Why I'm Joining super{set} as Chief Commercial Officer

“You’re leaving Big Tech? In this economy?”

I’ve fielded some version of that dubious question every day since announcing my departure from Salesforce.

I joined Salesforce 6 years ago as part of the Krux acquisition. In my time, I got to work with and learn from some of the best and brightest in the industry, first as the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Product Marketing for the Marketing Cloud, and more recently as the SVP, Marketing Strategy & Innovation. 

At Salesforce, I focused on empowering marketers and growth leaders with the strategies, capabilities, and technologies to ​​deliver exceptional brand experiences across channels and throughout the customer journey at scale - ultimately enabling companies to connect with their customers in new ways. And it was a great ride.

But the question shouldn’t be about what you are leaving; it should be about where you’re going and why?

The where is easy. I am thrilled to join super{set} as Chief Commercial Officer, where I will lead market strategy and development designed to accelerate super{set} companies’ growth in current, new, and expanding markets.

The why is also easy, but far more important. I’m locking arms with the founding partners, Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya, and the super{set} team to uncover novel ideas, liberate exceptional talent, and revolutionize how companies are founded and built. super{set} is a startup studio that founds and builds data-driven companies. We have a fund, but we only invest in companies that we found ourselves. Our focus at super{set} is turning the lessons of serial entrepreneurship into a process for founding startups in the best soil conditions imaginable.

Why super{set}, why now? I agree with my friend Vivek that there’s never been a better time to build for these three reasons:

1. Abundant global talent
2. Extensive product-led data + AI expertise
3. Fortune favors the bold

I know what you’re thinking - is this really the right time with the world poised on the brink of recession, inflation on the rise, and software IPOs at a nadir? You bet your bottom dollar. Let me explain.

Human Capital is on the Move

Like the adage “investment follows performance,” talent gravitates toward innovation, growth, and values. And talent is never a given.

At super{set}, it all starts with people. super{set} brings decades of experience as operators to the table and leverages that expertise to empower and mentor talent that would otherwise be locked away in the halls of a big tech company. It is an opportunity for personal growth, excitement, impact, and wealth-building: a heady combination already recruiting talent away from Big Tech.

super{set} doesn’t shy away from building companies with a mission - whether it is Eskalera improving diversity and inclusion in the workplace or Ketch tackling data stewardship online. We’re part of the Pledge 1% community, which you can read more about on our culture page.

The quest for the best talent is never-ending. Organizations like super{set}, with its portfolio of high-growth, innovative companies that offer impact, growth, values, and the potential for wealth, will be where talent moves.

‍The Data+AI Revolution Has Just Begun

Be in tech for long enough, and it’s easy to forget how early we still are in the cloud-enabled TAM. 

The 2010s were about the emergence of the cloud, as data and workloads moved off-prem, making it cheaper for SaaS companies to go to market and innovate. Still, only half of IT and enterprise app spending is on cloud-based applications.

In the 2020s, innovation will move up the value chain from commodity cloud products to leveraging data+AI in almost every application: this is why the AI software category is growing 20% annually.

Data+AI isn’t a standalone category - it’s in every category. I saw first-hand how Salesforce is building data+AI features into every part of its platform to deliver more value, more quickly for its customers. Case in point is the recent announcement of Genie at Dreamforce.

Of course, Salesforce isn’t alone. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced at their Ignite conference that “going forward, every business process will be collaborative, powered by data and AI.”

Similarly, Amazon is known as “the everything store,” yet recent acquisitions as diverse as One Medical and iRobot show the importance of data + AI applications as increasingly essential growth drivers.

At super{set}, our thesis is that data eats the world: across sectors and industries. We build companies where data management and intelligence is the central tech differentiator, moat creator, and value multiplier. super{set} companies solve business problems through data generated, captured, pipelined, orchestrated, analyzed, and activated. Every super{set} company is rooted in our data-driven thesis - leveraging the tools of the data and AI revolution to solve complex business problems.

Take Habu: their clean room software makes collaboration across decentralized data safe, simple, scalable, and smart. By better orchestrating data, customers can better activate it. The market is embracing the model, from customers such as Disney, L'Oreal, and Kroger to follow-on investment from Wing, Snowflake, Norwest, Ridge, and of course, super{set}.

Data-driven isn’t only about orchestrating data. Many super{set} companies better enable others to build with data, for instance, our MLOps platform MarkovML or our automated cloud infrastructure company Kapstan.  Other super{set} companies apply the data+AI toolset, for example, Spectrum Labs’ solution for content moderation or Headlamp Health’s mission to bring precision data to mental health. 

The market is ready for the next wave of innovation - and that’s why super{set}’s data-driven thesis will win out as we ride the next decade of cloud-enabled growth.‍

The Innovative and Courageous Survive and Prosper

Technology startups are, by nature, disruptive, and the current market turmoil represents an opportunity for a significant shift in the status quo.

Benchmark’s Bill Gurley recently said: “There have been plenty of great companies started in the troughs to suggest that there’s no reason to stop investing.” Look where the money is going: many of the most prominent investors - Coatue, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and more are all pivoting to the early stage.

‍When times change, the courageous and innovative survive and prosper. That is why VCs like Bill Gurley are convinced the trough is a great time to build. I recently hosted a fireside chat at Ketch’s Privacy Matters conference with Brad Jakeman, Co-Founder of Rethink Food and former President, Global Beverage Group, PepsiCo, who advised, “Now is the time to be bold and creative in your mistakes, just learn from them and don’t make the same ones more than once.”

If you’re in the business of innovation, recessions can be the kick in the pants to uncover new avenues of growth and value creation. So I’m joining super{set} to partner with the courageous and innovative to develop new markets and co-create with us on our journey to build world-changing products. We’re in this for the long haul, and a momentary recession is only an opportunity for innovation to gain a toehold.

The Best Thing Ever

As Tom and Vivek like to say: building companies from scratch is incredibly soul-sucking and mind-numbingly hard - but it’s the best thing ever.

A massive swathe of talent needs the right support to become game-changing entrepreneurs. The market is hungry for the type of data+AI companies that super{set} builds. And this is a time of flux when the landscape shifts and new markets emerge - perfect timing for us innovators.

I welcome you to join one of our fast-growing companies as a customer, investor, or future employee - It’s the best thing ever.