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Cristina Cordova is a seasoned operator who has scaled some of the most iconic companies in tech. At Stripe, she built and led partnerships that became a foundational revenue engine, including the pivotal deal with Shopify. At Notion, she helped turn viral adoption into a durable distribution strategy powered by community. Today, Cristina is the Chief Operating Officer at Linear, where she’s applying her experience building high-velocity GTM engines to the next generation of developer-first tools.
Discussed in this episode
- Why Cristina joined Stripe without knowing what an API was
- Building Stripe’s early partnerships and salvaging the Shopify deal
- How Notion pioneered community-driven growth
- Lessons on brand, design, and investing for the long term
- What Cristina looks for in exceptional founders and operators
- How Linear is scaling GTM with AI-driven prioritization
- The difference between “keeping the lights on” and transformative leadership
- Cristina’s frameworks for evaluating product resonance and customer love
Episode Highlights
00:43 — The rare superpower behind Cristina’s career: joining breakout companies early
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=43
2:46 — Why Cristina joined Stripe without knowing what an API was
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=166
12:22 — On Cristina’s first day, Shopify walked away from Stripe’s deal — and how she won them back
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=742
16:55 — How Notion scaled by making consumer use free and fueling community-driven growth
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=1015
20:52 — Why investing in brand early is a leading indicator of durable growth
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=1252
25:27 — Cristina’s framework for spotting beloved products in the market
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=1527
37:53 — How Cristina applied lessons from Stripe to build Linear’s GTM from scratch
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=2273
47:30 — Where AI fits into GTM: prioritizing opportunities, not replacing humans
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=2850
56:01 — Why Linear built high-quality swag kits for early customers
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=3361
58:28 — Where to follow Cristina’s journey today
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0czKFwD-Q&t=3508
Key takeaways
1. Partnerships are a revenue engine
Cristina built Stripe’s partnerships into a core distribution channel, proving that platforms like Shopify can shape a company’s trajectory as much as direct sales.
2. Community can be distribution
At Notion, the real unlock was community. By empowering users to create businesses around templates, content, and consulting, Notion turned fans into evangelists.
3. Brand is a long-term bet
Cristina believes design and brand investments signal whether founders are building for the long term. Quality design makes customers assume product quality.
4. Vision > logo size in partnerships
Stripe didn’t partner with Shopify because it was big; they partnered because Shopify’s vision aligned with where the market was heading.
5. Look for spikiness in founders
Exceptional founders stand out by being world-class at something—even if it’s Minecraft servers or Taekwondo. Excellence translates across domains.
6. Operators must act in founder mode
Great operators don’t wait for direction. They identify opportunities, set strategy, and execute without being told.
7. AI helps prioritize, not replace
Linear uses AI to surface the best opportunities from a sea of self-serve signups, but the sales experience remains deeply human.
8. Salespeople must match the vibe
Hiring technically credible salespeople with the right “vibes” was critical at Linear to avoid the stereotype of pushy sales.
9. Exceptional leaders balance strategy and execution
Cristina sees leadership as generating transformative ideas and also ensuring flawless execution. One without the other isn’t enough.
10. Relationships keep operators in the room
Beyond results, operators must invest in founder relationships. Alignment with founder priorities often determines longevity in the role.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor
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At GTMfund, we even have a private Slack channel called #companywatchlist powered entirely by Harmonic.
Get 2 dedicated sessions with their team to help you test and structure the perfect searches here.
Recommended books
- Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson — Cristina revisits this book often for lessons on organizational growth and leadership.
Referenced
- Stripe: https://stripe.com/
- Notion: https://notion.so/
- Linear: https://linear.app/
- Shopify: https://shopify.com/
- Xero: https://xero.com/
- QuickBooks: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/
- Figma: https://figma.com/
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinajcordova/
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/cjC
Host Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
- Website: https://gtmnow.com/
- Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
Where to find GTMnow:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/GTMnow_
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
- Podcast directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast tells the stories of how the top 1% of operators, founders and investors build, scale and invest.
Each week, we uncover the pivotal moments, bold decisions, and go-to-market strategies that turn ideas into breakout companies.
GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund – we are an early-stage venture fund made up of 350+ go-to-market executives from the fastest-growing companies.
GTM 164 Episode Transcript
Cristina Cordova: 0:00
It really started with the people, one of those things where I was just like, oh, these people are incredibly bright, have so many interests. I just want to be around these people generally, regardless of whether I work here. Patrick was like oh, do you want to come out flying on my plane? And I was just I am not getting into a small plane with a person I barely know. My first day I sit down and they tell us that they’ve actually chosen to go with with a different partner.
Sophie Buonassisi: 0:43
Behind every breakout company that becomes an iconic and legendary company, there’s someone quietly building the go-to-market engine. Behind the scenes, christina Cordova has a rare superpower she joins companies before the world knows their names and helps turn them into icons. She arrived at Stripe when the team was under 30 people. Why join a company when you didn’t know what an API was? Christina built an engine that helped Stripe scale, generating billions in revenue. On her very first day, shopify told her they were walking away, a deal she ultimately saved, turning into one of Stripe’s biggest early wins. She did it again at Notion, transforming Viral Buzz into a community-driven growth machine, now generating hundreds of millions in revenue. And today she’s doing it a third time at Lanier, where AI is reshaping how developer tools reach customers. In this episode, you’ll learn how Christina spots breakout companies early and builds the go-to-market engine that turns them into unicorns. All right, let’s get into it, christina, welcome to the podcast.
Cristina Cordova: 1:44
Thank you for having me.
Sophie Buonassisi: 1:45
Absolutely. It is a pleasure. I want to jump right in because you know, behind every breakout company that becomes an iconic and legendary company, there’s someone quietly building the go-to-market engine behind the scenes. And at Stripe you helped turn more of an abstract developer API into a movement that really transformed payments. And at Notion, you took a product with high virility and got it in the hands of thousands of people and created an enduring distribution engine. So curious to get your thoughts because again and again you’ve been able to bring products into the hands of users and your fingerprints are really like on the go-to-market strategies behind a lot of products that became enduring companies. So I want to start from Stripe. Now. You joined Stripe and I’ve heard you say you didn’t even know what an API was when you joined actually. So I’m curious when you joined, why join a company when you didn’t know what an API was? Yeah, what potential did you see in it that you knew would become this great company?
