Todd Olson

CEO and Founder, Pendo

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

Running a company:

2020: can you survive a pandemic?

2021: still here? we’re going to give all of your competitors $100m series A rounds.

2022: wow, you made it? okay, all engineers cost $600,000/year now.

2023: nice job! okay, SVB failed and we’re going to take away your bank account.

2024: a survivor I see. but can you pivot from ai to crypto to defense tech back to ai-enabled defense tech in a 12 month period to stay relevant?

2025: unfortunately all of your competitors have raised $2b series B rounds. oh and only 500 engineers are relevant and they cost $100m/yr each.

2026: well, well, well. you’re still in business? let’s deploy the thunderclap of godlike LLMs from the heavens so all of your customers can rebuild your app in 2 hours. can you survive?

[Todd Olson @tolson]

Total class act. Great game and go @Canes

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

Sidney Crosby letting this Canes fan hear it after going on the power play 😆

[Todd Olson @tolson]

Great post.

[Todd Olson @tolson]

Ok. Who is actually going to Applebee’s for that burger resting in cheese?

[Todd Olson @tolson]

Great example of a great product.

[Ryan Jones @rjonesy]

United CEO on @Flighty. 🙏

Impressive clarity and customer focus throughout the interview. https://t.co/a5zih1sx2H

[Todd Olson @tolson]

Amen.

[Ali Ansari @aliansarinik]

https://t.co/lPl6ove4sO

[R “Ray” Wang 王瑞光 #Cupertino #AI #Energy R.NFT @rwang0]

MyPOV: honored to keynote the @pendoio CKO for @tolson

[tobi lutke @tobi]

Sunday rant.

For software engineering, my sense is that the phrase “premature optimization is the root of all evil” has massively backfired. Its from a book on data structures and mainly tried to dissuade people from prematurely write things in assembler. But the point was to free you up to think harder about the data structures to use, not leave things comically inefficient. This context is always skipped when it’s uttered.

Not all fast software is world-class, but all world-class software is fast. Performance is _the_ killer feature.

If you are in engineering, here is a fantastic anecdote. I refer to this account often. It’s a bit subtile, but the implications are massive-

It’s an account of how SQLite became 50% faster, not by doing one specific thing but hundreds of small ones.

SQLite is everywhere today because of this work.

https://t.co/krLFFps2up

We need the engineers in all companies fight for this more. Product leads are not the right owners of the end performance of the software. This needs to be encoded in the professional pride of the software engineering discipline. Leaders in companies need to encourage it and hold engineering accountable. It’s simply not ok to fritter away the performance of the products for random reasons.

Every user of your products cares exactly as much about latency as engineers do when typing in their terminal. They just don’t have the words to describe what they don’t like about the experience and neither should they.

[Todd Olson @tolson]

@sreinsights @pendoio DM me and I’ll help.

[Todd Olson @tolson]

I'm really excited that the amazing content produced by @MindtheProduct and their community is now open to all. I invite anyone interested in advancing your product career to sign up for their newsletter or join an upcoming event. Take advantage of this incredible resource!

[Mind the Product @MindtheProduct]

In order to create more ways for the #ProdMgmt community to come together & be more successful, we’re making some changes!

As of today, we’re removing our content paywall to enable wider access to our premium content & sunsetting our membership program. https://t.co/sEQYSJUag4

[Todd Olson @tolson]

@lissijean @pendoio @MindtheProduct Hey @lissijean, we are doing everything we can to support @thedailyem and the @MindtheProduct mission. Having said that, we're all humans and something slipped through the cracks. We're fixing it ASAP and using this is a learning opp. Thanks for the feedback.

[Shortcut @shortcut]

Plan, build, and ship. All with one tool.

Shortcut 2.0 is here with the launch of our tightly integrated Docs feature, making it possible for software teams to have a single source of truth for seamless, collaborative execution.

[Todd Olson @tolson]

From designing physical workspaces for IDEO to imagining the future of work here at @pendoio, @tmamut will draw from her breadth of experience in next week's Guide keynote. Registration is free - join us!

[pendo.io @pendoio]

Only 8 more days until Guide: The Digital Adoption Summit! Learn how business technology leaders can succeed with digital transformation by putting empathy for employees at the center of their tech decisions from Pendo’s @tmamut

Register now ⤵️ https://t.co/zFfOcnhcVe

[Todd Olson @tolson]

@cal_hinck12 Of course. Just DM me to coordinate.

[Todd Olson @tolson]

CIOs and IT leaders: join leaders from Square, Prosci, Silicon Valley Bank, and my friend, @mik_kersten, May 10 to discuss the biggest challenges IT faces managing the digital workplace.

https://t.co/872xgrbVXd

[pendo.io @pendoio]

Our employees are rocking some socks today to celebrate #worlddownsyndromeday recognizing our awesome in-house coffee shop partner @drink321coffee. 🎉

We are so proud to partner with them and further their mission ☕️

[Governor Josh Stein @NC_Governor]

As the state’s metrics continue to move in the right direction and with vaccines available, Gov. Cooper encouraged schools and local governments to end their mask mandates.
https://t.co/lTkALDeuzU

[Todd Olson @tolson]

@levie Isn’t the answer just user experience? Trying doing something — if it’s painful, there’s a good chance won’t work.

[Todd Olson @tolson]

RIP John Madden. I owe a lot of my love of football to watching you. Thank you.

[Greater Raleigh Chamber @raleighchamber]

Register now for Launch 2022 presented by @WellsFargo to hear from speakers like Cindy Eckert of The Pink Ceiling & Todd Olson of Pendo. Register here:
https://t.co/eE24MA6x4n @cindypinkceo @tolson @pendoio #RCLaunch2022 #Raleigh #Talent #Entrepreneurship #Startups #Future