20VC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on The Scaling Journey to a $26Bn Market Cap, The Challenges in Moving From Single To Multi-Product Company & How To Scale Efficiently into $M+ Enterprise Deals
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2021
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Olivier Pomel is the Founder & CEO @ Datadog, the company building the next generation of tools for DevOps teams. Prior to their incredibly successful IPO in 2019, Olivier raised over $147M for the company from Index, ICONIQ, Meritech, IA Ventures, Amplify and OpenView, to name a few. Prior to founding Datadog and changing the world of devops, Olivier was a VP with Wireless Generation for 8 years leading an engineering team of close to 100 of the best developers in NYC.
In Today’s Episode with Olivier Pomel You Will Learn:
1.) How Olivier made his way into the world of startups and what was the a-ha founding moment for his creating of Datadog, changing the world of devops?
2.) Why does Olivier believe that "short term failure is a source of long term success?" Why did both seed and Series A investors not get Datadog? What would Olivier have done differently if fundraising again? What do investors misunderstand today when investing in big markets looking for the "entry wedge"?
3.) What has been Olivier's biggest learnings on how to run Datadog during a pandemic? What attributes does Olivier look for when hiring senior leaders? Why does Olivier believe the CEO has to be the "equaliser in chief"? What does that mean in practice? How can leaders creat eenvironments of safety where their team can approach them with anything?
4.) What have been the biggest challenges in moving from a single product to a multi-product company? How does one know when is the right time to add additional products? What is Olivier's decision-making process to determine which products to build next?
5.) How does Olivier assess his relationship to money today? How has it changed over time? In what ways has becoming a father impacted Olivier's operating mindset? What 3 traits would Olivier most like his children to adopt?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Olivier Pomel
Olivier’s Favourite Book: Kurt Vonnegut
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and diving straight into the show today, few IPOs over the last few years have been as successful as Datadogs. |
| 0:07.0 | It's become a darling of Wall Street, and I'm so excited to welcome their co-founder and CEO's CEO today. |
| 0:11.4 | Quick side note, Olivia was one of the most humble and authentic guests I've had on the show, made it such a joy to do. But as mentioned, Olivier is the co-founder and CEO at Datadog, the company building the next |
| 0:21.3 | generation of tools for DevOps teams. Prior to their incredibly successful IPO in 2019, |
| 0:26.9 | Olivier raised over $147 million for the company from Index, Iconic, Meritech, IA ventures, |
| 0:33.4 | Amplify, and Open View, to name a few. Prior to founding Datastog, Olivier was a VP with Wireless Generation for eight years, |
| 0:40.0 | leading an engineering team of close to 100 of the best developers in New York. |
| 0:43.9 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you on the schedule, though. |
| 0:46.1 | This was such a team effort. |
| 0:47.5 | Jerry Newman, Sunil at Amplify, Shardul at Index, Dev at MongoDB, and many more. |
| 0:52.6 | I really do appreciate your help on the schedule. |
| 0:54.8 | But before we move into the show today, I have to say I just love using Angel List's fund admin |
| 0:58.9 | platform to manage my investments. The team and platform at Angel List takes care of all my |
| 1:03.4 | back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers |
| 1:07.7 | have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via AngelList, |
| 1:12.0 | all online and all in one place. |
| 1:14.0 | And with the recently announced rolling funds, you can easily find and invest in these top |
| 1:18.2 | fund managers on AngelList.com forward slash rolling. |
| 1:21.4 | And speaking of incredible customer experiences there with Angel List, Mercury is building |
| 1:25.4 | full stack banking for startups. |
| 1:28.5 | Applying under 10 minutes from anywhere for FDIC-insured bank accounts, physical and virtual debit cards, domestic and |
| 1:34.3 | international wires, and integrations with gusto, stripe, quickbooks, basically every other |
... |
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