CTO Wisdom with Sushma Nallapeta | Beyond the Program

Tim Winkler: 00:00:00

Hey, listeners, Tim Winkler here, your host of The Pair Program. We've got exciting news introducing our latest partner series Beyond the Program. In these special episodes, we're passing the mic to some of our savvy former guests who are returning as guest hosts, get ready for unfiltered conversations, exclusive insights, and unexpected twist as our alumni pair up with their chosen guest. Each guest host is a trailblazing expert in a unique technical field. Think data, product management, and engineering, all with a keen focus on startups and career growth. Look out for these bonus episodes dropping every other week, bridging the gaps between our traditional pair program episodes. So buckle up and get ready to venture Beyond the Program. Enjoy.

Eric Brooke: 00:00:53

Welcome to CTO Wisdom. My name is Eric Brooke. This series will talk to leaders of technology at organizations. We'll understand their career, what was successful and what was not and what they learned along the way. We'll also look at what the tech market is doing today. We'll understand where they gather their intelligence so they can grow and scale with their organizations. Welcome. My name is Eric Brookee and welcome to CTO Wisdom today with Sue. Hey, Sue.

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:01:31

Hi, Eric. Nice to be talking to you today

Eric Brooke: 00:01:34

and to you. Thank you for coming on today. Could you give me your elevator pitch, please?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:01:41

Yes, I am soon. I'll update. I'm currently the CTO at trusted health. Trusted. Health is a health care marketplace company, a leading labor marketplace and workforce management platform for health care workforce. We mainly focus on travel nurses and allied professionals. Our mission is to help people everywhere, get care and we are transforming the travel industry and making it more modern. We are a CDC company and 300 employees, a hundred people in engineering.

Eric Brooke: 00:02:16

Cool. Thank you for that. Um, let's talk about your journey. What was it like when you started in your journey? What were you passionate about in technology? How did you get started?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:02:27

It's a funny story. Actually, two names come to my mind, uh, when I think about how I got into technology. It's Dave and Keen. They're not people. They are characters in a very famous DOS game back in the day, in late 1980s. Um, I think mid nineties, early nineties timeframe. I grew up in India. I got access to computers when I was in middle school and I was super crazy about games. Every time I got a chance, you know, uh, to go to the lab, we would just go type in some DOS commands and then start playing some DOS games. And so that was a thing. Um, I, that's what kind of got me super excited to continue to explore the world of computer science. And, uh, I also wanted to study computer science. So, which I did, I did my bachelor's in India. I was at that time, I was super impressed when the IBM's deep blue program came out where it defeated a very famous chess player and then IBM Watson happened. So I was following that. Uh, journey and that got me super excited to pursue the world of A. I. If you think about, um, you know, A. I. has been around for a long time and, uh, IBM actually was a pioneer in a lot of stuff that they tried back in the day. So that got me excited. Then I came to the United States, uh, to pursue my graduate degree. And, uh, and that's where my technology journey began.

Eric Brooke: 00:03:55

Um, so you got, you're in America, you're working, um, as a software engineer. And, Question mark.

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:04:01

Yeah. So, uh, initially I was doing research under a couple of professors back in, uh, university of Texas. Uh, and then, uh, after that, when I graduated, it was 2000, uh, December 2007 job market was in a very bad state, uh, at that time. So, and then, so I got into consulting. So I was doing a lot of, uh, I joined as a software engineer. I was doing a lot of e commerce. Uh, software building and it gave me a very strong foundation because especially when you're in consulting, you're already talking to customers. You're trying to understand their problem. You're trying to figure out different technologies, different choices of languages, and so it gave me a breadth as well as depth, uh, early on in my career that I was very fortunate for. I did everything from Lotus Notes administration, if you remember Lotus Notes. To front end back in development, all of those things, um, and, uh, you know, I was very excited about learning new things and new technologies. And slowly, as I started interacting more and more with customers, that's where I started to feel. Passion for really connecting business and technology and and then people. So it's really the, um, uh, attachment of all the things.