Cristina Cordova: 2:46
Yeah. So I mean, for me it really started with the people. I happened to run into Patrick Collison at a barbecue that a friend of mine was throwing with a bunch of founders, and so I run into him. He’s like, oh yeah, I work at this company called Stripe and I’m like, okay, cool, Sounds good Payments on the internet. I’m like cool. And it turns out that he was living in the house that was next to the startup that I was working for at the time. So, purely just because of proximity, we ended up we’re like, oh, we should grab coffee and get to know each other. And so we did that.
Cristina Cordova: 3:20
And my decision to join Stripe really started with how amazingly smart the people behind Stripe were, certainly starting with Patrick and then John and lots of other people that I met there over time, and it wasn’t just like raw intellect or intelligence, but it was also this diversity of interests. You know, I think Patrick was, oh, do you want to come out flying on my plane? And I was just I am not getting into a small plane with a person I barely know. And then I learned that he flies planes all the time and obviously is very competent, and all those things where you’re like, oh, wow, this is such an interest. And then you meet other people and it’s very similar. So it’s one of those things where I was just oh, these people are incredibly bright, have so many interests. Like, I kind of just want to be around these people generally, regardless of whether I work here, Right.
Sophie Buonassisi: 4:06
Yeah.
Cristina Cordova: 4:06
And so nine months later I get a very serious email that’s we want you to join the company and interview like really interview, not just putzing around, like having fun conversations with people on the team. And I was okay Cause I was very committed to the startup I was at at the time, and from there I started to get to know their ultimate vision for the company and what they wanted to achieve. And they had a very grand vision of building financial infrastructure for the internet. And, of course, immediately, what exactly is that Sounds really cool.
Cristina Cordova: 4:37
And we talked a lot about who their current customers were, which were a lot of developers at startups who were implementing payments on their websites, in mobile apps, those kinds of things. And they were starting to think about well, who else in the world accepts payments on the internet? Right, there are a lot of people who don’t actually know how to integrate with an API, who want to accept payments. How are they going to be able to do it right? How do they do it today? And then you realize there are all of these platforms.
Sophie Buonassisi: 5:17
A quick word from a tool that we use. Right, how do they do it today? And then you realize there data all in one place. At GTM Fund we even have a company watch the Slack channel, powered by Harmonic. Their website is harmonicai. Get two free sessions with their team to help you structure the perfect searches if you use the link in the show notes.
Cristina Cordova: 5:34
That enable companies to get started without necessarily having an engineer on board. So Shopify for e-commerce or Xero or QuickBooks for invoicing you know these are ways that you get paid without necessarily having to code and it’s like, well, should we be integrated with all of those tools so that, wherever you get paid whether you’re building a custom integration to your website or you just want to send an invoice and you know, get bank payment that should all be Stripe, right and well, we should go out and talk to these companies and see if they want to work with us in some shape or form and what are their problems and how hard is it to get set up with payments on their platform, with whatever solution exists today and other competitors. And that, to me, was really exciting. I had done a lot of partnerships work prior, so I was okay, well, I’ve done media partnerships. How hard could this be right? And then, of course, as I was interviewing, I was like I really should look at these API docs and learn how they work and what’s possible. And, you know, try to get as technical as I can be no-transcript about my experience at Stripe.
Cristina Cordova: 6:55
There were a lot of people who were just, instead of me, joining that meeting. Why can’t, why can’t I teach you how to do this? You know, and join that meeting, and then I don’t have to join it anymore right Right.
Cristina Cordova: 7:06
And so that was just another benefit of working with really great people.
Sophie Buonassisi: 7:10
That’s incredible. So I mean you nailed the interview process. Clearly they bring you on. You’re starting to understand and get more technical. What was the actual go-to-market motion or strategy looking at the time when you joined?
Cristina Cordova: 7:21
Yeah, so when I joined, everything was pretty self-serve. So you as a developer would go into the website, you’d integrate with the API and then, whenever a payment would come through, we’d take our cut. Basically, and that’s how we would make money. And we had maybe one or two support people on the team. So if you had an API question or something that you could write into support and get a response.
Cristina Cordova: 7:43
Maybe about a month after I joined we hired a salesperson, but you know they were not responding to RFPs and you know, going out and doing pitches, it was more like someone writes in and is like hey, I like Stripe, it’s interesting, but I’m going to need a discount. What kind of discount could you give me? And so then you’re trying to figure out your pricing model and what are your costs and how far can you discount without going underwater. And it’s actually a very complex business. So it’s not easy to understand what your costs are, in the same way that maybe compute is now or other things right, and so from that perspective it was pretty difficult to think about what are these models? And you’re making basically your best guess and coming up with the best model that you can to kind of understand your costs. And then I would say it wasn’t until maybe a year or so later until we hired maybe what I would define as a real or closer to real sales person. You know with a real motion of what does this look. And I think we called everyone growth. You were on the growth team, right? And then we started hiring a lot of, I would say, ex kind of consultant profiles in a lot of ways to kind of build out this team, so people who had never really done sales or account management or some of these other things before, or maybe done it for one year or two years, and then they were joining the company, they were on that growth team and they would do all of these different functions, whatever was really needed for the company at the time.
Cristina Cordova: 9:14
And then I had carved out my own area in partnerships and so we were starting to build a lot of really fantastic partnerships with e-commerce, invoicing, booking platforms, basically going down the list of what are all the top players in the space. How do we partner with each and every one of them? How do we give them a revenue share to keep them incentivized to continue working with us? And as we grow, they grow and trying to find the right incentive structures there and that business started to grow very significantly right incentive structures there and that business started to grow very significantly and the primary rate limiter on it doing well was how many deals I could do with partners. So that was the period where I was like maybe it’s time to hire another person. And I talked to my manager at the time, who was our COO and then eventually became our chief business officer, and he was well, I think you’ve been doing a good job. So you know I’m going to let you hire this person and build out a team and I think you deserve that.
Cristina Cordova: 10:09
And you know, I started kind of building that team and we kind of had the idea of people who are out going getting new partners and people who are managing existing partners and we built that to a pretty significant portion of Stripe’s overall revenue and a really great business overall for a few years.
Cristina Cordova: 10:25
And by that time we had a full-fledged sales team revenue leaders, sales managers, all those things as well.
Cristina Cordova: 10:32
And I think our head of revenue came to me at one point and was hey, christina, I’m head of revenue. Maybe it’s a little weird that your team is managing a lot of what ultimately becomes revenue for the business, because these partners are referring all of these merchants to us, right, and I was like that’s fair. And also these partnerships are becoming very, I would say, formulaic and you know, what was really unique and first of a kind at the beginning is not anymore. We have a playbook and a sales team could probably run that playbook and so we transitioned all of those partnerships into the sales team and I think now we call it platform partnerships within sales or something like that at Stripe. And then I started building out a number of product partnerships and kind of shifted the team more in a product direction, working very closely with PMs, engineering those kinds of things. So yeah, that was a lot of foundational, I would say, revenue generating distribution work for the business. That happened very early on.
Sophie Buonassisi: 11:35
Yeah, no, that’s incredible and you built out a ton of potential revenue and revenue that converted from pipeline to revenue through partnerships initially, and I know Shopify was one of the deals that you helped bring in and partner with. I’m curious that’s such a huge brand, especially for a startup to get on board as a customer. What part of that kind of partnership deal might have almost fallen apart or what was the hardest part about securing Shopify?
Cristina Cordova: 12:01
Yeah, so our initial deal with Shopify was closed before I joined, actually, but it was a very lightweight integration, I would say. And then my first day my manager was like hey, you should come join this meeting because this is a partner you’re going to manage right. And then I sit down and they tell us that they’ve actually chosen to go with a different partner.
Cristina Cordova: 12:22
Oh, no day one On day one yeah, that wasn’t Stripe because they wanted to own more of the stack effectively, and we had this kind of like very lightweight solution and they wanted to own more of the experience because they thought that would be better ultimately for their customer. And so I was like, well, this isn’t the best you know first day for me, but hopefully we can figure this out. And then it was a critical time in the company. We were maybe, you know, we were less than 30 people and we had to decide okay, do we try to save this right? Is this salvageable? First, and then what would it require us to build in order to save it? And that would basically be a whole new set of APIs that would enable them to control more of the experience and then offer that to their customers. And then, you know, what would the business model look like, what would the structure be, and do we think that we want to not build all these other things that we had planned to build and do this instead, and that probably that was probably a third of the engineering team or something like that in terms of what it would require. And so it was pretty significant for us and we ultimately made the decision that they were an important enough partner that we should go and do that. But it’s easy to look back and say, yes, that was, of course, the obvious, right decision to do that and eventually win them back over and have them terminate this relationship.
Cristina Cordova: 13:44
That never went anywhere with the other partner, but at the time, shopify was maybe I want to say 40 people or something 50 people and we were 30 people. It wasn’t like we were partnering with some huge organization with this huge opportunity. So it wasn’t as obvious at the time that you should throw off your whole roadmap basically for another startup, and I think the you know in hindsight, the choice was made primarily because we believed in Shopify’s vision for the world and what they were trying to do, and we felt that ultimately, they’re asking for this because they’re super innovative and they want to build the best product. But maybe other companies in the world are also going to want the same thing eventually, and maybe they’re just on the bleeding edge of this, and eventually other people will want access to this too. So this won’t be just a custom, one-off thing that we’re doing for Shopify, but also something that we’re doing for other partners as well, and that was really, I think the key part of it and then also understanding that they were growing fast and we were also growing fast.
Cristina Cordova: 14:50
But I think a lot of times you look at partnerships and you’re like we should go after this partner that’s huge and could bring a lot to our business. But often that kind of partner is going to want to push you around and want to have a deal where you know they have the best possible outcome and you’re kind of like riding along and in a lot of ways, partnering with smaller companies can be far easier and I think I’ve also taken that approach at Linear. We’ve worked with a lot of what I would define as like other fast moving startups and that’s been really fantastic for us. But you know, I think in another world would it make sense to partner with a really big company? I think you have to make sure that the incentives are really there and that it makes sense. But I definitely think that was a key and critical partnership that transformed the business, not just because we won Shopify and continued to keep it, but also what it did for a lot of other partners eventually down the road.
Sophie Buonassisi: 15:47
Very cool. It sounds like just taking a first principles approach to partnerships, where you’re not necessarily looking at the brand size but really looking at the vision, the alignment, the mission at the core and then choosing your partners based on that. Yes, Cool, yes, exactly. And shifting to Notion, which you later joined. Notion was blowing up when you joined what was kind of the key growth unlock for the distribution engine at Notion.
Cristina Cordova: 16:14
Yeah, I mean I think the team at Notion had done a lot of really fantastic work early on to build a really strong community around the product, and I hadn’t really seen a community-driven growth strategy in previous companies. A lot of people like Stripe and would say great things about it and love the product and that kind of stuff, but they didn’t necessarily have skin in the game in the same way that Notion’s community did. So, very early on, the product was available for consumers to use and also for businesses, and so one of the, I think, key decisions for the company was are we a consumer business? Are we a B2B company? What are we?
Cristina Cordova: 16:55
And ultimately deciding that we should make the consumer business free which was a decision we made while I was there so that more people got to experience what Notion was and then a lot of the people who could experience it as an individual you know you’re planning your wedding in Notion or doing so many other things that you then start to say, oh, could I use this at work? Or what are the great use cases that you know might exist in my professional life, beyond my personal life? So you had a lot of like what I would call it, maybe like really indie professional people who were consultants or you know, in the arts or creative. You know world that started using Notion as their portfolio and also how they would do all of their project management for their individual work.
Cristina Cordova: 17:44
You know, things like that that I think, were really critical to build a lot of fanfare. And then we hired people early on who invested deeply in building a community. So let’s get these people together, virtually or in person. Let’s send them swag virtually or in person, let’s send them swag. Let’s create this ambassador program so that people who want to do Notion meetups or things like that can actually do that. Let’s give them early beta access to a lot of our features so that they feel they’re on the inside and get access to things earlier than others. And also it’s a great way to get product feedback, yeah.
Cristina Cordova: 18:24
So all those things I would say were key components of building a community around the product, and a lot of those people ended up building careers around Notion. So they created like Notion templates and then would sell them, yes, and have a great business. A lot of them became Notion consultants, so working with companies on how to set up their Notion workspaces, things like that, and making a lot of money doing that. So the community started to become very financially incentivized to see Notion succeed and creating YouTube videos, doing a lot of other things that we didn’t pay them to do those things, but they would make money in other ways off of that and it was, at the same time, very beneficial to us because we didn’t have to create all of this educational content and stuff like that. They get to it and I think that was like a model that I had never really seen before, and I give a lot of credit to Camille and a lot of early people on our team who invested deeply in that kind of strategy.
