Meet Paul Mandeville! Paul was hired by QuickPivot in 2013 to run Product and Strategy. He currently serves as the company's Chief Product Officer and CEO. Paul's career path is unique, and he has proven to be a vital asset to our organization.
Q: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I grew up in Rhode Island and spent much of my childhood in Narragansett Bay at the beach and on the ocean. As a kid, I was obsessed with learning everything related to the ocean: the tides, winds, surfing, sailing, fishing – you name it. The idea of making a career out of something that I was so passionate about was exciting. So why am I not sitting on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic right now? Well, it turns out it can be hard to make a living in that field. I’ll keep the bay as a leisure activity for now.
Q: What do you do here at QuickPivot?
In my role I focus on three things:
- Managing product strategy and design
- Understanding our clients' and prospects' product
- Engaging with the venture funding and private equity communities
My job is really, really fun and I enjoy what I do a ton. I get to set the course for product strategy and design at QuickPivot. I work at the intersection of the Product Team, the Professional Services Team, and the Engineering Team. I'm constantly trying to translate what I'm seeing in the market into new or revised product capabilities that QuickPivot can implement to keep our clients ahead of the curve. I also work closely with Marketing to turn Product features into Product Marketing stories that can be more easily understood by our clients and prospects. I then get to tell this story in the broader context of overall (global) market forces so that I can get the investor community excited about what we are doing.
Q: How did you get into the field?
I started my career as a commercial banker here in Boston. At that time, some banks, including the one I worked for, undertook some huge customer database projects. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and in my early 20’s so I volunteered to work on one of the corporate data projects. I ended up loving it, especially learning how to tell stories through data. The company that implemented the database solution for the bank recruited me right out of the bank and my career in database marketing technology was launched.
Q: Why is right now an exciting time to join our team?
The customer data platform (CDP) space is growing like heck. Smart and passionate people have a huge opportunity to jump onto the first wave of something really big. I predict that CDP technology will grow similar to how enterprise email marketing platforms evolved. Right now, we are in the early days where vendors are still jockeying for position and dominance. This is QuickPivot’s chance to stake out a meaningful claim in this fast-growing sector of the overall MarTech industry. We’ve worked hard to position ourselves in the CDP space and now we just need to execute. It’s exciting.
Q: What do you consider to be your greatest personal and professional achievements to-date?
Raising my family and (knock on wood) arriving at a place where I have two happy, healthy, smart, funny and caring boys at age 12 and 13, is so far my biggest personal accomplishment. It’s a daily effort but well worth the blood, sweat and tears.
On the professional side, I’m proud to have been part of the success in my last company, called Conversen. We were a small, scrappy start-up that had big ideas, built great technology and grew into something meaningful. Does this sound familiar? We operated independently for 5-6 years, growing the business each year, and eventually had a strong exit opportunity with Experian that produced a healthy shareholder ROI, and also some great opportunities for our employees.
