I’m very excited to share that I’ve recently joined Snyk as a Demand Generation Manager. Snyk is a leader in open source security and is widely used by developers to continuously find and fix vulnerable dependencies.
Some of you know that I’ve retired from the digital nomad life and settled down in London a few months ago. What started as an itch to relocate from Montreal and was fuelled by circumstances with the startup I was working for at the time… culminated in 3 years of working remotely from 25 countries.
I fell into nomading and consulting. Around the same time I left Montreal (November 2015), a close friend of mine quit his job and planned to travel for a few months. He asked me to come with him, but I was adamant about working while traveling. About finding a way to make this work. I had enough savings, but I didn’t feel like I wanted or needed a break.
And once I did make it work, that became my new normal, so I just kept going. Around the 2 year mark, close friends and family started to ask questions like: How long more do you plan to do this for? Aren’t you tired?
Looking back, I was.
That was primarily why I spent last Jan-Mar in Vancouver. To rest and relax. 3 months was the longest amount of time I’d spent in one place in the last 3 years.
I can dedicate a whole post to tiring of nomading and consulting, as well as on the following sections, but that’s for another time. Bottomline: I was optimizing for acceleration, and now I’m optimizing for stability.
Choosing London
Pre-nomading, I always thought I’d end up in the Bay Area. I still do, to some extent. So after deciding that I wanted to settle down somewhere, I spent 5 weeks in San Francisco this summer scoping things out. Clearly that didn’t pan out, so… why London?
- My sister lives in London… for now
- I’m currently eligible for a particular UK visa, but not for much longer
- I’ll catch UK pre-Brexit, and save US for post-Trump
- London has a stellar tech scene
Choosing Snyk
…was a culmination of the most extensive job search, ever. As mentioned, I’m now optimizing for stability, so I was looking for a company whose product I love, culture I love, and where I can see myself spending many years at.
Location: anywhere
Sector: high tech or effective non-profits
I wrote down all the software I use and love. I went through LinkedIn’s list of top 100 companies in 2018. I kept an eye on the Effective Altruism jobs board. I found companies at the intersection of tech and social good like Watsi.
Turns out “anywhere” was too broad a search. For example, I had an opportunity in Denver present itself. Though I’ve always dreamed of visiting Colorado, the thought of moving somewhere where I didn’t know anyone at all gave me a slight panic attack.
Prescription: get real with myself
First picking a city (London) helped.
It was a tricky transition from winding down my consulting business to transitioning back in-house. Thank you to everyone who helped (emotionally, through referrals) over the last couple of months. I’ve talked to a lot of fascinating companies and organizations because of the doors you opened. I appreciate your confidence in me.
I’m very grateful for this new opportunity with Snyk – both the product and the role are so perfectly aligned for me.
Snyk recently raised a Series B. I’ve been in the trenches. I’ve:
- Bootstrapped a company
- Worked for a seed-stage startup until they ran out of money
As a consultant, I’ve also seen the other extreme: I worked with a Fortune 10 company and a unicorn, and I certainly do not know if my work with the former ever saw the light of day.
Snyk’s stage gives me the confidence that they’ve found product-market fit and have a working product that users love. At the same time, they’re early enough to still be “moving fast and breaking things” = very fun for me. (Not to mention, they’re backed by the best in the game including Accel and Google Ventures)
As a semi-technical person, I love straddling both technical and non-technical worlds, as well as working on my technical chops. On top of that, I love challenging myself and working with technical products. Some consulting examples:
- an ETL SaaS tool
- a front-end automation platform
- an IoT platform
- logging software
So, open source security is heaven for the quasi-geek in me.
I’m the ~67th employee, and 3rd marketer at Snyk. I’m joining a demand gen/growth marketer and a product marketer, and am excited to help drive their inbound growth through compelling campaigns, automation, and experimentation. I look forward to working with energetic and genuinely nice people who care about our product and what we do.
Thanks to Snyk for taking a chance with me. I think we’re going to do great things together!
If you’re already using Snyk or are thinking about it for your company — please feel free to reach out with your suggestions and feedback. You can find me on Twitter @nicolejfu.
As mentioned, there are a few spinoff posts that I could and might write. But for the moment,
So Now You Know.
Nicole Fu 