Manager, Sales Operations · Zendesk · 3 Years

From Employee #65 to IPO

I joined as employee #65, when the company ran on basic tools, and helped build the systems, data, and planning behind the 2014 NYSE IPO.

#65 Employee
0→1 Revenue systems
IPO NYSE, 2014
Basic tools
Built
Finance + sales stack
Revenue systems
Limited data
Modeled
Data sets + models
Decision-making
Informal
Structured
Territories, goals, comp
Sales planning
Private
Public
NYSE, 2014
Company outcome
What changed
  • Set up finance and accounting systems, sales operations systems, and the sales and marketing tool stack.
  • Created the data sets, ran the models, and built the reporting that leadership used to drive company-wide changes.
  • Owned the sales planning engine: territory management, company goal setting, compensation, and reporting.
  • Connected sales to finance through revenue scheduling and billing.
Day One
Employee #65, basic systems
A product customers loved and a company growing fast. The systems and tools behind the business were still basic.
Systems
Stood up the stack
Used a computer networking and security background to jump in and set up finance and accounting systems, sales operations systems, and sales and marketing tools, and make them work together.
Data
Turned systems into insight
Applied economics and econometrics training to create data sets, run models, and build reporting the business could trust.
Planning
Built the sales planning engine
Territory management, company goal setting, compensation plans, and sales reporting, all driven by the same data.
Revenue
Closed the loop to finance
Revenue scheduling and billing so what sales booked flowed cleanly into what finance recognized.
Change
A driving force, company-wide
Grew from setting up tools to using data to drive company-wide changes in how Zendesk planned, sold, and measured itself.
IPO
Ready for the public markets
The systems, data, and processes became part of the infrastructure behind Zendesk's successful 2014 IPO.

Two backgrounds that rarely sit in the same person: computer networking and security (years as a senior network engineer) and economics and econometrics. One meant I could set up and connect the systems myself. The other meant I could model what the data was saying and turn it into decisions.

Networking + Security
  • Set up and integrated systems hands-on
  • Connected finance, sales, and marketing tools
  • Built with data integrity and access in mind
Economics + Econometrics
  • Created and maintained data sets
  • Ran models for goals, territories, and comp
  • Turned reporting into company-wide decisions
Finance & Accounting
  • Finance and accounting systems
  • Revenue scheduling
  • Billing
  • Sales-to-finance data flow
Sales Operations Systems
  • Sales operations systems
  • Sales tools
  • Data sets and models
  • Reporting
Sales Planning
  • Territory management
  • Company goal setting
  • Compensation
  • Performance reporting
Marketing
  • Marketing tools
  • Shared data with sales
  • Funnel reporting
01I joined Zendesk as employee #65 and was there through the IPO, so I have seen the whole journey from basic tools to a public company.
02My background is unusual: networking and security plus economics and econometrics. I can build the systems and model the data.
03I did not just run reports. I set up the systems, created the data sets, ran the models, and used them to drive company-wide change.
04My scope ran across finance and accounting systems, sales and marketing tools, territories, goals, comp, revenue scheduling, and billing.
05This is where my playbook started, and I have repeated it at AppDynamics, Riskified, and Omilia.