Announcing Jon Suarez-Davis (jsd) as super{set}’s Chief Commercial Officer: jsd tells us in his own words why he's joining super{set}
“You’re leaving Big Tech? In this economy?”
I’ve fielded some version of that dubious question every day since announcing my departure from Salesforce.
I joined Salesforce 6 years ago as part of the Krux acquisition. In my time, I got to work with and learn from some of the best and brightest in the industry, first as the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Product Marketing for the Marketing Cloud, and more recently as the SVP, Marketing Strategy & Innovation.
At Salesforce, I focused on empowering marketers and growth leaders with the strategies, capabilities, and technologies to deliver exceptional brand experiences across channels and throughout the customer journey at scale - ultimately enabling companies to connect with their customers in new ways. And it was a great ride.
But the question shouldn’t be about what you are leaving; it should be about where you’re going and why?
The where is easy. I am thrilled to join super{set} as Chief Commercial Officer, where I will lead market strategy and development designed to accelerate super{set} companies’ growth in current, new, and expanding markets.
The why is also easy, but far more important. I’m locking arms with the founding partners, Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya, and the super{set} team to uncover novel ideas, liberate exceptional talent, and revolutionize how companies are founded and built. super{set} is a startup studio that founds and builds data-driven companies. We have a fund, but we only invest in companies that we found ourselves. Our focus at super{set} is turning the lessons of serial entrepreneurship into a process for founding startups in the best soil conditions imaginable.
Why super{set}, why now? I agree with my friend Vivek that there’s never been a better time to build for these three reasons:
I know what you’re thinking - is this really the right time with the world poised on the brink of recession, inflation on the rise, and software IPOs at a nadir? You bet your bottom dollar. Let me explain.
Like the adage “investment follows performance,” talent gravitates toward innovation, growth, and values. And talent is never a given.
At super{set}, it all starts with people. super{set} brings decades of experience as operators to the table and leverages that expertise to empower and mentor talent that would otherwise be locked away in the halls of a big tech company. It is an opportunity for personal growth, excitement, impact, and wealth-building: a heady combination already recruiting talent away from Big Tech.
super{set} doesn’t shy away from building companies with a mission - whether it is Eskalera improving diversity and inclusion in the workplace or Ketch tackling data stewardship online. We’re part of the Pledge 1% community, which you can read more about on our culture page.
The quest for the best talent is never-ending. Organizations like super{set}, with its portfolio of high-growth, innovative companies that offer impact, growth, values, and the potential for wealth, will be where talent moves.
Be in tech for long enough, and it’s easy to forget how early we still are in the cloud-enabled TAM.
The 2010s were about the emergence of the cloud, as data and workloads moved off-prem, making it cheaper for SaaS companies to go to market and innovate. Still, only half of IT and enterprise app spending is on cloud-based applications.
In the 2020s, innovation will move up the value chain from commodity cloud products to leveraging data+AI in almost every application: this is why the AI software category is growing 20% annually.
Data+AI isn’t a standalone category - it’s in every category. I saw first-hand how Salesforce is building data+AI features into every part of its platform to deliver more value, more quickly for its customers. Case in point is the recent announcement of Genie at Dreamforce.
Of course, Salesforce isn’t alone. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced at their Ignite conference that “going forward, every business process will be collaborative, powered by data and AI.”
Similarly, Amazon is known as “the everything store,” yet recent acquisitions as diverse as One Medical and iRobot show the importance of data + AI applications as increasingly essential growth drivers.
At super{set}, our thesis is that data eats the world: across sectors and industries. We build companies where data management and intelligence is the central tech differentiator, moat creator, and value multiplier. super{set} companies solve business problems through data generated, captured, pipelined, orchestrated, analyzed, and activated. Every super{set} company is rooted in our data-driven thesis - leveraging the tools of the data and AI revolution to solve complex business problems.
Take Habu: their clean room software makes collaboration across decentralized data safe, simple, scalable, and smart. By better orchestrating data, customers can better activate it. The market is embracing the model, from customers such as Disney, L'Oreal, and Kroger to follow-on investment from Wing, Snowflake, Norwest, Ridge, and of course, super{set}.