Eric Brooke: 00:05:23

Awesome. So you're traveling a journey as an engineer, like, um, at what stage did you start considering about managing humans?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:05:34

Yep. When I was at that company, I started to kind of play the role of a tech lead. And so, uh, and the more, uh, the more I started to play that role, uh, and started to mentor junior engineers, I kind of knew like, I'm really passionate about management. I wanted to bring the best in people. And I often found myself not just telling them, Hey, do this project, do this work, but connecting the dots. It's like, here's the end goal. We're building an e commerce site. Here's how many people it's going to serve. Like, here's the product and why that's important, what the company is trying to do, and then connect the dot back to, if you build this one feature, what's the impact that you're going to have? Uh, and so that's when I didn't even know what management was uh, back then. So I was like, but this is something that I want to do. I did, I talked to some people, did some research. I was like, okay I want to be a manager. I went and talked to my boss, um, and said, I want to be a manager. And he's like, you're crazy. Uh, management is like, you know, uh, useless. You, you are a very good techie. You should pursue that out of architecture and be, be an architect someday. And so then I slept on it for six more months. I was like, no, I really want to be. a manager and that became more and more real. Um, so then I actually, uh, joined Kodak Gallery, uh, which was a startup at that time acquired and owned by Eastman Kodak, um, the, the camera and film company, uh, as a manager.

Eric Brooke: 00:07:02

So what were the things that you would say in hindsight that you'd learned from the transition from engineer to manager that you didn't necessarily perceive at the beginning?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:07:11

Um, I think one, obviously, when I first became a manager, uh, what became very obvious to me is. It's always about people. It's always about managing expectations, and it has nothing to do with your actual software engineering skill set. For a long time, I tried to really stay close to technology, really keep my hands dirty, do a lot of hands on coding and stuff, but then I was actually not doing a lot of, like, different parts of my job. Which is managing stakeholder expectations, sometimes really figuring out a delivery and really figuring out processes and things like that. And I think that was a huge realization for me. Um, the second big thing that became very obvious is how do I manage up? Because a lot of times it's very easy to manage down, manage out. You're always, you're talking to your team all the time. Uh, you have built a solid relationship. But really struggled a lot with managing up and figuring out exactly, like, what type of information to send upwards? What makes sense? And what do they want to hear? What are their goals? And how do I make sure that I'm connecting the dots and stuff? So that those were some very early learnings. One interesting thing that happened is, The company went through bankruptcy. The parent company, Kodak, went through bankruptcy. So our company that focused on e commerce photo products, we went through a series of, uh, you know, uh, situations where we didn't know what was going to happen. If we were going to survive, if we were going to become independent, are we going to get sold? Are we going to get shut down? So we didn't know that. And so the leadership actually had us all focus on building a brand new product and which we did. And so we're just going through that adversity and figuring out how to lead a team, because you can be too transparent and say, we actually don't know if we could shut down in 3 months, but you also have to balance that with motivation. It's like, okay, you have nothing. To gain other than experience, and you literally could have no job in three months, but let's all get excited and do this one last thing. Um, so that was, I think, years of learning bagged into a few months.

Eric Brooke: 00:09:32

Yeah, absolutely. Very stressful, but a great opportunity at the same time. How did it pan out?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:09:39

The company actually, so we launched this new product. It was a huge success. Unfortunately, the parent company had sold us off to shut or fly, which was a competitor. And it was like, just for peanuts. They just wanted to acquire the website and technology. Um, and so everybody pretty much lost their jobs. Uh, but I think having having gone through that, I think the whole company had bonded and we had really accomplished something before we actually left. So everybody had picked up new skills. Everybody had learned a lot of managing through difficult situation. So. Uh, we all went on to find other jobs and, uh, figure out our next, uh, journey.

Eric Brooke: 00:10:21

Cool. What happens next?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:10:23

So I was on a, uh, a visa and I came close to like, you know, uh, almost getting out of the country because I couldn't find another job. And here I was like one year of management experience. Um, and you know, everybody was like offering me IC roles and I struggled to really figure it out. Uh, you know, do I want to go back to being individual contributor or do I want to stay in management? My passion was with management. And I knew I didn't want to go back, but the opportunities surrounding me, me were, um, you know, all I see roles and it was a desperate situation. Uh, however, I kind of continue to tell myself and just learn new skills, keep trying, and then, uh, I did get a job as an engineering manager, uh, at Blackhawk network, which was a payments and a gift card company, and it was still private when I joined, um, and. Pretty soon we went public and went through a rapid growth. I went from taking on one team to two to three and four and continue to learn a lot of things along the way. And we also went through a lot of, um, acquisitions and MNA where we acquired, I think, almost 10 companies when I was there. Uh, so really figuring out how to merge the tech stacks, um, and how to just go through scale and grow was. A lot of learning again,

