President at Databricks, Andy Kofoid: Reinvention at Any Stage

When Andy Kofoid was growing up in the working-class town of Joliet, Illinois, he dreamed of getting to college and — like a lot of his relatives — worked in construction. Today, Andy is laying digital foundations at Databricks, a data analytics and AI company that works with enterprise brands including Adobe, NBCUniversal, and Starbucks. Previously the COO of ExactTarget, which Salesforce acquired for $2.6 billion in 2013, Andy thought his career might end there. “I wasn’t looking” for another gig after Salesforce, he recalls, “but I knew I had another run in me.”

In this episode, Andy and Joubin talk about the Chicago tech scene; the trade-offs between fully remote work and physical offices; walking away from success to build something new; reinventing yourself as a new kind of leader in a complex, unstructured environment; and separating your self-worth from your professional accomplishments. Andy also discusses the people and culture at Databricks and how he balances his demanding career with “what really matters” — being a good husband, father, friend, and person.

In this episode, we cover:

• Andy’s first job, his family, and his favorite baseball team: The Chicago Cubs (04:56)
• Transitioning among different types of roles within a company (10:11)
• The physical office as a representation of your company’s culture, and the difference between Chicago and San Francisco’s post-COVID tech scenes (13:07)
• Why Andy left Salesforce for Databricks, and how he knew he had another run in him (19:40)
• Becoming a better leader and accepting “A huge dose of humility” (23:41)
• How leaders are perceived by the people underneath them on the org chart, vs. how they perceive themselves (30:51)
• The interview process at Databricks and overcoming the “industry domain hurdle,” to speak AI and data fluently (40:10)
• How Andy creates balance in his life, and the correlation between pressure and responsibility (44:05)
• The most difficult, sleepless nights in Andy’s career and how he recovers when things aren’t going his way (01:02:01)
• What Grit means to him, and the sort of person who should apply for open roles at Databricks (01:10:54)

Links:

• Connect with Andy
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm