Launchable Announces First VP of Sales, Mark Ho

Continuing on the momentum from our Series A, we’ve added another stellar Launchable astronaut to the crew, experienced Sales leader Mark Ho. As Launchable’s VP of Sales, Mark joins the team with over 20 years of experience in digital technology and sales. 

Having spent over a decade in the DevOps community in sales leadership roles with Codacy, JFrog (Artifactory) and Zend Technologies (Open Source PHP), Mark brings his vast experience with early-stage SaaS companies and his global sales knowledge, serving as an asset in igniting Launchable’s continued growth.

We sat down with Mark to learn more about his developer-first ethos, where he sees the evolution of DevOps tools moving towards, and Launchable’s place in the ecosystem. 

How are developer-centric tools changing the DevOps landscape?

DevOps has seen its share of evolutions, with first- and second-gen tool pioneers paving the way for faster quality code releases. Based on market growth and continuous demand for speed and quality, the latest evolution of DevOps relies on harnessing the data being produced by these tools -- making cycles smarter through data-driven decision-making. 

Engineering leadership and teams are facing their own sets of challenges that are driving CICD pipeline transformation. The emergence of developer-focused tools will support the next revolution of DevOps, and both developers and leadership are learning how to adopt them into their organizations.

How are you seeing DevOps tools being adopted at most enterprise organizations?

Developer Experience (DX) is a growing part of the tool adoption process, as it relates to how developers interface with their tools holistically, every day. I’ve seen it first hand, but places like The New Stack are reporting that less than one-third of developer time is actually writing code. Developer experience includes all the other tasks they face daily including testing, maintaining code, security, and more. The next generation of developer tools are focusing on those more complex tasks where gaps live in the developer experience and finding innovative ways to improve them.

Evaluating new tools and technologies can be a full-time job on top of existing development tasks. The time and resources to research and run POCs can make testing and adopting new technology a struggle. That’s why we’re seeing DevOps tools being adopted at most enterprise orgs on a two-pronged approach: from the top down and the bottom up. 

What I mean by that is team leaders and VPs of Engineering are driving initiatives for standardizing processes to keep competitive, often looking for tech stack options to make cycles more efficient. We’re also seeing developers spearhead grass root efforts within their teams as they’re naturally inclined to review and test new ways to make their tasks more efficient. It’s imperative that both management and developers are included when assessing technology and tool opportunities. 

What makes Launchable’s sales approach different?

The best sales approach to tech stacks and adopting development tools comes from understanding the gap the developer and team are experiencing, as well as the challenges they face because of it. Successful tools and services add value and solve a problem. 

My approach to providing technical solutions to a technical audience starts with the right team. When building Sales and Customer Success teams, the best teams are composed of specialized people who understand developer-specific needs. I look for people that understand operations and high-tech processes and the pains faced within DevOps organizations.

What should people expect when engaging with the Launchable sales and customer success teams?

Launchable was founded by developers, to help developers. We see every interaction as an opportunity to partner with teams to solve their biggest hurdles. That’s why we create educational, informative articles and technical documents focused on providing valuable data and insights. We created the Launchable demo environment to give developers the power to test out the CLI, and preview how you can start your ML model based on your data to help speed up your testing. And that’s also why we’re happy to do a POC for those interested in exploring Launchable.

As DevOps continues to evolve, successful tools will harness the readily available data to drive speed and quality. Developer-focused tools will continue to grow as the holistic development landscape of development is assessed for tool gaps. Successful organizations will find leadership and developers evaluating tools and their benefits for a balanced assessment.