What do the career path and the day-in-a-life look like for the Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Quick Base?

We connected with Neil Forbes to find out!

Also, Quick Base is hiring! Click here to see all of the company’s openings!

Where did you grow up?  What did your parents do for work?  

I grew up in North Kingstown, RI. My father was a middle school history teacher and later a high school guidance counselor. My mother was a middle school home economics teacher and later a high school art teacher.

Where did you go to college?  What did you study and what were some of your initial jobs out of school?

I majored in Art, Philosophy & Literature with a minor in Systems Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. I later studied Film Directing and Production in UCLA’s Graduate Film Program. My first jobs after West Point were as a rifle platoon leader and mortar platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom I. While I was in grad school I did everything from assistant editing gigs for reality television shows to teaching film to working as a bouncer at night clubs and hotels.

What has attributed to your success thus far and has helped propel you to the position you have now?

The leadership training I received at West Point, in Ranger School and through leading platoons in combat was second to none and greatly contributed to my success so far.

Can you share the high-level responsibilities of your current position as Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Quick Base?

• Collaborate with customer base to align our platform with their business needs

• Identify and share new ways that our customer base can leverage our platform

• Build, drive and report on my team’s pipeline

• Partner cross functionally with sales enablement, customer success, product, marketing, legal, finance, and ops to continue to drive efficiency in our sales team and sales process

• Hire, coach, mentor and retain exceptional sales talent

Any tips for someone considering a career in Sales?

I think there will always be a place in Sales for highly curious, technically savvy people with strong oral and written communication skills.

Day in the Life

Coffee, tea, or nothing?

Coffee

What time do you get into the office?

Between 7:30 and 8:30 most mornings. 

What are three things that motivate you in your role?

1. Helping people grow professionally

2. Collaborating with customers that are energized by our platform

3. Working in a market that is largely undefined with a platform that is the leader in that emerging space.

Every day is different, but can you outline what a typical day looks like for you?

• Supporting account executives and managers on customer calls or face to face engagements

• Working with account executives and managers to build effective account plans

• Inspecting and building a rolling 90-day forecast/pipeline

• 1:1s with managers and account executives

• Interviewing or phone screen prospective candidates for our team

What time do you head out of the office?

Between 5 and 6:30 most nights.

Do you log back in at night or do you shut it down completely?  

I log back in at night.

Any productivity hacks?

Meditation. Sometimes you only need 10 minutes of silence to look at a problem in a different way.

What are the 3 apps that you can’t live without?

1. Quick Base

2. Spotify

3. Audm

What professional accomplishment are you proudest of?

Seeing members of my team get promoted to run teams of their own here at QB.

Who do you admire?

I admire all members of my veteran extended family, but particularly those that are working day in and day out to overcome physical and/or psychological challenges that they developed overseas as a part of their service to our country.

Colin Barry is the Content Manager on VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter @ColinKrash

Images courtesy of Neil Forbes

For the 91st episode of our podcast, I interviewed Debi Kleiman, Executive Director at Babson College’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.

When you think of places that encourage and foster entrepreneurship, few places top Babson College. In fact, Babson has been ranked the #1 school for entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report for more than two decades.

Lots of very successful entrepreneurs have graduated from both Babson’s undergraduate and MBA programs. For example, the name behind Babson’s center for entrepreneurship. Arthur M. Blank is the co-founder of The Home Depot and the owner of the Atlanta Falcons. Another notable alum is Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring, which was acquired by Amazon for $1B last year.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like:

• Debi’s childhood dream of becoming a late night TV talk show host.
• A journey through her career including her experience in marketing roles in the CPG industry and executive positions at C Space and MITX.
• What brought Debi to Babson, all the details about her role there.
• A deep dive into the entrepreneurial environment and programs that Babson offers its students
• Advice on what people should be thinking about when starting a business.
• Advice on crafting a pitch.
• Plus, a lot more.

Did you know that our job board has over 4,000 positions listed with the hottest companies across the Boston tech scene? There are jobs across all levels of experience and across all functional areas like engineering, product management, marketing, sales, and more. Don’t put your career on hold, go to venturefizz.com/jobs today to start searching.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there! 

This is a start to a rough travel week.  I woke up, left for the airport at 4:10 AM, spent the day in our DC office which included a town hall and a ribbon cutting to celebrate our beautiful new space.  Hopped in an Uber with two others and rushed to the airport to catch our flight. Delayed. Put on stand by for an earlier flight. Another delay. Then my exceptionally thoughtful CEO was the only person elected from the stand by list to board.  He gave me his seat so I could get home to my kids. One and a half hours later, I’m still stuck on the tarmac and all routes to Boston are shut down because of weather. And I get to go to NYC this weekend, and London on Monday. Yup, business travel is not at all glamorous.

With every rainy cloud that prevented me from getting home at a reasonable hour, however, comes a silver lining. Tonight, my gratitude comes from a deep appreciation for the people I work with.  Typically, it’s not lost on me how great they are, but tonight one simple observation turned my travel frown upside down.

