Thank you, Confluent.

After nearly six years, my time has come to leave Confluent. Working at Confluent has been a career-defining, life-changing experience for me—like it has been for many others. As I step away and prepare for my next adventure, it's impossible not to indulge in reflection and gratitude for one hell of a journey.

When I came to Confluent in April 2019, we were a 500-person privately-held on-prem business doing about $100MN in annual revenue. I joined a growing London-based EMEA team leading a small but mighty group of 5 SDRs. Today, we're a 2,500-person NASDAQ-listed cloud business with (as of Q3, FY24) a $1BN revenue run rate. And I've had the privilege of spending the last three years running a 100+ person Global SDR and Cloud Acquisition Organization.

On this journey, I've had the opportunity to build and lead SDR Teams across London, Sydney, Singapore, Bangalore, Barcelona, and the US. I've grown into second-line and third-line leadership, helped scale from 20 to 100+ SDRs and Leaders, and most recently helped build a new logo-focused inside sales team. Without a hint of exaggeration, this has been a dream job for me.

While life is not about work, a hell of a lot of life happens while working. Over this span, I married my dream woman, moved from London to Toronto and then Toronto to San Francisco, bought our first house, had our first (wild) child, had our second (wild) child, fell out of shape, re-learned how to play hockey and how to surf, watched my beloved Phillies and Eagles lose championship games, and had what feels like countless other life-changing experiences. I'm grateful to Confluent (and especially my bosses) for not only allowing me the space to make this life outside of work but also for actively supporting it. Not many $10bn companies going through a category-creation pre-to-post IPO journey, or the leaders within those companies, genuinely and proactively support your growth so profoundly inside and outside work.

During my time at Confluent, I've had the best bosses, teams, colleagues, and partners I could imagine. I've learned and grown more than I ever thought possible. As I told the team on my final day, the opportunity that so many of us have lived out with Confluent is something that many people (most people) spend an entire career hunting for. The combination of people, product, and market is rarer than rare. I'm grateful for all of it.

Thank you to my teams, but especially to my bosses. The leaders I've worked for at Confluent have been the best bosses I could have ever asked for—thank you to Marie Gassée , Gary Enriquez , Matt Quarfoot , and Jonathan Rye for believing in me, stretching me, and coaching me. Thank you to the leaders I had the privilege of leading—we drove a lot of hard but impactful change and growth over the years, and I'm thankful for everything you helped me with and taught me along the way.

Over these six years, I've learned too much to condense it all here effectively. Still, I'll try so that my future self can remember to apply some of it on my next journey: Work hard, aspire to be resilient, seek feedback, embrace the challenges, pursue the hard things, ask the hard questions, work to answer the hard questions, endeavor to help, don't take yourself too seriously, be yourself, seek the truth, be the truth, never settle on hiring, lean into the power of purpose and loyalty, aim for balance, laugh, and let the work speak for itself.

The main downside of my experience at Confluent is knowing how hard it will be to replicate again. And even for that, I am grateful—high standards are powerful. Thank you, Confluent, bosses, teams, colleagues, partners, my wife, and everyone I met along the way for raising the bar, teaching me, and elevating my career and my life. You've been everything I sought and more.