Sophie Buonassisi: 19:26
Super cool and you guys were, I mean, one of the first really creating that community-driven strategy at such a depth. I think that’s a huge differentiator. Now you see it way more commonly, especially for PLG companies. You were really trailblazing that model?
Cristina Cordova: 19:42
Yeah, totally. I think Figma was another company that did it very similarly.
Sophie Buonassisi: 19:48
I think when you have an audience that’s very creative, that becomes a natural part of like kind of evangelizing within that community in a way, and it’s cool to see little parts of your playbook at Notion now applied to other companies, like even the animation designer that you guys had behind. You can see that Clay now has an animation designer. Oh yeah, Just someone who just so much delight.
Cristina Cordova: 20:09
Like, yeah, who just does like Clay stuff all day and you’re just, this is wild, and I think a lot of it. Maybe you think about it, as you know this, like fun, quirky, one-off job, but it’s also about brand right and how you see the brand and how you choose to invest in the brand, and I think to me that’s always been a great sign of a business that really cares about building for the long term. I think at Stripe we cared a lot about the brand early on. We’re very responsive to customer feedback, things like that, and we invested a lot in design, which some people interpreted as marketing, but I actually think it was design, design.
Sophie Buonassisi: 20:52
Pure design?
Cristina Cordova: 20:52
Yeah, true design and I think the founders cared a lot about that, even though they weren’t necessarily designers. They hired really fantastic designers and product-minded people to work on the website and the brand and those kinds of things. And then Notion obviously took a very different shape in hiring an illustrator very early on, which was fantastic. You know, at Linear our CEO is a designer, so it’s really at the core of what we do. But our brand is also very different. We have a much more professional brand and it’s very clean, very sleek, minimal color. So it’s just, in a lot of ways, very different.
Cristina Cordova: 21:33
But when you see something and does that feel linear or does it not feel like linear? And to me that’s like having a brand. You have a direction where people can go but also know where they shouldn’t go or where that’s too far. And investing in that early has always been very attractive to me as an employee, because I know that these are founders who want to invest in the long term and be patient about building things that take time, and I think building a brand is part of that.
Sophie Buonassisi: 22:01
Absolutely. There’s a saying that I love and I think about all the time with companies that invest in brand and it’s people impute the quality of your product from the quality of your design and everything we do. Now I always think about that quote, irregardless if it’s a small tweak on the website or if it’s a brand guideline, whatever it is. Yes, yeah, so it sounds like what I kind of heard you say was one of the things that you look for, whether intentionally or not, but a good sign as a founder that really leans into building brand, because it is a long-term investment.
Sophie Buonassisi: 22:35
Are there other things that you look for other than being whisked away in a plane up top?
Cristina Cordova: 22:41
and an airline, but overall curiosities.
Sophie Buonassisi: 22:43
It sounds like investing in long-term durable solutions. Are there other things you look for in your team.
Cristina Cordova: 22:58
So I would just say like talented in lots of ways that I am not Ying and yang it’s part of it.
Cristina Cordova: 23:01
Yeah, exactly, it’s like I want a founding team to have a lot of skills that they can bring to the table, but the skills that I can observe are not my skills, but I can still understand that.
Cristina Cordova: 23:13
It’s exceptional.
Cristina Cordova: 23:14
There are people that you can observe and you’re just like oh yeah, that’s an engineer.
Cristina Cordova: 23:19
And then, when you’ve been working in this industry long enough, you can tell the difference, even if you’re not an engineer, between someone who’s good and someone who’s great, and sometimes that might be in domains that are outside of what you would think, like an engineer interacting with a customer and trying to understand their technical feedback and how to fix it.
Cristina Cordova: 23:41
That’s an interaction that you can observe as someone who’s not necessarily technical to understand if they’re truly great at what they do. So there’s a lot that I think about when I think about founders, where, okay, if you’re a designer, I want you to be one of the best designers in the world. If you’re an engineer, I want you to be one of the best engineers in the world, and I think it’s important that, as founders, you are bringing the best of the best to the table, because it also helps you recruit so many other really fantastic people too, because you know what to look for as someone who’s great in whatever domain that might be, and then, at the same time, I think in a lot of ways you are looking for exceptional people even in other domains that you are not familiar with.
Cristina Cordova: 24:30
So, you know, as an early stage company, you do a lot of first of hiring. You’re hiring your first people ops person and your first recruiter and your first salesperson. And as a technical founder, you may not know a lot about those domains or understand what’s the difference between good and great, but I tend to find that if you are exceptional at something yourself, you are better at kind of trying to spot that exceptionalism in other people. So that’s definitely a key component of it. And then I would say, from a business standpoint as a whole, I’ve generally joined companies that are post having some kind of product in the market. Yeah. So I try to look for a lot of signs that that product is doing well in the market. It doesn’t have to be doing amazingly well, right. And also, your interpretation of that on the outside is limited, given the data that you have.
Cristina Cordova: 25:27
But I love products that people love so much that they want to talk about them somewhere on the outside is limited, given the data that you have. But I love products that people love so much that they want to talk about them somewhere on the internet, right. So with Stripe, it was like people talking about Stripe on Hacker News and I would search for people posting about it. And what are people saying? Right, because I’m also, I was not a customer of Stripe. I don’t know. Is this really a great product, right? So I would go talk to people that I knew who were early stage startup people and I would say what are you using for payments? Oh, you’re using Stripe. Why did you choose that? Do you like it? You know, like those kinds of things to try and understand why they made certain decisions.
Sophie Buonassisi: 26:04
Yeah.
Cristina Cordova: 26:05
And then for Notion. A lot of my perspective was on Twitter, Like what are people saying about this product? Right, Do they?
Sophie Buonassisi: 26:11
like it.
Cristina Cordova: 26:11
Do they love it? Is it controversial? You know why? Linear was very similar, like where can I find this product’s audience? And then what is the audience saying about the product? Yeah, and I think that can be very helpful to understand. Is this a beloved product, even if the audience is small?