Data-driven isn’t only about orchestrating data. Many super{set} companies better enable others to build with data, for instance, our MLOps platform MarkovML or our automated cloud infrastructure company Kapstan. Other super{set} companies apply the data+AI toolset, for example, Spectrum Labs’ solution for content moderation or Headlamp Health’s mission to bring precision data to mental health.
The market is ready for the next wave of innovation - and that’s why super{set}’s data-driven thesis will win out as we ride the next decade of cloud-enabled growth.
Technology startups are, by nature, disruptive, and the current market turmoil represents an opportunity for a significant shift in the status quo.
Benchmark’s Bill Gurley recently said: “There have been plenty of great companies started in the troughs to suggest that there’s no reason to stop investing.” Look where the money is going: many of the most prominent investors - Coatue, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and more are all pivoting to the early stage.
When times change, the courageous and innovative survive and prosper. That is why VCs like Bill Gurley are convinced the trough is a great time to build. I recently hosted a fireside chat at Ketch’s Privacy Matters conference with Brad Jakeman, Co-Founder of Rethink Food and former President, Global Beverage Group, PepsiCo, who advised, “Now is the time to be bold and creative in your mistakes, just learn from them and don’t make the same ones more than once.”
If you’re in the business of innovation, recessions can be the kick in the pants to uncover new avenues of growth and value creation. So I’m joining super{set} to partner with the courageous and innovative to develop new markets and co-create with us on our journey to build world-changing products. We’re in this for the long haul, and a momentary recession is only an opportunity for innovation to gain a toehold.
As Tom and Vivek like to say: building companies from scratch is incredibly soul-sucking and mind-numbingly hard - but it’s the best thing ever.
A massive swathe of talent needs the right support to become game-changing entrepreneurs. The market is hungry for the type of data+AI companies that super{set} builds. And this is a time of flux when the landscape shifts and new markets emerge - perfect timing for us innovators.
I welcome you to join one of our fast-growing companies as a customer, investor, or future employee - It’s the best thing ever.
Transcript
In the first episode of The Closed Session, meet Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya, serial entrepreneurs and podcast hosts.
read moreIn the second episode of The Closed Session, Tom and Vivek discuss the framework for starting your own company from scratch, and the three dimensions that should be taken into account.
read moreYou’ve decided to launch a business, but before you hurtle blindly into the breach, you need a bulletproof plan and a perfect pitch deck to persuade your co-founders, investors, partners, and employees to follow you into the unknown.
read moreIn this episode of The Closed Session, Tom and Vivek talk about dilution, methods, mindset, benchmarks and best practices for raising investment capital for a new tech startup.
read moreNow that you've written the business plan and raised money, it's time to recruit your early team. In this episode, Tom and Vivek cover the do's and dont's of building a high-output team - who to hire, how to build chemistry and throughput, how to think about talent when your company is a toddler versus when it's an adolescent.
read moreWelcome to Season 2 of The Closed Session! In this first episode of 2020, Tom and Vivek talk about the five companies super{set} launched in 2019 and the lessons they’re learning as they go.
read more
Tom and Vivek talk about inclusion and reflect on their personal experiences as brown guys in tech. Inclusion feels like a moral imperative, but does it really make for stronger, better companies? Are there unintended consequences of acting on good intentions to 'fix' an inclusion problem at a company? Why is tech so lacking in diversity, and what can we do to get it right?
read moreWe are living in a time of extraordinary concern about the negative consequences of online platforms and social media. We worry about the damage interactive technologies cause to society; about the impact to our mental health; and about the way that these platforms and their practices play to our most destructive impulses. Too often, the experiences we have online serve only to polarize, divide, and amplify the worst of human nature.
read more
This post was written by Habu software engineer, Martín Vargas-Vega, as part of our new #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Developer Advocate, Ryan Overton, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Data Privacy & Compliance Specialist, Jocelyn Brunson, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Sales Director, Sheridan Rice, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read more
The super{set} studio model for early-stage venture It is still early days for the startup studio model. We know this because at super{set} we still get questions from experienced operators and investors. One investor that we’ve known for years recently asked us: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?”
