DataBaller's Origin Story
After being unexpectedly laid off from Stripe and while searching for a new gig, a marketing technology executive builds a powerful new marketing platform.
In September 2022, I left my job as the Global Head of Marketing Technology Operations at Canva to start a new gig as Head of Marketing Technology at Stripe. I admired and respected Stripe, the complex problems they were solving, the talent they were hiring, the vision of the owners, and how they ran the company. But before even finishing all the HR and legal onboarding videos, after being there for less than four weeks, I got the unwelcome "Your Role at Stripe" email in which I learned that I had been laid off along with over 1,000 other people due to a 14% reduction in their workforce.
The severance was tremendous, I could keep my total sign-on bonus, and they included funds for a new computer and extended health coverage. They handled it well, a class act. My brief time at Stripe was my professional career's most lucrative four weeks, which gave me a cushion to consider my next move.
I hoped to find another leadership role with a growing company where I could make an impact. Reflecting, I realized that my passions and skills are best suited for technical product development and leadership, which I had done for many years at Amazon and Activision. Through my work at AWS and Canva and then at Stripe, I found my way into operations roles, which took advantage of only some of the skills I offer. Early in my job search, I found that while there was some interest in my candidacy for marketing operations roles, my resume needed to reflect my strength as a technical product development leader. This competency was not evident in my operations positions at Canva and Stripe. I needed to take the time I had while searching to create a new narrative for my resume. Of course, my job search was not helped by a job market flooded with waves of exceptional talent from top-tier companies as the tech giants embraced "efficiency," but I'm inclined to focus on the things that are within my control.
In that context, there were significant challenges that I had observed from my time in the various operations roles that could be addressed by a system I had in mind, waiting for an opportunity to build - an evolution of some of the work I had done at Amazon - a new marketing, technology, persuasion, and engagement platform. So I took some time to sit down and think about what this new iteration would look like, write a bit of code, build up the concept, and validate these ideas I have been thinking about.
The principal notion is that a dynamic behavioral graph of actions and their value relationships can be the basis of a real-time decision-making framework embedded into a single centralized set of high-performance APIs creating the experience glue that can easily be integrated across a marketing technology ecosystem. This would allow marketing technology organizations to overcome some of their most significant challenges, such as message orchestration and coordination, proper campaign selection and triage, and overall scaling of operations to improve customer engagement significantly. The idea of centralized decision-making to drive customer journeys is not entirely new; however, using the derived value in consumer action relationships as the currency unit in behavior modeling is unique.
And so, as I started building out the proof of concept, the APIs, and the logic behind how that would work, the whole endeavor took on a life of its own. I no longer wanted to prove that I could engineer a simple solution but could architect a viable MVP that I would feel good bringing to market. The next thing I knew, I had a fully functional API that was ingesting events, creating recommendations, and operating as envisioned. During this time, my job search produced few interviews, and the options were slim, so I kept writing code. The time I was spending was valuable, and I was investing in something that could have some legs and produce real value. So I gave it a name, ActionHub, and got to thinking about how I can get some adoption and find folks that may want to use it, and that is what lead me to build a Shopify app.
I've worn many hats throughout my career, including software developer, solutions architect, data analyst, project manager, product manager, and operations leader. I have always been a pretty good Python scripter and quite the expert in SQL, as well as a solid AWS architect. These technologies have been necessary throughout my career for handling operations, self-serve problem solving, building prototypes, and showing data-driven solutions as a product manager. But now, as a part of the product development process for ActionHub and my engineering contributions, I've had to go expert level across the board. I had some experience with JavaScript frameworks, having worked with Vue.js and Angular in the past for other small side-projects I had over the years but with the Shopify app, I got to dive into understanding React and Node, and I consider myself to be pretty good with those technologies now. From the standpoint of upgrading skills, mission accomplished.
The unexpected outcome has been something durable, unique, and valuable. And so now, seven months later, I've set up a shop as DataBaller and, in ActionHub, have a production-ready product. The ActionHub platform now includes a high-performance API, client utilities, and "plug-and-play" integration apps for select supported platforms. I want companies to use ActionHub because I believe strongly in its ability to impact small, medium, and large companies who wish to improve their engagement and see results in their marketing efforts—the Action-based Framework. I'm excited to see what this thing can do. I'm excited for the companies that use it that will see great results. I'm eager to bring folks on board and grow the team.
I'm also excited to share my experience with others. I've learned a lot and gained some insights others may find valuable. I’m still, more than ever, ready to have a positive impact on growing companies. That just might look a little different than originally planned.