The Best Teams Build the Best Companies: Why I Joined Kurrent
With nine startups and three IPOs under my belt, people often ask me what drives my decision to join a new company. The answer is simple: the team, the team and also… the team. Over 25 years in Silicon Valley has taught me that while innovative technology gets you in the door, success is all about talent, company culture and trust.
In evaluating Kurrent, I found something special: a team that has collectively achieved legendary success at companies like Cloudera, Netezza, BladeLogic, MongoDB, Redis and more.
Working again with Kurrent’s CEO Kirk Dunn is particularly meaningful to me. I was one of his first hires at Cloudera, where he was COO. We built that business from $5 million to $250 million in ARR, and I saw firsthand the power of strong leadership combined with exceptional execution. The opportunity to reunite and apply those lessons at Kurrent was too compelling to pass up.
As CRO, one of my priorities is to continue building this world-class team by recruiting the best talent on the market. Great companies are built by great people – and people still like to buy from people, even in this AI-hype-infused era. I’m excited to assemble a go-to-market organization that reflects my people-centric philosophy.
Some of Us Just Love Building from the Ground Up
I’ve always had a passion for early-stage companies. There’s something uniquely rewarding about getting in early, building a business from the ground up and disrupting established markets. Yes, it can be a grind. You have to expect hard work with inevitable ups and downs. However, nothing is more rewarding than scaling a business and overachieving what you set out to accomplish. Each company I’ve chosen to work with presents new challenges and opportunities that make the journey exciting.
This playbook works: create repeatable processes, go to where the signals are, test relentlessly and implement a GTM strategy and culture that matches excellence with efficient execution.
Kurrent already serves 150 customers across a broad range of industries and business models, from Fortune 500 enterprises to innovative startups. We’re solving real problems for our customers and operating inside their most important business workflows. We are building infrastructure that companies depend on every day and there’s no limit to our growth potential.
When you’re embedded in your customers’ most important processes, you have the opportunity to drive radical impact. That’s the kind of business I want to be part of. That’s Kurrent.
The Perfect Storm of Opportunity
The timing for Kurrent couldn’t be better. “Events” are becoming core to the new paradigm of shift-left development, and the industry signals are unmistakable. We’ve seen Snowflake acquire Crunchy Data and Databricks acquire Neon DB. These are just two of the many clear indicators that the market is moving in our direction.
Add to that the tailwind of AI, and you have a perfect storm of opportunity. Organizations building modern microservices and agentic AI applications need direct, fast, granular access to the highest-fidelity source data. Kurrent’s event-native data platform provides exactly that, delivering instant replay of detailed, real-time insights without the complexity of traditional data pipelines.
As I lean into this role, my goal is to accelerate Kurrent’s go-to-market and sales efforts, connect more businesses with a solution that modernizes their operations for the scale and speed of the AI era, and execute highly targeted strategies that maximize revenue growth.
I’m energized by what lies ahead. With our exceptional team, a product that solves real problems and a market that’s ready for our event-native data platform, Kurrent is positioned to become the next legendary success story. I couldn’t be more excited to be part of this journey.