read more
This post was written by MarkovML Co-Founder, Lindsey Meyl, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreWhere do the ideas come from? How do we build companies from scratch at super{set}?
read more
Coming up with new company ideas is easy: we take the day off, go to the park, and let the thoughts arrive like butterflies. Maybe we grab a coconut from that guy for a little buzz. While this describes a pleasant day in San Francisco, it couldn’t be further from the truth of what we do at super{set}. If only we could pull great ideas out of thin air. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.
read more
The wheel. Electricity. The automobile. These are technologies that had a disproportionate impact on the merits of their first practical use-case; but beyond that, because they enabled so much in terms of subsequent innovation, economic historians call them “general-purpose technologies” or GPTs...
read more
In our last post, we discussed how data is the new general-purpose technology and that is why at super{set} we form data-driven companies from scratch. But new technologies are a promise, not a sudden phase change.
read moreWhen a VC decides to invest in a company, they write up a document called the “Investment Memo” to convince their partners that the decision is sound. This document is a thorough analysis of the startup...
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Solutions Engineer, Sahiti Surapaneni, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreWhat does it mean to be a super{set} co-founder and who do we look for? Why is the Head of Product the first co-founder we bring on board?
read more
Considered by some to be “America’s Second Independence Day,” Juneteenth has only recently entered the national zeitgeist. Celebrated on the third Saturday in June, it became a federal holiday just last year under President Joe Biden. Many companies are left wondering how to acknowledge the holiday. We sat down with Eskalera’s co-founder Dr. Tolonda Tolbert to get her take.
read more
Has someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”? Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word! Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley...
read more
At super{set}, we stand side-by-side and pick up the shovel with our co-founders. Our first outside co-founder at a super{set} company is usually a Head of Product. Let’s unpack each portion of that title....
read more
Pankaj Rajan, co-founder at MarkovML, describes his Big Tech and startup experience and his journey to starting a company at super{set}.
read more
The decision to start a company – or to join an early stage one – is an act of the gut. On good days, I see it as a quasi-spiritual commitment. On bad days, I see it as sheer irrationality. Whichever it is, you’ll be happier if you acknowledge and calmly accept the lunacy of it all...
read moreTom and Vivek describe how building the best product is like planning the perfect heist: just like Danny Ocean, spend the time upfront to blueprint and stage, get into the casino with the insertion product, then drill into the safe and make your escape with the perfect product roadmap.
read more
Tom and Vivek discuss what the very first customers of a startup must look and act like, the staging and sequencing of setting up a sales operation with a feedback loop to product, and end with special guest Matt Kilmartin, CEO of Habu and former Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Krux, for his advice on effective entrepreneurial selling.
read more
Reflections after a summer as an engineering intern at super{set}
read more
Gal Vered of Checksum explains his rationale for leaving Google to co-found a super{set} company.
read more
The era of easy money - or at least, easy returns for VCs - is over. Tom Chavez is calling for VCs to show up in-person at August board meetings, get off the sidelines, and start adding real value and hands-on support for founders.
read more
Tom and Vivek describe what the ideal CEO looks like in the early stage, why great product people aren’t necessarily going to make great CEOs, and what the division of labor looks like between the CEO and the rest of the early team. They then bring on special guest Dane E. Holmes from super{set} company Eskalera to hear about his decision to join a super{set} company and his lessons for early-stage leadership.
read more
o11y - What is it? Why is it important? What are the tools you need? More importantly - how can you adopt an observability mindset? Habu Software Architect Siddharth Sharma reports from his session at super{summit} 2022.
read more
Othmane Rifki, Principal Applied Scientist at super{set} company Spectrum Labs, reports from the session he led at super{summit} 2022: "When Inference Meets Engineering." Using super{set} companies as examples, Othmane reveals the 3 ways that data science can benefit from engineering workflows to deliver business value.
read more
Head of Infrastructure at Ketch, and Kapstan Advisor, Anton Winter explains a few of the infrastructure and DevOps headaches he encounters every day.
read moreTom and Vivek jump on the pod for a special bonus episode to call BULLSHIT on VCs, CEOs, the “categorical shit,” and more. So strap yourselves in because the takes are HOT.