Eric Brooke: 00:11:50

so could I go back to that moment when you're kind of adding teams so you get to your third and your fourth team? What are the things that you felt that you had to do differently as an engineer manager? Because that's obviously a lot workload. Can you remember, like, what were the things that you changed?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:12:08

I think number one, like, you really figured out pretty quickly that you cannot really be an expert in every technology that the team is working on. So initially I had, I was managing like a full stack, but mostly front end team. And then I took on mobile. And I had never worked in mobile, uh, neither iOS or Android. And this was my first time. And I had to really manage a team and learn to manage a team for a technology that I do not even know how to, um, go about. And then that that's one thing that comes along with it. And then very soon you need to start scaling yourself up. Uh, it's very easy to manage. Maybe a couple of teams have even managed like almost 13, 14 people directly at one point. And, but very soon it's not scalable. You can't go through 14 performance reviews, have career conversations. Some point you need to start figuring out how to build leaders or you'd hire leaders from outside or build them yourself. And, and a lot of times you're like, what type of leader do I want? How do I even go about. Building those leaders. So I think those were some interesting questions that went through my mind at that time. It's how do I create redundancy? Um, and then when I brought on those managers, and now I had four teams, four managers reporting to me, and then I went through this phase almost like for a few weeks and a month, not knowing what my role was anymore. Because I was like, Okay, now I don't know what's happening. All these managers are capable. They're all doing their things now. So what should be my role? How do I guide them? Am I even needed at this point? And it took a while for me to figure out that actually now it's no longer about execution, but it's also connecting. The strategy with execution and there is nobody in between to do that. And that's the role that I need to be playing. So it took a while to really click, um, that that's what I need to be doing.

Eric Brooke: 00:14:06

So, yeah, let's explore that further. Cause it's quite a, a step change. One minute you're in kind of direct contact with people and the next minute you're managing through managers. So in hindsight, um, when looking back at managing managers, what did you learn from that journey?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:14:25

It was a very interesting journey. When I started to take on these managers, I think one of the first things I realized is you cannot really have a full understanding of everything everybody is doing. And you have to figure out one, how to get that information from your manager to how to enable your manager and give them space to make those decisions that you no longer are privy to. Thank you. And then three, you also have to figure out how to remove their blind spots. And so that's a little tricky because one, you don't know if you need to wait for your manager to come to you, uh, with problems or do you, or you see the problem happening, do you just dive right in and start to help them out? And I think it takes a little bit of time to balance that out. So I went through those struggles myself. It's, uh, I have micromanaged sometimes and annoyed my managers. I've empowered too much and then also suffered from them not giving me the right information and me communicating the wrong information upward and so on. So it's, um, those are some interesting challenges that you go through when you're managing managers. And the 2nd thing is also about understanding the sphere of influence. It's, if you're a manager, your sphere is probably limited to your team and the stakeholders like PMs that you closely work with. But as you go to managing managers, now your sphere has just exploded. It's no longer just your team and their stakeholders, but you have your own stakeholders and you also have upper management that you need to manage. And so you have to figure out different types of communication across all these different levels.

Eric Brooke: 00:16:07

Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's a very different type of work, as you rightly say. So that's great. Okay, continue the journey for us, please, Sue.

