Why I Joined Seva

I started my career in a sea of tens of thousands at NBC Universal. My last job was at Simulmedia, which reached 100 employees during my tenure. Today, I’m thrilled to share the news that I have joined Seva as their COO and employee number 6. I could not be more excited that my career has taken me to this size and stage company, where I’ll have the chance to roll up my sleeves and take on a new challenge from the ground-up.

When evaluating my next move, there were four major criteria that I considered, and I’ll explain why Seva was the unquestionable choice for me on all.

The Team

I worked with our CEO, Sanjay, when he was CTO at Simulmedia, and I’m thrilled to partner with him once again. His technical mastery and my business acumen complemented each other perfectly at our last company. Knowing my colleagues, and understanding the working cadence we’ll be engaging in, was critically important to me and a major reason that I entered into conversations with Sanjay with the excitement that I did. Additionally, I’m inspired by the team of engineers and scientists here from whom, in only a couple of days, I have already learned tremendously.

The Product

I was Seva’s first user, and continue to be an active user everyday.

My last role was in Sales Operations where, like almost every modern knowledge worker, my daily routine took me across at least 10 SaaS-based applications — from Salesforce to Slack, Google Drive to Microsoft Office, and Box to Evernote, just to name a few. The difficulty of finding the most relevant piece of information at the right time continued to escalate with the proliferation of available applications and growth in the team. I saw it plague the entire Sales team as well. In fact, on average, Sales teams spend 30% of their time looking for information, and 45% of that information is scattered outside of their CRM.

Seva became an integral part of my professional life, and was the first app I used every day. There were times in both internal management meetings and external customer sessions when a datapoint was needed, and with one click, Seva pointed me in the right direction. This type of frictionless access to information was critical for me to succeed. Seva drastically cut down on the time I spent searching for information, and alleviated my struggles to remember whether I needed to search Box or Slack.

The efficiency gains that Seva gave me were real and quantifiable.

The Market Opportunity

Right now, we are still in a world where one person is working among, on average, 13 different applications. It’s time to flip that construct, and have the applications work together for the benefit of the user. We’re ready to put the individual first.

Seva is the antithesis of legacy search products that require significant overhead and resource allocation. We are simplifying information retrieval and using modern technology to make it turnkey, and that’s just the beginning of how we are reimagining this massive market opportunity.

I’m also really excited about how AI and Machine Learning can shift the paradigm from pull (search) to push (recommendations). I believe in the true power of prescribing content when and where it’s needed most — before, perhaps, the user even knows what is needed.

In all of the conversations I have had so far, there is definitive agreement on both the problem and the need for a solution. This market is here.

The Role

This opportunity at Seva allows me to leverage my previous experiences at companies both large and small, and apply them to something even smaller and more nascent — and that is extremely appealing. We’re executing our go-to-market strategy. I’m focused on signing up additional beta customers, driving more usage, and working closely with them to gather valuable feedback to inform future product enhancements. We’ll concurrently define our customer and buyer profiles and analyze their pains and gains. We will iterate on our messaging and positioning. And eventually we will scale our business.

Constant in all of our efforts is our core goal of understanding our customers’ challenges and evaluating the quantifiable value that Seva is providing.

I’ve been an operator and a marketer. I’ve worked with Finance teams and Sales teams. And I’ve run sales meetings and product sessions. All of this comes together in this opportunity at Seva, where Sanjay and I will be charting the path forward for our company.

So that’s why I’m here.

I’m looking forward to this ride, and to speaking with you about it. Don’t hesitate to reach me at peter@hiseva.com.