Cristina Cordova:26:32
Right, and that matters a lot to me because you know, for the most part, you know I’ve managed literally every type of function Engineering, product management, business, revenue, all these things but generally I’m not hands-on building the product.
Cristina Cordova: 26:47
Generally I’m not hands-on building the product. And so I would love to see that there’s evidence that the people who are hands-on building the product are listening to customers, know what customers want, and that whatever they have built so far is resonating with those customers. And then I think what you tend to see is that people who are maybe detractors or don’t believe in the brand might just be bigger companies, right, that are, oh yeah, like Stripe, that’s for startups. You know that’s what people would say in the early days when they were like, yeah, that’s probably not going anywhere. And then you realize that, like, every company starts out with some kind of wedge in the market that they’re focused on and then eventually, over time, if they’re successful, they’re able to kind of grow that wedge and own a bigger share of the pie. And for every company I’ve been part of that’s done B2B, it’s been starting with startups and early stage companies and then going to grow stage companies in mid-market and then going to enterprise.
Cristina Cordova: 27:47
So yes, the enterprise companies really early on are going to be like oh you’re small, no one’s going to use you, like that kind of thing, and then you’re just going to change that company’s mind and it might take you a decade, but you can do it right. But you should be resonating really well within that wedge that you have defined is working really well. So those are the things I try to like suss out. It’s really people and like is the product resonating in the market that you are really focused on at this particular moment in time? But sometimes, obviously, when you’re looking at a pre-product company, it’s really just the team, yeah, and that’s all you’ve got right. And so, figuring out what are the data points that you do have and do you find that the company is exceptional in one of team market product areas? And ideally it’s all three and you have a transformational business in front of you.
Sophie Buonassisi: 28:44
So super cool. It’s really interesting to hear you actually articulate that, because it mirrors exactly how we evaluate startups, too, and founders. It really is. You know, two of the core areas I heard you say was around the person. We think about that as spikiness. Yep, you know, one of the founders we invested in was the largest creator of a Minecraft server. Oh wow, super niche and random, but he was so passionate about this idea that he pursued it. Same kind of thing of you know what are people excellent at and what are they pursuing. And then, similarly, with the beloved customers and just people being being huge raving fans of a product we look for, you know people that would essentially be so unhappy if the product was taken away from them.
Sophie Buonassisi: 29:25
We’d look at that over revenue any day or most, or most days, I should say any day, but most days, you know, we’d rather have 10 happy design partners that are paying a tiny tiny fraction over, you know, $500,000 in revenue with their more disparate logos sometimes yeah, yeah, not kind of the same principles. I heard you say.
Cristina Cordova: 29:41
Yeah, I like what you mentioned around the Minecraft thing. It’s like me. It’s like I want to see someone who’s exceptional at something, because then I know that, like, when they make this transition to being a founder, they’re going to want to be exceptional at that too, right. So, whether it’s craft or, I don’t know, taekwondo or your IMO gold or those are the more classic, closer to engineering type things.
Cristina Cordova: 30:06
But I didn’t know taekwondo was so engineering focused closer to engineering type things but I didn’t know Taekwondo was so engineering focused Less so that, more the IMO gold focus. But or those people who do like what is it like quiz bowl or things like that? Right, these like competition, math-y style things, probably closer to engineering and then maybe good founder, like you know, you’ll see, but you want people to be good at something. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to build something exceptional. So having someone who’s been exceptional at something, whatever it might be, is also a really good sign. Like you see, this even about sales leaders so many of them are athletes, college level athletes going straight into sales and it’s like, well, yeah, if you are someone who has experience trying to get out in, like college athletics, you’re probably able to pick up the phone, make a lot of phone calls, be relatively personable and close some deals right, You’re used to rejection Right exactly.
Cristina Cordova:31:01
So things like that, where you’re just kind of like what’s the corollary for what this person has done historically and does that translate to this new field, whether it’s being a founder or being an operational leader or what have you? You know, I think the interesting thing about startups is that we’re all doing things that we have no business doing. I’ve never been a COO until now, so you know you could argue what business do I have doing this job? Right, I had never worked at a startup, you know, until I had right. So we’re all doing these things, I think, for the first time. And anyone who’s building a company is building a company in that specific market for the specific customer, you know, for the very first time.
Cristina Cordova: 31:41
So we’re all doing something that we don’t necessarily have experience in, and it’s important to think about A what are the things that I do bring to the table that are going to help me adjust to this problem and how to solve it?
Cristina Cordova: 31:56
And then are there examples that exist elsewhere that I can learn from, I think, the straight founders. One of the things they’re really great at is just bringing in this growth mindset to everything that they’re doing. There were times when we were doing company planning early on and they were like, christina, could you maybe go off and have some conversations with some other people at bigger companies about how they do planning and then bring those learnings back to us? Yeah, and so I went and I did that and I talked to execs at Amazon, at Meta, at Google, several places, and tried to understand how they did planning and then what, if anything, could translate to Stripe of well, google plans this way. So we should plan this way too, because, you know, is that what makes Google a great business how they do operational planning. I don’t know, but it may not be right.
Sophie Buonassisi: 32:59
Or it could be unique to them in a certain way.
Cristina Cordova: 33:01
Right, yeah, and so like, is the fit there for your business, like from this advice that you’re getting, and trying to understand if it really applies to you? And then understanding is what makes this business great, like this particular thing, or actually is it these other things that they’re really good at and the operational planning could be terrible and it wouldn’t really matter, right?
Sophie Buonassisi: 33:23
So, hey, one quick thing If you like what you’re hearing here, you should check out the Product Market Fit Show hosted by Pablo Cerugo of Mistral VC, where top founders share exactly how they found product market fit. It’s one of the best podcasts for early stage founders, going from zero to one. Just search the Product Market Fit Show or check the show notes. Very cool. And what about the operator side? Because you yourself you’ve been I mean, one of the first business hires for companies multiple times. You assess founders in a certain framework, like we talked about. Does the same framework apply to operators when you hire? Because I’ve heard you say be the person that builds without being asked to.
Cristina Cordova: 34:02
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends about like leadership specifically, so some kind of like operational leader within a company.