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:16:16

Yeah, so I was there for almost five years. I managed managers, built a lot of systems, scale systems. And I felt like I was missing, um, really like figuring out what being an executive looks like, or even furthering my leadership journey. Uh, at that time, um, you know, uh, I had a couple of opportunities to pursue and I was very excited about, uh, you know, consumer in general, consumer tech impacting millions of people. So I joined this online dating company called Zoosk. Okay. And it was very exciting problem to solve. I joined them as a senior director. Uh, I was, I had taken on like all of the applications teams and they were going through a very interesting phase, um, because they had gone through a big growth journey. Uh, they had tried an IPO and at that time decided IPO was not, they were not ready for an IPO. I had stopped and then they were continuing to really make their operations super efficient. And so I joined at that juncture. Uh, so they were, I think, half mature and half, like, chaotic. So it was like a perfect blend for me to come and solve some problems and bring some calm to the chaos. And then also learn from things that are really working and figuring out how to continue to scale and enable that. Um, I, I think I was in that role probably for nine, ten months. Uh, this when the company went through a lot of changes, the CEO left the my of engineering left and then immediately the interim CEO is like, hey, I need you to take on, uh, being the head of engineering and my 1st response to him was. I don't know if I can do this. And so then both my SVP and, uh, who was leaving. And then the CEO was like, one, we absolutely believe you can do this. That's why we are asking you to take this on and to don't ever say that to a CEO again, even if you don't know how to do something, it's okay. You have to always show confidence. So that was my first. Learning of, um, you know, how executive communication actually works and how you should always show up. Uh, and I think that lesson has I've taken on that lesson at the board level and across. Um, various different levels. I took on, uh, the head of engineering role. I took on every pretty much all of the team's infrastructure data engineering. Um, you know, we were also migrating from a data center to cloud. So we had all these tech ops folks as well. So there was a huge, um, migration plan that we were taking on. And security, because it was an online dating site. We had a ton of personal information. We were always prone to attacks people trying to do account takeovers and stuff. So really like dive into like 5 different areas that I'd never managed before. And especially security. And with all these problems, I was playing the role of a CISO, I was playing the role of a CTO and, uh, like trying to balance everything. Um, so it was a lot of learning. Uh, uh, the, finally we had a new CEO who came in, who sold the company, uh, and my journey there ended and I moved to my previous company, Apartmentalist, another marketplace business, um, which was in a renting space.

Eric Brooke: 00:19:40

So before we move on to that, talk to us about like. Um, the head of engineering, how that differed from being like the director. Now you've got all of these technologies, all of these people. Um, what were the things that you learned in that part of your journey?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:19:57

So many different, uh, lessons. I think one, you have to make, be willing to make really difficult choices. Uh, about people and, and some of these people are people that everybody loves. They have very good relationship, but you zoom out and then you start to look at the org as puzzle pieces and figure out what does not fit anymore and who are your detractors and who are the people who are really trying to push the company forward. And that's a very tough place to be because you literally went from having a lot of these people as peers to now becoming their leader and having to make some tough decisions to even like, let them go. So, I went through that immediately as I took on, I started to understand org and figure out, like, what's working, what's not working and I do. Really part ways with some senior folks, uh, in the business and, uh, try to really change up our arc structure to be more future proof and like thinking about where the company is going. And as expected, it didn't go as well because some people were excited, adverse emotional reaction to it. Uh, once I had to QA department because. I was like, we need to make sure that we're moving towards automation. The QA engineers need to have a career path, so they need to be part of the engineering team. It doesn't make sense for them to have a separate organization because always the engineers would throw things over the wall and say it's QA's problem. So I wanted to eliminate that and be more efficient. But the QA engineers were like, We don't get this. Like, why are you doing this? Why are you getting rid of a leader? And, you know, we don't want to be part of this team and so on. So it took a while and a lot of messaging and building confidence in the teams of what exactly I was trying to do and why it was important. And honestly, like, I didn't even know if I made those right decisions until I actually left the company. And then some of these engineers reached out and said that was the best decision ever because they, they had all changed their careers. They had moved on and learned new skills and. And they had moved on to become software engineers from QA.

Eric Brooke: 00:22:08

Yeah. Change is difficult for all humans. Um, but it does give us opportunities if we can free frame it in our own mind. So love to hear that. So you've gone to your next organization, as you said, after this organization, tell us about that.

