Goodbye
I recently made the very hard decision to leave Blend. Today (March 4, 2022) is my last day. I am overwhelmed with emotion thinking about all of the amazing people I worked with and projects I worked on at Blend. I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart, it has meant the world to me.
After finishing my PhD I had a standing job offer to return to Google, but decided to take a leap at Blend and learn something new. Boy did I ever! I spent just over three years at Blend but I feel like by moving at startup speed I gained ten years of indispensable experience.
I've seen the incredible impact that comes from meeting a customer need. In my early time here on a product team, we saw a quarter's worth of effort turn into huge increases in utilization for our target customers.
I've directly witnessed the growing pains that come with hockey stick growth and the heroic efforts to scale systems, databases and people. Hearing motivational speeches from our leaders is one thing, but watching the scale of our compute grow as our product continued to gain traction was the most motivating thing of all for me1!
Though it is already a publicly traded, multibillion dollar company, Blend is still a very young company. That means everyone still gets the chance to influence the culture at Blend and set the standards in Blend engineering for the future. This was and is incredibly compelling to me2!
What's Next?
I am not running away from Blend, I am running towards a new opportunity. I am starting a company with two close friends. I have been fascinated with company building since early in my career and am excited to begin the journey of growing my very own startup.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
