Patrick Malatack

My whule life I have been interested in how things work. As a kid, I would constantly take things apart and put them back together just to see what makes them tick. Taking apart lego scenes gradually morphed into taking apart computers. One thing led to another and by 5th grade, I was the go-to computer nerd of my home town outside of Philadelphia helping travel agencies and realtors adapt their businesses to this new thing called the internet. Fast forward a few years, I made my way through undergrad and grad school at Carnegie Mellon, spending time doing a mix of design, coding, psychology, and business. I really liked being a jack of all trades/master of none because it meant I was constantly learning. When it was time to get a job, I did what all bad designers and developers do. I became a PM :) After a few years at Microsoft, I was fortunate to join the team at Twilio in 2011 leading the SMS product. Going from a 100,000 person organization to a small team of a few dozen people was quite a shock. While there, I witnessed the dramatic impact everyday decisions had on the company, both for better or worse. When a company doubles every 6 months, learning happens much more rapidly and everyone is forced to wear different hats. While there were plenty of ups and downs along the way, it was clear I wanted to be spending my waking hours helping build teams and go after ?just crazy enough to work? ideas.