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:22:23

Yes. So, um, it was founder led, uh, one of the co founders, uh, hired me, uh, uh, and then, uh, you know, I was leading all of engineering. The team was pretty small when I came in, it was about 25. So I'd gone from managing a bigger team to a smaller team. Um, but the company was growing pretty quickly in my first year. I think I doubled the team. And then again, second year, another significant growth milestone, and we had to double the team again. Um, but while doing all of that, I think what I realized one, the way we were doing product management was also very different. Um, we were, we had a lot of traffic, so we were, we were able to run a lot of tests, how our approach to product strategy, our approach to design. Everything was different from what I had been used to. So that was a lot of exciting learning in those years. And then pandemic hit. And it was a whole new world. The company went from, you know, being in person to completely remote and we, I'm going through this phase of unknown because if you think about pandemic and rental industry, nobody was moving for like a period of 45 months. So the macro was like, really in a bad shape and we didn't know how long it was going to last. People were just staying put where they were. Nobody was paying rent. Nobody was like, you know, changing leases. So, the property managers were complaining to us saying, you know, I can't even evict anyone who's not paying rent and then no new renters were moving. So, we went through a very tough phase. Um, and, you know, we had to, uh, do layoffs and, you know, doing my first layoff was very hard because, you know, we got to a point where we were like, okay, you know, you start to have an approach and a method to doing these layoffs. There's never a right way, but you kind of start to pick your list. You talk to your managers and figure out, uh, you know, um, who are the people and stuff, but eventually you get to a place where you need to go deep deeper. And then when you have to cut even deeper, then you have all these hard conversations. And 1 such conversation was with 1 of my directors, where we were trying to make a decision of do I cut a manager or like, do I cut an engineer? And then he basically said. No, let let me volunteer for it like you need all these people. These are great, but you don't need another layer or at least a period of time. So let me volunteer. I'll be part of this. I'll help you transition. And that was a very hard thing for me, because if someone that I saw highly, um, you know, like, basically volunteer himself. So going through that was like, again, a whole new experience and lesson. And then, you know, uh, the company turned around after the pandemic, things started to go well. Um, and I also started to get involved a lot more within product and I got a lot of opportunity to kind of really figure out how to drive business outcomes through technology. And we've did a lot of initiatives that really contributed to top line growth. That was super exciting. Um, and so that was my, I think almost four year journey at ApartmentList.

Eric Brooke: 00:25:33

Wow. Um, Courage from your director, um, but also a tough time for anyone in leadership during COVID, let alone the people that obviously are laid off. Um, after the layoff, how did the team do? What were the things that you felt that you and what was left of management had to do to support the current team, um, that was still employed?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:25:58

I think the biggest fear that the team goes through is, is this done? Uh, like they're, they're always looking, uh, around their shoulder, figuring out when is the next one coming, what's going to happen, that fear of unknown. Number one, and then two, as leadership, we have to do a lot to build that confidence. Yes, we made, uh, we took a big decision to eliminate a lot of roles in the company. And, and, but now what, like, what is our strategy and why do we think eliminating these roles is actually going to help us in the near term when we need to do all these things and we need all the people to help build those things. So, I think that is very key, especially as an executive team to build that confidence, but to do a lot of that, like, understanding what our strategy is figuring out, like, how to communicate it and then seeing that over and over again. Because you're never done, uh, you have to repeat it, uh, until, like, people really get it. Like, when you start getting tired of repeating it, now you know that you've done your job and then they got it. Um, so, I think those are a couple of big things that stand out to me, especially after, like, the riff and the layoff. And then starting to build the team back up. Because it's 1 part is, yes, you eliminated the role you're done. But then again, when the next performance review cycle comes, how do you measure performance? How do you set them up for success? Now, if you have a manager who had 4 or 5 people, and now they have 2, like, how do you kind of build their career growth? And what does that look like? Because you have a lot of people in leadership positions and management positions, Who associate growth to the number of people that they manage or their scope. And so, but in an environment that is super constrained, you have to change the dynamics of that role and really like helping them understand that here are some new skills that you can pick up and this is going to be helpful for you in the long run. And here's how and connecting those dots is going to become critical.

Eric Brooke: 00:27:58

Thank you for sharing that wisdom. Okay, so what's next in your journey?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:28:03

I'm, uh, that's what brought me to Trusted. And, you know, I've, I've always tried to solve problems that help people. It was one, at Zeus, like, uh, connecting different people. At Apartmentless, it was helping people find homes. And now, finally, I'm helping people find care. Um, so I was super excited about the mission and, uh, I generally love marketplace businesses. And I think what was unique about Trusted is one, the segment that they were really trying to help because coming out of COVID, you realize like the biggest shortage in nurses, nurses are burnt out. Even normal times, and a lot of nurses had to come out of retirement to support the covert, uh, search at that time. So really trying to help, um, move the needle and help these nurses, um, find, uh, care, help people, help patients find get faster is something that, uh, resonated with. So that was exciting. And then also, we, uh, had a unique setup. We have a marketplace business and enterprise business. I had been with enterprise almost like three companies ago and, and that was in FinTech. Um, so I was like very excited about trying to marry the two, like, how can I take this consumer side of the business and connect the dots with the enterprise side? And how can this become a strong mode for the company? And. Um, so that was what brought me to Trusted. Now I've been here for a year and, uh, it's been an exciting journey.

