From Product, to Sales, to Engineering
After a decade in tech, I’ve decided to venture into the dark screen of code.
“The spread of computers and the internet will put jobs in two categories: people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.”
In this post, I’ll take you through my past, present and future journey to ultimately achieve ‘The Tech Trifecta’ of Product, Sales and Engineering. You’ll see how technology has been at the forefront of nearly all of my successes and how I plan to leverage my current investment in engineering for my future.
Leading Product to a #1 Ranked iPhone App in the USA
The long story is on my other blog, “PlaySay's Love Story, How it All Began”. In short, I needed to learn Japanese for my my first job in Tokyo, Japan. I essentially invented the first form of enhanced podcasts, but purposed for myself to learn Japanese. The Director of PayPal, Japan randomly ran in to me at a bar and was so impressed with my Japanese and product that he offered to give me a seed investment. I called the company PlaySay.
My next four years at PlaySay were the most exciting of my life. I fell deeply in love with technology and the impact it could have on the world. Technology enabled us to fulfill our vision of advancing cultural awareness and international fellowship through language.
The more I learned about software engineering, the better I managed software engineers.
With tech startup ethos, we leveraged customer development, market research, usability studies, and competitive and industry analysis to identify our market opportunity, determine our business case, define our product vision, design our UI/UX and plan our go-to-market strategy. I led agile development through the critical path by ascertaining the market, by defining our product value propositions and by validating our product market fit hypotheses.
We raised $800K in Venture Capital and Launched as TechCrunch Disrupt Finalists. The greatest achievement and to this day the proudest I’ve been in my life was when our application became the #1 ranked iPhone app in the USA. We were ultimately Acquired by Babbel. What a journey!
Becoming the #1 Ranked Sales Engineer at Salesforce
We used and loved Heroku at PlaySay. Heroku (acquired by Salesforce) enabled my engineers to deliver our applications as quickly as possible, which is essentially tables stakes in tech startup land. When a Salesforce recruiter called me after PlaySay was acquired, I was excited for the new opportunity to sell a product I loved. After all, I had sold $20K worth of kitchen knives to strangers as a teenager ;)
My background in product quickly served as a powerful asset to selling Heroku to engineers. If it weren’t for my product chops, I wouldn’t have known how to improve my sales process through multivariate testing. It’s largely what enabled me to hold my #1 ranked spot of the Heroku sales engineering team every year I was at Salesforce.
Surely, my rapport and technical knowledge as a former tech startup Founder & CEO was helpful for me to sell to developers. I effectively sold nearly every software technology under the sun at Heroku. That said, I didn’t truly understand most of the technologies I was selling.
The more I learned about software engineering, the better I sold software to engineers.
Back then, I couldn’t revere the power and simplicity of Ruby’s convention over configuration with Yukihiro Matsumoto (Founder of Ruby). I would instead practice my Japanese with him. Instead of thanking Blake Mizerany for the time his Sinatra framework saved me from managing development overhead, I merely had small talk with him over coffee. Rather than geeking out with how easy Postgres queries are, I would often chat with Craig Kerstiens (Postgres Influencer) about how to best cook a steak. Not anymore!
Learning Engineering at the #1 Ranked School in the World
This quote has so much merit that I’ll post it again.
“The spread of computers and the internet will put jobs in two categories: people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.”
That sums up my reason for investing in engineering for my future. From a #1 ranked product to the #1 ranked salesman, the greatest successes of my career have been a direct result of my limited software engineering experience. From an ROI standpoint, it only makes sense for me to go all-in.
At the end of 2019, I set my sights to learn full stack engineering at Flatiron School - the #1 ranked software engineering school in the world. I was accepted and have been on an amazing self-growth path in 2020.
Instead of managing software engineers or selling software to engineers, I am engineering software.
I’m experiencing how much time GitHub saves with distributed version control and source code management by building with fellow engineers. Instead of selling software, I’m building software. I’m learning nuances between web languages and frameworks along with their plethora of associated technologies. There are fireworks in my brain with the mental paradigm shift from the creative right side (product & sales) to the logical left side (engineering).
This website showcases applications I’ve built in my Portfolio along with explanations of particular technical items that I’ve learned in my Blog.
My Future with Technology
Upon graduating in September as a full stack engineer from Flatiron School, I intend to serve as an invaluable asset with ‘The Tech Trifecta’ of Product, Sales and Engineering. Stay tuned here with my journey, let me know if I can be of help and of course be in touch if you’re interested in hiring me after my graduation.
