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Episode 14
With Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty
By Ashu Garg
09.23.2019
Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, puts people and relationships at the forefront of her business strategy. In this episode of the podcast, she tells me what she’s learned as a two-time CEO and how important it is to create a good company culture with diverse talent.
Jennifer Tejada has been the CEO of PagerDuty, an operations manager software for cloud-based services, since 2016. In April 2019, she led the company to its IPO, where it was valued at $1.8 billion. PagerDuty was Jennifer’s second CEO rodeo; she also headed up Keynote Systems from 2013 to 2015. Jennifer draws on her marketing background to put people and relationships at the forefront of her business strategy. In this episode of the podcast, she tells me what she’s learned as a two-time CEO and how important it is to create a good company culture with diverse talent.
As a first-time CEO, Jennifer says she expected everything to be perfect, from both herself and her team. When things went wrong, she didn’t handle it as well as she could have.
Jennifer realized:
How you build and manage your board of directors may determine the direction of your company. For instance, if a private equity firm is your sole investor, you will have to do what that firm wants, and hire people who align with that vision.
Jennifer realized:
This industry places more importance on the product your company produces than the people who produce it. Jennifer thinks it should be the other way around; all about the people.
Jennifer realized:
Each room in PagerDuty’s office has a poster declaring its five values:
Employees know this is what’s expected of them and their co-workers.
Jennifer realized:
A good company culture must come from the top. If you get the culture right, you’ll attract and retain the best talent. Good strategy and product will come from those people.
Most Silicon Valley companies struggle to find diverse talent, claiming that there just isn’t any in the pipeline. Some see it as an afterthought and not part of a good business strategy.
Jennifer realized:
Published on 09.23.2019
Written by Ashu Garg