Following Zynga, I went on to learn with some amazing people through additional executive roles at Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto), some consulting time with WePay (acquired by Chase) and Twilio (IPO), a joint venture at Vevo, and most recently with Credit Karma (acquired by Intuit).

Startup life is exhilarating, terrifying, exhausting, joyful, painful, fun and lonely. And I love it. I have massive empathy and excitement for the entrepreneurs willing to follow this path.

My first external note upon departing Credit Karma was to Meyer “Micky” Malka of Ribbit Capital. He was on the CK Board and head of the compensation committee. I had a ton of respect for his business perspective, his support of founders and his long-term view. He’s direct, trustworthy, passionate and himself a multi-time entrepreneur.

I went into my job search looking to try something new. I wrote a lot about it here and on Medium. Over a number of months, Micky and the team made me really think about how I could scale the lessons I’ve learned over the years about building companies. How I could continue to drive innovation in the financial space with other passionate people. Ultimately, talking to 17 CEOs pushed me in this direction. I wanted to be able to help all of the companies, not just one.

I have never met someone like me at a VC firm but I’m excited (and terrified) to try something new. So you can now find me as part of the team and companies at Ribbit Capital.