First, let me explain our executive team.  The average tenure of people on our executive team at Rapid7 is 5.6 years.  (I removed our Co-Founder Tas Giakouminakis from this average, as he’s been here since the start, and he’d throw the numbers waaaayyyy off).  Often asked why a self-proclaimed startup junkie would stay put for 8+ years, my response is simple.  “The people.” Sure, I work with almost 1,400 smart, talented and committed people. However, at the gut level, I have two teams that keep me inspired; our incredible people strategy team whom I have the honor of leading, and our executive team who I share company leadership with.  Tonight, I write about the latter.

The long tenure of this team, I believe, is a significant indicator of how committed to Rapid7 and each other we all are.  Not just in a “please, take my stand by seat” way (which arguably is the kindest thing anyone has done for me in a long while) but in a more meaningful “Hey, we are on this journey together so let’s make the most of the ride” kind of way.  With all that time spent together, we’ve supported career milestones and challenges. We’ve lived through each other’s increased responsibilities and scope, as well as stumbles and the inevitable missteps that come with our rapid growth. And because we spend so much time together, we’ve also seen each other through divorces and health scares, as well as the more joyous victories of our children’s accomplishments and the purchase of that car we had dreamed about and worked our butts off to finally earn.

In other words, these are my people.  We have a shorthand with each other, and even though we are all different in significant ways, they are just as much family to me as my own blood.  When I have a bold idea, they are the people who jump in and help me advance it further rather than roll their eyes at me. When I am struggling with a problem, they are my trusted advisors who I look to for their sound counsel.  When I have a win, they are the first to cheer me on. As we each take turns on the high wire, the rest form the safety net below. I am unabashedly my true self with them, without reservation.

Any person would be lucky to work on a team that brings out the best in each other.  The fact that this crew forms our company’s leadership team is even more significant to me, however.  Of course, we aren’t perfect, and sometimes we drive each other crazy. More often than not, though, we can be found pushing each other to our best work.  For every high five that comes with a win, we will also take the time to share constructive feedback to aid each other along. Rather than watch our backs in fear that someone is about to backstab us, we actively seek out each other’s opinions because we know it will result in a better outcome.  This mode of operating is deeply rooted in trust, and a whole lot of time spent building something we all care passionately about. And because we all behave this way, we model it for the rest of our company. The bar is set for what healthy teaming looks like, and not surprisingly, we hold each other and our teams accountable for that as well.  

Tonight, I sat at an airport restaurant table with two of these cherished colleagues/brothers/friends waiting to learn the fate of our flight home.  As we ordered dinner and shared ideas, we mindlessly munched on a communal bowl of chips and salsa. We were in the middle of a conversation about how insecurity leads to risk avoidance, and how detrimental those traits can be in leaders of growing companies. Then Corey looks down, and says, “That’s the mark of a good team…”. Lee and I likely looked at him like dogs with their heads cocked to the side, trying to figure out what he was talking about.  “Look at the chip bowl,” he explained. “This is why we are a good team. All that’s left in the bowl are a bunch of broken chip pieces and one good last whole chip. We are all nibbling on the crumbs, and we all avoided that last chip, rather than take it for ourselves.”  With all the work I’ve done studying teams and leadership, that last chip observation kind of summed up this team perfectly. It’s about "the we", not "the me".

As I sit on the tarmac tonight, eager to get home and sleep in my own bed, I reflected on just how fortunate I am to work with such an incredible team.  We all have strengths, as well as flaws, but somehow, we just seem to bring out the best in each other. THAT is a huge reason why I’ve stayed at Rapid7 for eight years.  That, and the fact that when we all got up to head to the gate, the single remaining chip was still in the bowl.

For the 89th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Sridhar Iyengar, Founder and CEO of Elemental Machines.

Very few entrepreneurs in the Boston tech scene have had the same level of success as Sridhar.

As a co-founder of three different companies in the medical device and wearables industry, the products that he’s helped bring to market are incredibly innovative. Take AgaMatrix, a glucose monitoring company that built the world’s first medical device that connected directly to the iPhone.

Or, Misfit, the makers of elegant wearable products that was started along with Sridhar’s longtime collaborator Sonny Vu and also, John Sculley—yes, that John Sculley—the one that was the CEO at Apple. Misfit ended up getting acquired by Fossil for a reported $260M.

At Elemental Machines, the company is modernizing the lab and helping to accelerate science with its IoT and data science platform. The company has raised over $11.5M in funding.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like:

• How to give constructive feedback to your co-founder.
• Sridhar’s early background and a deep dive into AgaMatrix and Misfit, including the story of how John Sculley got involved.
• What led him to start Elemental Machines and all the details on the company.
• Whether he thinks equity should be equal between co-founders.
• Advice for founders on managing cash and raising capital.
• Plus, a lot more.

We are getting very close to episode 100 of The VentureFizz Podcast! Can you believe it? So, I need your help. Who is the #1 person that you would want to be interviewed for the 100th episode? I’m open to all suggestions, the only requirement is that the person is an entrepreneur or investor that is based in Boston or New York. You can reach me via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Thanks in advance!

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!