From Datadog to Primary
I am immensely excited to announce that I have joined Primary Venture Partners as VP of Market Development.
While this is the first time that “VC” will be on my resumé, I’ve been working at startups and speaking with entrepreneurs and investors for nearly a decade.
By way of introduction I thought it would only be fair that I should answer the common core questions that VCs frequently ask founders:
Who are you/ what’s your background?
I’ve spent my career in enterprise technology in NYC. I was the 40th employee at AppNexus and then the 10th employee at Datadog. My skillset is business-oriented, but I truly enjoy working closely with product and engineering teams. My final year at Datadog was spent building out Enterprise Enablement, which entailed onboarding, use-case specific conversations and technical implementation at Datadog’s largest clients.
I attended WashU, IMSA (aka Hogwarts for Hackers), and have taken and TA-ed a web development class at General Assembly.
What will you be doing?
One key part of Primary’s diligence when deciding whether to invest or pass is to contact potential clients of the company pitching. These conversations orient us in two ways; first we learn the general industry landscape and second, can potentially make a client introduction for the company. There is nothing better than realizing you are excited to invest in a company AND realizing that there is real customer demand for that product.
Yet after the diligence process stops, even if Primary invests, these industry-scoping/ lead-generating phone calls also stop. Identifying a need for a more systematic and ongoing push to help their companies find early product-market fit, Primary GPs Ben Sun and Brad Svrluga resolved to build that function into their team.
I am joining Primary to do precisely that. I will work closely with our portfolio companies at the intersection of Product and Sales, on go-to-market strategy and early client acquisition. “Work closely” might be a slight understatement; I will embed with one to three companies to truly learn the ins and outs of their business and the challenges they experience.
Thus my mission is to understand both the markets where our current portfolio companies exist, but also seek new markets and new offerings.
Why now?
This is truly a tough question to answer.
I loved working at Datadog and still loved it as I departed. In fact, let me now say that if you are looking to work for a late stage tech company in NYC (or Boston or Paris or SF or….) — there is no company I can recommend more highly. Seriously.
I realized that I am more energized working at early stage ventures. Datadog is now 500+ people and will likely cross 800 in 2018 (which is wild and awesome and GO TEAM!). As I am interested in angel and seed investing, in product-market fit and go-to-market strategies, and eventually in founding a company myself, I realized that it was time to look elsewhere and aim for smaller.
I have witnessed the blood, sweat, and tears that go into being a founder. A close friend slept on my sofa while he pitched VCs. Some people have an idea they love and others can’t imagine working for anyone else, but I am definitely not the second and am not yet the first. Without the right idea nor the right cofounder I was not willingly entering that realm.
Simultaneously, my good friend Daphne introduced me to Brad. It turned out that Primary was building out it’s already well-respected Portfolio Impact team. In this role I’d get to meet many entrepreneurs, chew on those gnarly early strategy problems, and truly make an impact at a few young companies. It sounded pretty incredible to me at the time and it turns out that it was not undersold.
What’s next?
I am beyond excited to work with the entrepreneurs in the Primary portfolio. In my first six weeks I have already seen the impact that the years of knowledge accrued at Datadog can have. I’m eager to talk about client onboarding or top-of-the-funnel or new product development or content or partnerships. And when it comes time to tackle the almighty, many-headed Hydra loosely known as “scaling”, I’ll be there.