read more
The Move Accelerates the Rapidly Growing Startup Studio’s Mission to Lead the Next Generation of AI and Data-Driven Market Innovation and Success
read moreAnnouncing Jon Suarez-Davis (jsd) as super{set}’s Chief Commercial Officer: jsd tells us in his own words why he's joining super{set}
read moreTom and Vivek describe the lessons learned from fundraising at Rapt in 1999 - the height of the first internet bubble - through their experience at Krux - amid the most recent tech bubble. After sharing war stories, they describe how super{set} melds funding with hands-on entrepreneurship to set the soil conditions for long-term success.
read more
Tom and Vivek have come full circle: in this episode they’re talking about closed session board meetings in The {Closed} Session. They discuss their experience in board meetings - even some tense ones - as serial founders and how they approach board meetings today as both co-founders and seed investors of the companies coming out of the super{set} startup studio.
read more
Arthur Patterson, founder of venture capital firm Accel, sits down for a fireside chat with super{set} founding partner Tom Chavez as part of our biweekly super{set} Community Call. Arthur and Tom cover venture investing, company-building, and even some personal stories from their history together.
read moreArthur Patterson, the founder of venture capital firm Accel, sits down for a fireside chat with super{set} founding partner Tom Chavez as part of our biweekly super{set} Community Call.
read more
This month we pass the mic to Sagar Gaur, Software Engineer at super{set} MLOps company MarkovML, who shares with us his tips for working within a global startup with teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, India
read more
Arthur Patterson, legendary VC and founder of Accel Partners, sits down with Tom Chavez to discuss insights into company building. Tom and Vivek review the tape on the latest episode of The {Closed} Session.
read more
Chris Fellowes, super{set} interned turned full time employee at super{set} portfolio company Kapstan, gives his 7 recommendations for how to turn an internship into a job at a startup.
read more
Kicking off the fourth season of the {Closed} Session podcast with a great topic and guest: Frida Polli, CEO and co-founder of pymetrics, which was recently acquired by Harver, joins us to talk about the critical role that technology and specifically AI and neuroscience can play in eliminating bias in hiring and beyond.
read more
Obsessive intensity. Pack animal nature. Homegrown hero vibes. Unyielding grit. A chip on the shoulder. That's who we look for to join exceptional teams.
read more
Go-to-market has entered a new operating environment. Enter: RevOps. We dig into the next solution space for super{set}, analyzing the paradigm shift in GTM and the data challenges a new class of company must solve.
read more.jpg)
We are delighted to share our new episode of the {Closed} Session podcast with guest Alyssa Hutnik. Alyssa looms large in the privacy world, and she’s been thinking deeply about the intersections of data, technology and the law for nearly two decades. She’s also the Chief Privacy and Data Security Architect at Ketch, a super{set} company, as well as a lawyer. Hope you enjoy the episode!
read more
super{set} startup studio portfolio company’s seed funding round was led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Ulu Ventures Raise will enable boombox.io to accelerate product development on the way to becoming the winning creator platform for musicians globally
read more
On the heels of boombox.io's $7M seed fundraise led by Forerunner, Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya sit down with boombox co-founders India Lossman and Max Mathieu for a special episode straight from super{summit} 2023 in New Orleans!
read moreThis post was written by MarkovML Co-Founder, Lindsey Meyl, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreConsidered by some to be “America’s Second Independence Day,” Juneteenth has only recently entered the national zeitgeist. Celebrated on the third Saturday in June, it became a federal holiday just last year under President Joe Biden. Many companies are left wondering how to acknowledge the holiday. We sat down with Eskalera’s co-founder Dr. Tolonda Tolbert to get her take.
read moreArthur Patterson, founder of venture capital firm Accel, sits down for a fireside chat with super{set} founding partner Tom Chavez as part of our biweekly super{set} Community Call. Arthur and Tom cover venture investing, company-building, and even some personal stories from their history together.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Data Privacy & Compliance Specialist, Jocelyn Brunson, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Sales Director, Sheridan Rice, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreAt super{set}, we stand side-by-side and pick up the shovel with our co-founders. Our first outside co-founder at a super{set} company is usually a Head of Product. Let’s unpack each portion of that title....
