I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined CaptivateIQ as Head of Design to support, develop, and nurture a diverse design team of outstanding folks. We’ll be working cross-functionally with engineering, product, and other departments to help create great experiences that will serve our customers and the business.
When developing and evaluating criteria for a new opportuntity, these factors helped guide my decision.
I was looking for a company with:
- A great mission that’s championed deeply by the founder(s). Bonus if the mission is rooted in founders’ experiences in the world.
- Interesting, complex, and tangible problems that aim to improve the quality of life for folks within the industry it exists. Bonus if fintech.
- Solid traction and concrete metrics—meaning the company is generating revenue, growing, and has a solid customer base.
- A healthy culture that focuses on putting people first, is diverse, aims for transparency, and leans on empowering folks within the org.
- A team that’s composed of cool individuals across all levels with low ego, solid EQ, are approachable, and care about what we’ve all come together to build.
- Great investors and/or advisors (see investors and partners video in series b post).
- A focus on B2B, and enterprise.
Why CaptivateIQ?
Through researching CaptivateIQ (see G2 reviews, CIQ’s Series A post, Series B post—great videos in this, Series C post, why CIQ’s VP of Engineering joined, Glassdoor reviews, CaptivateIQ makes YC’s top company list), the space, and talking with the team, it became clear that CaptivateIQ hit all the criteria I listed above. The team’s working on something great, and I wanted to be a part of it.
Here are themes that stood out during conversations that helped me make the decision to join the team.
People
Every person I conversed with was thoughtful, passionate about the work, transparent about the challenges and opportunities, and were simply great folks to talk to. The team is composed of talented, smart, kind, and focused individuals that are excited about the space, challenges, customer needs, and work to be done.
Each interaction also painted the shape of an organization that has a healthy culture that is well composed, groomed, and maintained.
Mission
CaptivateIQ is on a mission to empower all involved in the commissions process with extremely robust and flexible systems that enables teams to better adapt commission plans, workflows, and outcomes to changing business needs.
Many companies have different commission structures that require heavy data calculations that are mission critical; the accuracy of these calculations are relied on for insights, and payroll.
Folks typically rely on manual and error-prone spreadsheets, or strict and expensive legacy solutions. With CaptivateIQ, companies can centralize all commissions management within a system that provides revenue-focused teams with the data and insights they need to make informed decisions and develop winning strategies.
Read more about CaptivateIQ backstory, and what’s next.
It’s a very interesting, complex, and essential space to build solutions for, and have impact within.
Culture
Reviewing CaptivateIQ’s Glassdoor profile, culture is a recurring theme. Keywords like transparent, respectful, diverse, inclusive, supportive, collaborative, intentional, caring, and more stand out. The career page on the website also shares more about the company’s culture.
The thing that stoodout the most to me was the level of transparency provided across the organization. Everyone at CaptivateIQ is kept up-to-date on how the business is doing, progress on things, and have the opportunity to support where applicable. To me, this level of trust and openness highlights good faith, confidence, and community (we’re in it together).
What’s Next?
Duuring my first week at CaptivateIQ, I flew out to the Bay area for an offsite with the product team (note: CaptivateIQ is remote-first). It was a great week filled with planning, conversation, eating, and fun.
Here are some pictures from the offsite 😎.
Since the offsite, I’ve been deep in discovery/getting up to speed—doing a listening tour, gathering context, joining meetings, and learning—and will be shifting gears shortly.
One area I’ll be actively working on is growing the design team.
We’re hiring!
We’re looking for great folks to join the team and help with transforming the incentive compensation management (ICM) space.
If you’re a Product Designer, Senior Product Designer, or Lead Product Designer who is looking for a new opportunity to work with an outstanding team, healthy organization with a great culture, and on something interesting, challenging and fulfilling, let’s chat!
We can connect on Linkedin, Twitter—send me a DM on either—or you can send me a good ol’ fashion email.
Also, we’re hiring for many other roles across the org; Data Analyst, Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, and Director of PM are a few roles we’re actively looking to fill. If you’re interested in learning more about CaptivateIQ, or you maybe you know someone, I’d love to connect.
I’m very excited about the future of CaptivateIQ, the space, and the team. We’re building something incredible.