Global Tech Leaders' Podcast podcast

Brian Vallelunga, CEO of Doppler, shares how they are building a whole new category.

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In today’s episode we speak to Brian Vallelunga. “Managing secrets is a very unsexy space,” acknowledges Doppler CEO Brian Vallelunga, recently featured in Forbes 30 Under 30.

At scale, Doppler helps developers maximize time building core applications rather than worrying about secrets management. Brian raised 2.3M in a seed round from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, engaging Peter Thiel. Recently raised from Google, another 6.5M and brought some amazing investors as well.

We kick start this episode by asking Brian to tell us more about his career journey, the bumps along the way and what has led him to this point:

  • Something that was pivotal for Brian, as a kid government use to do these trips where you travel to a new place and learn the culture
  • Opened his eyes young to see how big the world is
  • He was picked on a lot
  • Fell in love with building things with technology
  • Was not a great student, pretended to take notes but was actually coding
  • Started working in high school as a software engineer for 3 years
  • Got a internship offer from Uber
  • Learnt so much so quickly - as an intern he would visit executive meetings and just listen

We ask Brian to share more on secret management and why it excites him:

  • Universal secrets manager - help developers store very sensitive data

Then we ask Brian what does the scale journey look like for Doppler:

  • Long term right approach, chose the very best
  • Building blocks - high passion, ownership and great at what they do

We then ask Brian, where does the next 3, 5 and 10 years look like for Doppler:

  • Pouring concrete right now
  • Stores, management and automation
  • Building a whole new category
  • Change the industry

Then we move over to leadership and we ask Brian how does he bestow his ethos:

  • Culture is how people operate while the CEO is not in the room
  • Spend a lot of time on onboarding
  • Hire in waves

We have Brian dive deeper into onboarding and that their process is like:

  • Company notion doc
  • Code instruct machines and docs instruct people
  • The new people have a 121 with everyone in the company
  • Weekly events and team bonding
  • Emulate it and then do it
  • Once every 3 months, fly people in groups to the office all inclusive and make them feel like their having a 6 star experience
  • Memorable experiences
  • Make vegetables taste like candy

Lastly, we ask Brian what are his go to gadgets:

  • Buy very few but pricey and keep them forever
  • Loves his Apple watch
  • Tonal
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