In the amazing, now it can be told story, I’ve joined an exciting new company called Marketo as manager of community and content. After three weeks (I started two days after returning from Australia) this is turning out to be a great opportunity and fit for me, and I’ve been able to jump in and be productive from the start.
Marketo is addressing a big open space in the enterprise software world, providing automation for marketing departments through a software as a service (SaaS) platform. There are a few smaller existing players, mainly selling on premise packages that are proving difficult to configure and run effectively but doing modestly well just because there are few good alternatives.
Right now on our public website you’ll see our 1.0 products but we’re working hard on 2.0, which is much more expansive in addressing the company’s longterm vision; the company tagline is “Revenue starts here” and it fits. The 2.0 beta actually launched the week before last and moved into high gear this week.
Engineering operates on an agile basis and we’re fortunate that the co-founders hired an outstanding user experience designer right at the start so that the work of the developers is exposed in very effective, flexible ways. The founding team didn’t just happen to get lucky, though, they’ve been through the startup lifecycle successfully several times before, with companies like Epiphany, Red Brick Systems, Metaphor Computer Systems and Siebel.
Our office setup was also chosen consciously. Only our VP of Sales has her own office, and the CEO and VP of Marketing (my boss) share a second office; everyone else has an Ikea desk in one of two big open rooms and there are no cubicle walls or other partitions. I sit with Engineering, right in the middle actually, next to the CTO. Dave is one of the co-founders and the fact that he sits in among the team is a good example of why there’s very little ego causing headaches.
We’ll see how this turns out but I’m extremely optimistic. In what might be a positive omen, we had a cozy company holiday party this past Tuesday and the last time the company party was held right after I joined it was NetDynamics, which turned out, er, reasonably well.
BillSaysThis 