The Situation
I joined as SVP of Engineering to lead the rebuild of an engineering organization and culture that couldn’t ship reliably. The engineering turnaround and the workforce transformation that stabilized the company’s economics ran together, and I was a full participant in both. These were hard decisions that affected real people, made as part of the executive leadership team, not handed down from above. That first chapter stabilized the business and set the foundation for everything that followed.
The Connected Moves
Promoted to CPTO, I led the acquisition and integration of two European companies across a globally diverse organization spanning a dozen countries. A combination of FinOps practices and cloud architecture modernization at one of those acquired companies cut cloud costs 50%, which unlocked a product strategy that made the company’s best product financially viable as the flagship, and drove 30%+ SaaS revenue growth.
I built and deployed a product portfolio operating model that gave the board, the executive team, and the product teams a shared language for investment decisions for the first time. And through three CEOs, four CFOs, and additional C-level transitions, I served as the institutional continuity that kept the organization moving. Every chapter required working in the seams between functions, where the real problems hid and the real leverage lived.
Outcomes
- Revenue grew 2.5X
- EBITDA improved 30+ points
- Cloud costs cut 50%; SaaS product grew 30%+ the following year
- Two European acquisitions integrated
- 99%+ customer support SLA maintained throughout
- Continuity through 3 CEO and 4 CFO transitions
A 30-point EBITDA improvement doesn’t come from optimizing one function. It comes from seeing how every decision connects and making moves across all of them, with each one unlocking the next.
Related stories from this journey: The Engineering Organization That Couldn’t Ship, Two Acquisitions, Multiple Cultures, One Portfolio, The Product Portfolio Operating Model