Alex Cotter grew up in Toronto, where his dad spent the last 41 years as a professional comedian.
The one rule at home: do what you love and put everything into it.
He found that at @nationgraph, where he leads our account management team👇️
GTM Engineering is one of the hottest roles in tech right now and we're hiring one at @nationgraph
If you identify as a great engineer that also has taste, come work with @chrislevan24 and I!
The hottest roles are usually two jobs mixed together.
We've seen it before:
- dev + ops → DevOps
- ML + engineering → ML Engineer
- data + engineering → Data Engineer
Now:
- product + engineering → Product Engineer
- design + engineering → Design Engineer
- GTM +
Hire people you know will quit.
I never understood why hiring managers/founders view candidates wanting to be future founders one day as a bad thing.
@tryramp ($44B valuation) deliberately hires future founders. Their CEO, @eglyman, says: I think the energy that founders bring is a determination, the desire to go build something new, push the norms, and try to take things faster. Having these kinds of people in your company who are restless, I think, is really valuable.
The company became a breeding ground for founders.
- @jsarihan, Co-Founder @crosbylegal ($400M valuation)
- @austinh___, Co-Founder @unifygtm ($40M Series B)
- @Pavel_Asparagus, Co-Founder, @SilnaHealth ($27M total funding)
- @hkimia, Co-Founder, @nationgraph ($18M Series A)
Ramp isn’t hurting because of their departures but absolutely benefited from their contributions.
To me, that’s the point.
We’re trying to take a similar path at @PlaykitUGC (and certainly have future founders already). These people have the traits we want to hire for: ambition, agency, willingness to figure it out, etc. So, we intentionally ask candidates where they want their careers to go. If it’s being a founder, we want to help develop the skills they’ll need for when the time comes.
The ambition that will make someone quit is also what makes them so valuable to you. Find it and reward it.
PS - credit to @rjnapolitano for the image idea!
Why does it feel like everything is way over budget and behind schedule nowadays?
It took 21 years and cost $346 Million to build a short bus lane in San Francisco.
The Golden Gate Bridge took 4.
What's changed? Is American Dynamism Dead?
We break it down on Episode 1 of NationGraph News 👇
if you're in waterloo next wednesday come through!
i'll be sharing some more bts stuff in all things startups, growth, venture & scouting for our w27 intern batch at @nationgraph !!!
"NationGraph to me is a problem that we're trying to solve that has not been solved yet. But the solution is so fascinating that I would put 12, 16 hours some days just into solving it faster.
His team takes the government data we gather, types of data other companies simply do not have, and wraps it into the product our customers use to get ahead of RFPs and win government contracts
How do you take the messiest data in the country and turn it into something a sales team actually wants to open?
That's the problem Jason, our Head of Engineering and his team solve every day.
165 Followers 616 FollowingBuilding Physical-AI, operational and situational awareness platform! Glass is half full kinda vibe. ex X, Meta, Unity, Dell. Founding member of 2X startup.
7 Followers 307 FollowingDevOps. I build and run things on AWS: Terraform, Ansible, Docker, CI/CD, monitoring. Posting what I build and break. DMs open for deployment work.
2K Followers 689 FollowingInvestor @firstmarkcap. Helping founders and sharing stories. Subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter for insight on who and what's next in venture capital.
32 Followers 662 FollowingTech, Sales, Sports, Probably with a Cappuccino or a Diet Coke in hand,
Ex 1Password, current AE at Haven, founder @ outtsell
2K Followers 2K FollowingFounder & General Partner @ F7 || Former Facebook, Yahoo, AltaVista (old school) || Supercharged by phenomenal people and big ideas
269 Followers 275 Following🥇st contributor @nationgraph | talk to me NOW if you… play league of legends / ride a road bike / sell B2G! 🏆 Proudly: @mcgillvc @desautelsmcgill 🚀