Cristina Cordova: 34:09
I definitely think I’ve always appreciated people who have a more like entrepreneurial mindset, so founder mode obviously being a thing, but I don’t think that solely applies to founders. I definitely think it applies to people who are leading in companies, and I think that’s because the mode that it requires of you at a certain stage and size, which is like I have never joined a company outside my first job straight out of college with more than 40 people, right, so I’ve always been very attracted to companies of a certain size and growing with them over time. Stripe was 3,000 people when I left, but I think, in a lot of ways, starting with companies that are really small, you’re looking for people who can see problems and want to fix them, or see an opportunity and want to go out and get it, and I think, for a lot of people, maybe in more traditional environments, are waiting to be told what to do and are waiting to be like. Oh, what strategy is, like you know, christina, going to give me?
Cristina Cordova: 35:15
that tells me what I should do this month and it’s like no, no, no, I’m hiring you because I think you can come up with a strategy, right, and you know, the difference between a really great leadership hire and a not so great leadership hire is someone who’s coming to you and saying, hey, you know, christina, I think we should change pricing at Linear, right, or I think we should build out our EMEA team, or I think we should do this, and I’m like this is a great idea. Let’s have a conversation about it, right, yeah, versus me having to go to them and necessarily say all of those things. Of course, there are going to be things that I have ideas about and that’s why I was hired, right and bring that to the table, but I do think I expect that leaders that I hire are going to not just think about what are the things that we should be doing at certain stages or size of business, because there are things that are pretty normal, like okay, at this stage, we should start having audited financials and we should get a finance person, and we should you know, that’s very classic Not necessarily like innovative or going to transform the business, though, right, yeah, so if you’re going to spend time, you know, coming up with ideas. I’d rather it be on the ladder rather than like on the stuff that, yes, we’re going to have to do that at some point, and reasonable Like, yes, we can do that now. Yeah, but coming and saying what are the things that we’re going to do, that can markedly change, you know, the trajectory of what we’re doing I think is really important and hiring people that you think can do that.
Cristina Cordova: 36:45
But that’s not true of all functions. Some functions, like the job is to keep the lights on and keep things moving and trains running on time and things like that right. But I would say that for a lot of roles where you can make a transformative impact for the business, the job of leadership is to really think through how that business can transform and then have the power to go and execute against it. Because ideas are great, we all have lots of ideas but if you can’t execute and get it done, the ideas don’t go anywhere. And so for me, I’ve always been a much more execution-oriented person. I really like doing things, I like getting things done, I like making progress, but that can’t come at the cost of thinking strategically and trying to do new things and being innovative.
Sophie Buonassisi: 37:35
Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean you mentioned you scaled from less than 40 people to thousands of people and organizations and you’ve seen billion dollar go to market and you’ve seen it built from scratch. What are you doing now at Lanier that you’re restarting that build process?
Cristina Cordova: 37:53
I think there are definitely lessons I’ve learned, like at Stripe. In the early days, I think there was a lot of fear of salespeople, like as if the salesperson that we would hire would be a person who’s trying to sell you something that you don’t need and all those kinds of things, and it was like you can find salespeople who know sales and can do it well without coming across in this particular way and so realizing that at early stage companies the vibes are important and if the founders suss out that we’re hiring salespeople with the wrong vibes, it’s not going to work.
Cristina Cordova: 38:42
But knowing that I’d rather save us a lot of time and instead of hiring people who don’t necessarily have sales experience, hire people who are experienced in sales but have done a lot of technical selling so selling to a buyer who is in engineering, product and design buyer who is in engineering, product and design and we almost exclusively hire salespeople with those backgrounds, specifically because I know that they have to come across in a certain way to not be salesy traditionally, and that has saved us a lot of time that I think was wasted at Stripe to kind of figure out you know, how do we sell, what is the strategy here, what is the approach, and cut through some of that initial work and get straight to what is the value that we’re providing and how do we talk about it and what is the sales narrative, and then finding a team that understands how to operate. At Stripe we didn’t have individual quotas until maybe I left the company. That’s three people, yeah, yeah. So I think by the time I left we had team quotas. We were slowly getting there because it wasn’t necessarily a traditional sales team, right. And when I joined Linear, we had our head of sales and one salesperson. And when we hired that one sales team, right. And when I joined Linear we had our head of sales and one sales person and when we hired that one sales person he had a quota from day one. So just things like that where I think having that structure can be really helpful In other businesses where you don’t understand your business model, you don’t understand your pricing and some of those things were true of Stripe.
Cristina Cordova: 40:06
At the time you’re like, oh, maybe we shouldn’t have a quota because I don’t want to incentivize the wrong behaviors and end up screwing up the business, right.
Cristina Cordova: 40:13
But I think when you have a pretty firm sense of what your costs are and we’re in some ways, traditional SaaS right, seat-based selling so it is a little bit more structured and easier to understand and easier to model.
Cristina Cordova: 40:26
So there are definitely lessons I’ve taken away that have been more of that shape. But I would say my biggest lesson historically has been knowing that at the end of the day, the judge on whether you’re doing a good job is do the founders want to keep you around, like as an executive leader who’s hired by founders and works for founders? Yeah, and there have definitely been executives I’ve worked with in my career where I’m just like I just don’t think this person’s doing a great job, and then you realize that the reason they’re still there is because the founders love them, you know, and so the founder will shuffle them around to different parts of the org and different parts of the company, even though they’re not doing a great job, because they’re well-liked by the founders, right, right, and so I hope that I’m doing actually a good job, right? Yeah, of course that’s the number one goal, but in reality, I think you have to realize that a lot of these decisions are relationship-oriented.
Cristina Cordova: 41:25
Who stays at a company, who grows at a company, who gets the opportunity to kind of see it through for a long period of time and I think what I’ve learned is just like you have to build those relationships so that you are on the same page and that you’re understanding of what their priorities are, and their priorities should be your priorities, and I think that’s a critical component of success.
Cristina Cordova: 41:47
when you think about being an executive leader who’s hired by founders like my, job is to make their lives easier yeah and better, and I would hope that at any point they say I’m so thankful we hired Christina because I don’t have to do this anymore, or because now this is going so much better or all of these things. I want that to be true, but it’s not going to be true unless I invest in the relationship and I understand what they want.
Sophie Buonassisi: 42:14
Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. And let’s say you’re dropped into a company who is very early stage, similar to how you built Linear Notion Stripe how do you assess the go-to-market? What would be the first things that you’d build out, just objectively, irregardless of the nuances of the business, but templates, frameworks, different ways of really building out the go-to-market roadmap?
