President at Databricks, Andy Kofoid: Reinvention at Any Stage
Grit7 Feb 2022

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:

Avsnitt(274)

Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

In Episode #1 of Go to Market Grit, Slack’s SVP of Sales and Customer Success, Bob Frati, gives the inside scoop about the company’s sales and go-to-market strategy, and why they have been able to scale their go to market so quickly and effectively over the last few years. Bob and Joubin discuss two key topics in detail, outlining the next four years for Slack and key growth levers they can pull, along with growing competition in Slack’s market and what that means for their future. In this episode of Go to Market Grit, we cover: Key growth levers for Slack, and why the company is positioned for continued market dominance.Slack’s response to growing market competition, and why it’s ultimately better for the consumer and for the company.How Slack identified a business need and strong product market fit, and then worked to expand the solution to a broader audience. The importance of having a strong and developed customer-facing team to navigate complexities in large enterprises, and push business forward to completion.How Slack grew its sales team from 300 to 2,000 people — quickly, and effectively. Some of the factors that Slack looks for when hiring customer-facing sales staff, and why they value these characteristics.Why hiring should be a mutual fit for both the candidate and the employer.Identifying motivated individuals, and finding ways to tap into their motivation that will drive them to be successful. Bob’s career journey from sales rep to manager — including why and how he executed the leap. Why much of Slack’s success can be attributed to tight collaboration between its engineering, product, sales, and success teams. Slack’s ability to not only deploy a solution in an organization, but to help manage through the change and ensure success — and why this is a game-changer.Slack’s role in ushering a new way of working, and why it transcends the tired and overused digital transformation narrative in business.Links Host company: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/Loom: https://www.loom.com/ Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfrati/Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoubinmirHost Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com

16 Juni 202050min

Grit Trailer

Grit Trailer

About the Joubin MirzadeganJoubin has been with Kleiner Perkins since 2019 where he advises the KP portfolio companies on how to build and scale a robust go-to-market strategy. Additionally, he enables the firm’s portfolio through high impact relationships with F500 executives and key ecosystem partners. Joubin was previously at Palo Alto Networks as a global district sales manager for the Central US based in Chicago where he scaled the Central Cloud business from 1 enterprise rep and $2M ARR to 12 reps and $50M+ ARR in 4 quarters. He has also worked for Evident.io as an enterprise account executive and at Bracket Computing (acquired by VMWare) where he built the inside sales team from the ground up.

20 Apr 202045s

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
varvet
rss-svart-marknad
rss-jossan-nina
uppgang-och-fall
lastbilspodden
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
avanzapodden
24fragor
rss-borsens-finest
bathina-en-podcast
affarsvarlden
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
borsmorgon
tabberaset
rss-dagen-med-di
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
rss-en-rik-historia
dynastin