Eric Brooke: 00:29:34

So you're a CTO now, what would you say is the difference between that and being a head of engineering or like a VP of engineering?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:29:42

I think, uh, I think the biggest thing is playing that strategic role and understanding that the buck stops with you. Uh, I think the. When I say the buck stops with you, you have to be willing to make all types of decisions, whether it's tough decision, whether it is like, you know, budget decisions, whether it is the strategy, like be willing to fill in the gaps wherever possible. The big difference between head of engineering and CTO, again, there could be differences depending on the size of the company. At least in my own experience, Zeus was a lot smaller, the role that I was playing while strategic, but a lot of it focused on, uh, like managing, um, you know, the team execution, really fixing a bunch of stuff that was broken, uh, focusing on people process and tech at large. Now as a CTO, it's a lot of that plus. Really understanding what is a competitive advantage understanding, like, you know, you're not just a functional leader, but you're also a business leader. So really trying to figure out how can I help my peers. Uh, in some of the problems that they are facing, we had a huge initiative last year where engineering finance partnered up to really like, look at our, um, you know, how we do payroll, how we actually, like, measure, um, our gross margin and things like that and did a lot of efficient, um, uh, efficiency improvements on that side. And then the third part of it is also external facing. Like, how can you keep up with the industry? What trends? Uh, are going on and how can that be a huge advantage? Uh, and right now, I'm dealing with a lot of build versus buy decisions, especially in a macro environment that is getting tighter and tighter. You have to focus on operational efficiency, and you have to figure out a look at all your software and figure out where your engineers time is going in and see if it's worthwhile to invest those engineers, building those systems, or should you just replace and buy it? And have them focus on something that is a clear business differentiation as well. So, uh, those are some key differences in my experience.

Eric Brooke: 00:32:02

Thank you, Sue. Um, so when you think about success, what does it look like for you and what has helped you be successful?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:32:12

When I think about success, I think success has the definition of success has changed depending on which company and what role that I have played. The success for me now is very closely aligned with the company success. So it's like, if we can really, um, you know, come out of this macro continue to really help people find care faster and reduce that time to care component. Uh, that to me is success. And personally, if I can help the company go through that journey and like be a strong player, and then eventually like, you know, um, take the company public. That to me is success. When I was in some of my previous roles, like when I was a manager, success to me was becoming a CTO. Um, not knowing what that looked like, or, you know, success to me was, Just my own, um, like career journey success to me was I have to go from managing maybe one team to multiple teams that to go from managing a function that I never managed before and so on. So, um, the definitions of success change for people as they go through different companies and roles.

Eric Brooke: 00:33:23

And what has helped you be successful in your journey?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:33:29

Um, I think one really, uh, when I was an engineering manager, what I really focused on was understanding the business. I was all, because I came from that consulting background, I always wanted to know the why behind everything. That helped me form strong partnerships with people. Like I, when I was an engineering manager, I was like great friends with the security team. And nobody's usually great friends with security team. Um, because I really try to understand why, you know, they wanted us to do code scans and why they wanted us to find vulnerabilities even before it got to production. I got firsthand on what type of attacks they're trying to prevent and why that's important and so on. I tried to go deep and understand their pain points that helped me put the right processes in place so that, you know, it's not an afterthought, but it's more proactive. Our engineers are trained to actually, like, look at some of these things as they're building software versus after the fact. The same thing I spent, I used to spend a lot of time with marketing, customer success, risk, trying to understand the different nuances of the business. And I think that's, is a key differentiation that I feel helped me really succeed because I was able to carry that trade across other companies, because when you become an executive. Uh, your entire skill is around understanding the business and understanding your customer base. And if you can do that internally, you can apply the same thing externally as well.