Cristina Cordova: 42:40
I feel like I would probably start with just getting in there and being very hands-on. Yeah, so are there sales calls? I can join. How do I get in front of customers? How do I observe what’s going on? So really starting to understand those things I think is helpful.
Cristina Cordova:42:59
One of the first things I did at one company I joined was I did a ride-along with our first salesperson and I was like I wasn’t in sales but I was like I just want to see the pitch and understand what this is like and I can have an interpretation on whether this is good or bad. Right, yeah, and then we can figure out how to kind of make progress. So I think a lot of it is just observational, to kind of understand things. Like, when I came into Linear we had a head of sales. He was our one salesperson, yeah, so he was both trying to build out the function and be an AE at the same time and we talked a lot about how he wanted to build out the team and hire more people but was feeling maybe like in a similar way to how Stripe was some resistance to hiring salespeople from the founders.
Cristina Cordova: 43:45
Very normal. And so it’s trying to understand. How does everybody feel about this, right? So talking to founders and understanding how you think it’s going yeah Right, you may not actually know right, Because you’re maybe potentially far removed from it, but what is actually going on here and then being in some of those meetings and calls and understanding how they’re going yourself and then trying to match what is the interpretation that other people have about this function? And then what is your interpretation of the performance at the ground level with customers?
Cristina Cordova: 44:17
And I really care about that, first and foremost because I would never want anyone to have a bad experience. And I think, as an executive, there are so many times when bad experiences are escalated to you. Oh, there were so many times when I was at other companies where it would be like I had this terrible experience with support Christina, can you help me? Or things like that. And that’s probably the most frustrating moment operationally as a leader, when those escalations are coming to you and you know that it is your fault as the company are coming to you and you know that it is your fault as the company. So I think trying to understand that at ground level is like the first thing that’s important.
Cristina Cordova: 44:56
And then I think you have to do an exercise to understand we did this at Stripe very early on based on how the company is going revenue margins, growth rate how do we think this business is going to grow over the next three months, six months a year? And then how many people are we going to need to have to support this business? Right, so just foundationally, like at stripe. For example, we had all these people writing into support. We couldn’t get back to them quickly enough and the business was growing. So we need to model out how big of a hole are we going to be in where we’re not going to be able to get back to people, and so how quickly do we need to hire in order to get out of that hole?
Sophie Buonassisi: 45:38
Right.
Cristina Cordova: 45:39
So understanding that first. And then I think, once you’re out of a hole which sometimes you need to get yourself out of then it’s about what are the investments that we’re making right? So Linear is a very self-serve business and that’s how we started. But we started to get people who are writing in to sales and saying, can I have a conversation? So then you know, next objective is to make sure you get back to everyone who’s writing into you and that you deliver a very strong sales experience to anyone who’s coming inbound. And then you’re like well, what is the opportunity of outbound right? What could we do to grow the business faster if we are trying new things and doing things differently?
Cristina Cordova: 46:19
And you know, outbound is not like you know, ooh, transformative, but like, if you haven’t done it before, yes, it is new. So what is that? How much are we going to invest in it? And then, if we were to do all of the outbound in the world that we think is beneficial to the business and efficient, how big would our team be and how much do we need to hire? So those are the things I tend to think about. It’s like is the quality there, first and foremost, in the experience? Because if the quality is not there, we can’t build anything until we fix it. And then next, are we getting back to people fast enough? Are we filling current needs? And then, what hiring do we need to do to get there? And then the last step is where do we want to invest and how much do we?
Sophie Buonassisi: 47:01
want to invest and how quickly. And you mentioned outbound, of course, and headcount and understanding the scaling process. You scaled multiple business before AI was so deeply embedded in the go-to-market motion. I’m curious what has changed now with AI building at Lanier.
Cristina Cordova: 47:19
Yeah, I would say the biggest change with AI has been primarily in helping determine what opportunities we go after in helping determine what opportunities we go after.
Cristina Cordova: 47:30
It has not changed fundamentally. The sales experience, like the experience you have as a customer, Like you still want to talk to a human being, that human being is going to have to interpret your needs based on what you say. You know all of those things are as they were five years ago, 10 years ago. But you know, because we’re such a heavy self-serve business, we have a lot of signups and you have to figure out where’s the needle in the haystack, Where’s the big opportunity that we should be paying attention to.
Cristina Cordova:47:57
And it’s not just oh, I’m going to send an email out to that inbound signup because, I don’t know, it’s like Netflix or something you know, so obvious, right, but it’s like well, is this person from this very large company who signed up for our product the right person to use our product, or are they like an IC engineer in an org and we need to find other people within the org?
Cristina Cordova: 48:21
who also care about linear, or find someone who’s a few levels up right, and that’s going to require investment and research and a lot of tooling, and that, I think, is where AI has really come in to say, okay, what are the opportunities based on the size of this company, the person who signed up, whether they’re in our ICP? All of these things should be automated so that we’re spending our time crafting the right messaging to the right person within an organization and then reaching out to them in a format that we think is going to yield the best outcome. So I think that’s the biggest area where things have changed for us, which has been really critical, because for our business, it’s not a lot of people signing up to want to talk to the sales team.
Sophie Buonassisi: 49:09
Right.
Cristina Cordova: 49:09
Because we’re a very you know developer-heavy business. It’s much more like how do you find the right people?
Sophie Buonassisi:49:18
I used to test and experiment a lot with messaging and that was a big learning. Yeah, because consistently if you put a human as the outcome, it was less likely to convert. Human as the outcome, it was less likely to convert. So if somebody was like sales, call, talk to a salesperson less likely of conversion as opposed to anything unrelated to a human experience which is so interesting.
Sophie Buonassisi:49:37
People want to do their own research more now than ever, especially when you’re looking at certain archetypes that are a little bit more hands-on and working with the product themselves, like developers.
Cristina Cordova: 49:47
Yeah, like our sales team. They don’t even say on their LinkedIn profiles I’m an account executive. They say I’m on the customer team, you know, yeah. And so it’s very much like how can I help you, how can I be of service to you and your organization? Again, we don’t want to come across like we’re trying to sell you something you don’t need. Yeah, so it’s like you, should you have problems, like presumably you’re signing up for us for a reason right to explore, there’s a problem you want to solve, etc. And that’s where the opportunity is. And I think coming across as someone who’s going to sell you something is going to immediately land you in the spam folder, right? So sometimes even just a quick LinkedIn connection and then a two-line message that’s very friendly and open and not overly salesy is the best strategy for certain leaders that we’re trying to engage with. So we found that to work particularly well for our audience in particular, and I think when Mm-hmm that they use. So it’s like I’m signing up for Linear, but I just don’t.