read moresuper{set} startup studio portfolio company’s seed funding round was led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Ulu Ventures Raise will enable boombox.io to accelerate product development on the way to becoming the winning creator platform for musicians globally
read moreAnnouncing Jon Suarez-Davis (jsd) as super{set}’s Chief Commercial Officer: jsd tells us in his own words why he's joining super{set}
read moreThe era of easy money - or at least, easy returns for VCs - is over. Tom Chavez is calling for VCs to show up in-person at August board meetings, get off the sidelines, and start adding real value and hands-on support for founders.
read moreThis post was written by Habu software engineer, Martín Vargas-Vega, as part of our new #PassTheMic series.
read morePankaj Rajan, co-founder at MarkovML, describes his Big Tech and startup experience and his journey to starting a company at super{set}.
read moreGo-to-market has entered a new operating environment. Enter: RevOps. We dig into the next solution space for super{set}, analyzing the paradigm shift in GTM and the data challenges a new class of company must solve.
read moreChris Fellowes, super{set} interned turned full time employee at super{set} portfolio company Kapstan, gives his 7 recommendations for how to turn an internship into a job at a startup.
read moreComing up with new company ideas is easy: we take the day off, go to the park, and let the thoughts arrive like butterflies. Maybe we grab a coconut from that guy for a little buzz. While this describes a pleasant day in San Francisco, it couldn’t be further from the truth of what we do at super{set}. If only we could pull great ideas out of thin air. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.
read moreThe wheel. Electricity. The automobile. These are technologies that had a disproportionate impact on the merits of their first practical use-case; but beyond that, because they enabled so much in terms of subsequent innovation, economic historians call them “general-purpose technologies” or GPTs...
read moreThe Move Accelerates the Rapidly Growing Startup Studio’s Mission to Lead the Next Generation of AI and Data-Driven Market Innovation and Success
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Developer Advocate, Ryan Overton, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreOthmane Rifki, Principal Applied Scientist at super{set} company Spectrum Labs, reports from the session he led at super{summit} 2022: "When Inference Meets Engineering." Using super{set} companies as examples, Othmane reveals the 3 ways that data science can benefit from engineering workflows to deliver business value.
read moreReflections after a summer as an engineering intern at super{set}
read moreWe are living in a time of extraordinary concern about the negative consequences of online platforms and social media. We worry about the damage interactive technologies cause to society; about the impact to our mental health; and about the way that these platforms and their practices play to our most destructive impulses. Too often, the experiences we have online serve only to polarize, divide, and amplify the worst of human nature.
read moreThe super{set} studio model for early-stage venture It is still early days for the startup studio model. We know this because at super{set} we still get questions from experienced operators and investors. One investor that we’ve known for years recently asked us: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?”
read moreo11y - What is it? Why is it important? What are the tools you need? More importantly - how can you adopt an observability mindset? Habu Software Architect Siddharth Sharma reports from his session at super{summit} 2022.
read moreObsessive intensity. Pack animal nature. Homegrown hero vibes. Unyielding grit. A chip on the shoulder. That's who we look for to join exceptional teams.
read moreHead of Infrastructure at Ketch, and Kapstan Advisor, Anton Winter explains a few of the infrastructure and DevOps headaches he encounters every day.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Solutions Engineer, Sahiti Surapaneni, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreGal Vered of Checksum explains his rationale for leaving Google to co-found a super{set} company.
read moreThe decision to start a company – or to join an early stage one – is an act of the gut. On good days, I see it as a quasi-spiritual commitment. On bad days, I see it as sheer irrationality. Whichever it is, you’ll be happier if you acknowledge and calmly accept the lunacy of it all...
read moreWhen a VC decides to invest in a company, they write up a document called the “Investment Memo” to convince their partners that the decision is sound. This document is a thorough analysis of the startup...
read moreThis month we pass the mic to Sagar Gaur, Software Engineer at super{set} MLOps company MarkovML, who shares with us his tips for working within a global startup with teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, India
read moreHas someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”? Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word! Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley...
read moreIn our last post, we discussed how data is the new general-purpose technology and that is why at super{set} we form data-driven companies from scratch. But new technologies are a promise, not a sudden phase change.
read more