Eric Brooke: 00:34:59

Thank you. Invaluable lessons there. So, um, what do you, what is your interaction with the executive look like? What, how does it feel to be in the exec? What are the things that help you to be a successful executive?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:35:14

You know, it's, it's so interesting that a lot of my team members sometimes ask me what happens in those meetings? Like, what do you guys talk about? Um, I think, you know, half of that time is actually spent on really like, we are the first team, like, there is a concept of the first team. So who is your first team? And how are you building that relationship and trust? I'm a big fan of the five dysfunctions. So, we do spend a lot of time at least I, I have, uh, in the last 3 companies that have been part of the executive team on like, just building that trust, building that collaboration, understanding and building that empathy with each other. Uh, so that's a lot of that. And then, uh, the 2nd aspect of it is. Really figuring out and in any given week, what are some of, um, uh, the, uh, headwinds tailwinds that are impacting the business. Um, because we all need to look at our outcomes that each of us are responsible for and really try to connect the dots across the whole business and say, Hey, this is what's happening on this side. And this is what's happening on this side. And, and then once you kind of start sharing and looking at. The bigger picture holistically, you start to find solutions. Um, so, uh, you know, uh, my, a lot of my interaction is relationship building, really understanding, um, what some of their pain points are and figuring out how technology can solve those problems.

Eric Brooke: 00:36:40

Um, so in terms of like, beyond the exec to the board, um, what would you say that you've learned about your interactions with the board for, um, an executive?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:36:52

Yeah, so I think for me, I, again, I apply the same relationship management to the board as well, but with board, it's a, it's slightly different. I think you have different types of members of the board. There are investors, and then sometimes there are independent board members when you're interacting with investors, a lot of times, it's 1. they want to understand financials. They want to understand the work that you're doing. How does it impact either top line or bottom line? And sometimes I've also had interactions with investors where they might have. Actually, come across some company in their portfolio, and the thing that could help solve the problem that we have, and they sometimes connect the dot. They want me to have a discussion with that a company and give them an understanding of whether it can help us or not. So, that's part of half of the equation. The other half, especially with independent board members, they have a lot of insight. The reason we companies bring on independent board members is for their experience of running such a company in the past or experience that can closely relate to the industry that we are in. And a lot of the interaction there is just getting advice and figuring out what worked for them and what did not and really listening and understanding and figuring out what can you actually take and apply. At your company, versus what might be something like a lesson that you have learned that you can share with them as well. Um, so a lot of my interaction with the board is around giving and receiving, uh, information and advice.

Eric Brooke: 00:38:24

Awesome. Um, so if we take a look, what are you seeing, Sue, across the wider tech market, um, today, January, oh, sorry, February, um, 2024?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:38:37

What, I think, one, obviously, everybody's talking about AI, um, so that is definitely, uh, intriguing for me, um, because, you know, I started my AI journey, like, 15, 20 years ago, and at that time, it was super rudimentary. You would get so excited by just. You know, uh, analyzing, uh, text a lots and lots of text and making sense of that text. And now, uh, chat GPT makes what we were doing for months, uh, very easy and get it in a fraction of milliseconds. So I think that evolution is definitely something that I'm keeping an eye on. But most importantly, I think where it can really help is to streamline your internal Operational efficiency, I think, in this climate, all companies are looking to cut cost, focus on profitability, uh, not growth at all costs, like, really making sure that you have product market fit, you continue to have that mode. And if you lose it, try to find. Uh, different competitive advantage and then really streamline your operations so that you can be profitable and I can definitely I think a lot of times people think of as like the school is the application that interacts with customers and can do a lot of good stuff. Yes, it can do all of that, but it can also help. Operationalize a lot of your internal inefficiencies. So we've been experimenting with that. How can we, uh, you know, uh, we have a lot of, uh, manual mechanical Turk in between automation. So, how, how can we actually eliminate some of that and build intelligence so that our jobs can be curated? Much faster, like how our internal operations team has tools at their disposal that they can use and get inside so that they can interact with customers better. That's definitely something that I'm seeing in the wider market. Um, and that is revolutionary and really will probably help the decision making process, uh, go much smoother.

Eric Brooke: 00:40:38

That's awesome. Thank you for your perspective. Um, is there a problem that you're digging into or trying to understand at the moment that you're willing to share?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:40:47

Yeah, I think, um, as companies evolve, your data ecosystem becomes extremely complicated. And, and, you know, especially with startups, as they have gone through multiple stages of evolution, it becomes so key anything that you build today might not be relevant 2 years from now. And so, especially in a journey of several years, and, like, covered, uh, bombs and things like that, what ends up happening is 1 people have come and gone. The context has been lost. People have built your data model and your data, your events, all of that in a certain, with a certain understanding of where the business was at that point in time. But the business has evolved since then. So now it's like you end up not really getting the right insights for your business to be able to make effective decisions. So that, that has become a big problem. And I've seen this pattern emerge across other companies as well. Thank you. Go from having. Really good data to like a face where like used to can make sense of anything in the business. And then you invest a lot and really cleaning up your data. So we're going through an exact same problem right now. And we've been focusing on that. How can we make sure that this data governance, this data sanitization, that we can look at the data and insights and make something out of it and make the right decisions for our business and our customer. And that's been super exciting for me to just plain old dig into the database and run some queries and understand what's going on.

Eric Brooke: 00:42:20

Yeah. I love business analytics. It's a fun space and the smarter you can make it, the better for everyone. Um, um, okay. So when you think about your journey, What has helped you grow or helps you grow and what helps you scale yourself so that you're able for all the challenges? What are the things that you use to grow and scale?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:42:49

I think one, um, I am a big believer of network and community. So I have spent a lot of time, especially in the last nine to 10 years, really building a network focusing on, uh, you know, creating this group of advisors around you so that you can go to them for help. Um, so that has helped That is something that I'm really begun. I also mentor on several platforms as well. And that also helps me learn and then continue to build that network. Both ways. I think people other CTOs that I could rely on the CSOs. But also, like, directors and engineering managers and engineers, um, that I could, uh, hire at a potentially and any given point in time. So that's something that has really helped me. And I do continue to invest a lot in that. Um, and that's that's 1 and then 2, because of this network, uh, you, if you invest in really learning and understanding, you actually can understand. Where the industry is going, what are some of the problems that people are facing and then really draw parallels to your business and get this, uh, understand and learn the same lessons. Um, because a lot of times we make the same mistakes over and over and so it's better to avoid those mistakes. I've seen this as an example when I was, uh, at Blackhawk, um, you know, FinTech company, we would have to connect with a lot of different banks and legacy systems. And every legacy system works differently. Some are file based and even file formats are different. Some are XML and nobody had heard of JSON then. Um, and you know, people have like CSVs and stuff. And then there are companies that have APIs, but they might not be rest. And, you know, they're all these, uh, old school, uh, type APIs. So when you're actually building a system, You have to cater to because we are an enterprise company to cater to every nuance of all of these different businesses. And we went through that journey of building customization for everybody and then realizing, like, this is impossible to keep up. So, how about then standardizing and getting to a point where we can build a common layer, but still have customizations. And eventually we start to get big where then we start to have our own APIs that people can integrate with versus us integrating with everybody. And then I had to repeat the same thing in my previous company, and then we have and we're going through the exact same thing again now. And but when you're part of this community, and you start to share some of the same pain points that you go through, that you immediately can avoid some of these pitfalls and problems and just learn from somebody else's mistakes and experience.

Eric Brooke: 00:45:33

Yeah. Most excellent advice. You reminded me of soap there for a second. I was thinking, I don't want to have to go back to that, but yes. Um, great points. Thank you. Uh, I guess my final question is what do you do for fun, Sue?

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:45:47

I play tennis. I have a nine year old, so a lot of my time is not my time at all. Revolving around her. Um, and you know, sometimes we just go out, um, and go to a movie. We have a big movie. And during between, uh, every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas break. Uh, we have to rewatch the Harry Potter series. Like we read all the books and then we rewatch the entire series. And that's something that we just enjoy doing. And we forget all about it for the one, for the rest of the year.

Eric Brooke: 00:46:22

So thank you very much for sharing your experiences, your wisdom, and your insights. It's greatly appreciated.

Sushma Nallapeta: 00:46:28

Thank you so much, Eric. It was great to have a conversation with you.

Eric Brooke: 00:46:33

You too.

Tim Winkler: 00:46:54

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