Sophie Buonassisi: 51:08
I don’t know if I can make this happen.
Cristina Cordova: 51:11
And it’s like well, I can help you, right, I can help you build a case. Right, I can help you try to find the people in your organization to talk to about making this decision. I can actually connect you with five other people who’ve signed up for Linear in the last month from your organization and maybe you can band together and we can make this happen, right. So coming across in that way, I think, is really important, especially when you’re selling to an organization in a very wide way, right, because we’re rolling out to every engineer, pm, designer within an entire organization, right. So it’s important that you build those advocates in a lot of different ways, and you know there are a lot of different people who can help you in the journey.
Cristina Cordova: 51:57
There are people who we talk to on the sales side. One of my indicators of is the sales team doing a good job is how many screenshots are they getting from their own customers, like internal Slack conversations about linear, where someone will be like oh, like, what about this? And someone else will be like no, we have to use Linear and here’s the reason why. And then someone else will screenshot that and send it to one of our salespeople, like that’s a sign that you have built trust with people and that they actually want to engage with you and that you are helping them. So those are the signs for me that our motion is working well and that people are trusting the salespeople that we have on our team and that it’s not just this transactional order form RFP filling type of role.
Sophie Buonassisi: 52:46
Yeah, I love the way you just boil it down into. You have a pain. I solve your pain Simple. And where do you find your greatest inspiration? I’m curious if there’s any books that have shaped the way that you think or lead over time or other resources even.
Cristina Cordova: 53:02
Good question, I really like a lot of podcasts and interviews with certain people out there. But in terms of resources, I’ve found myself kind of going back to a couple times. Claire Hughes-Johnson, who was Stripe’s COO and now a corporate advisor, wrote a book called Scaling People and it was a lot about organizational growth like what are we doing to build the company as we are also trying to grow the business, and she wrote a really fantastic book about a lot of the things that we did at Stripe, some of which I saw firsthand. So I know those lessons, but a lot of them I didn’t, and they were behind the scenes or just the thinking behind it, because, also, what we did at Stripe at a thousand people doesn’t necessarily apply to linear at 100 people. So those are the kinds of things that I think I tend to go back to and be like what was that chapter of that book? Because I think I’ve hit that point in our journey where something here needs to change. So just kind of understanding the mental models I think were really helpful. And then my other thing that I tend to do really often but it’s not a resource but something that I think anyone can do is find other people who are in your role or roles where you’re coming up to speed in them.
Cristina Cordova: 54:22
So, for example, when I joined Linear, we had leaders in some functions and didn’t have leaders in other functions, so I was running those functions directly. One function I still run directly to this day is marketing. So I have several marketing leaders that I’ve just gotten to know at other companies, knowing that right now I don’t think it’s the right time for us to hire a leader, so maybe these people will be our future leaders. You never know. But at the same time there’s a lot that I can learn from them as I’m coming up to speed, like with my marketing leader hat on in a way, and that’s really important so that I can A lot of those. I’ve been running through these people. I did a call with Amanda Clayha, who was the chief commercial officer at Figma, and at the time Linear had not a lick of swag like nothing, with our logo printed on it and stuff like that, and she was just like you don’t have swag you have to have swag.
Cristina Cordova: 55:33
If you go to config figma’s annual conference, like the biggest line in the entire conference is for swag. Like people live for it, people are going to evangelize you and wear these things and you know like it’s going to go so much further than you think. And so it was one of my things where I was like maybe I should experiment with this and see if I can get people to agree to try this in a limited way, just because she felt so strongly about it. Yeah, yeah, we did. What did you get?
Cristina Cordova: 56:01
So we, so my experiment was we were coming up on Linear’s sixth anniversary of the company, so we created what I call these linear supply kits, which was basically a Toyo steel toolbox and a bunch of things like really nice, like notebook patches that you could iron on to things, cool Pens, so just like the highest quality item in every category. Yeah, and connected it to this idea of like this is your toolbox and these, as a professional, are your tools, effectively that kind of go into the toolbox. And then we sent that to our 200 earliest paying customers and had a really nice note alongside it and people loved it and tweeted it and like a lot of things and because we had so many posts about it, I think people on our team were like oh, people really like swag you know, and I’m like yeah, I think if you do it in a very high quality way and in a very targeted way, that could be our style, our version of doing this.
Cristina Cordova: 57:05
We don’t have to have a closet with 8 million t-shirts in there that anyone can access, yeah, yeah. So just find the thing that works really well for you and your company. So I think, just figuring out, like you know, again, other companies are going to do things differently. If I had suggested that we launch an online store where people could buy anything for plenty, our founders would be like okay, Christina you’re out of here.
Cristina Cordova: 57:29
But, you know, doing something that felt really nice and custom and thoughtful to a limited number of users felt really good. And so I think it’s always like how could I take this advice and how does it apply to Linear? Right, but just getting on some of those phone calls with people that you feel like did something really great, had a really fantastic experience, are doing something really great, and just using them as a sounding board when you have an idea or don’t know how to do something. I have a little COO iMessage group with a few people Perfect, perfect, um, and so when it’s like you know you’re talking about like hey, what’s comp like for this role, you know, or things like that that are coming up every now and then, or there’s like small little questions, like you just have a group to kind of ask them to and it’s really helpful, yeah so build, build your networks, build your communities, yes, and where can people find you if they want to follow along your journey or get oh, let’s see.
Cristina Cordova: 58:28
let’s see, I’m pretty active on Twitter, or X, oh God, whatever people call it these days. My handle is CJC. And then, yeah, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I go to a lot of events in San Francisco, so you might find me there too.
Sophie Buonassisi: 58:42
But yeah, I know you’re speaking at a couple coming up too, so I’m sure people can follow along some of your speaking engagements also podcasts, and we’ll drop your socials in the show notes too for everyone. Awesome, thank you. Awesome. This has been fantastic, christina, thank you for joining us and thank you for sharing your story. Yeah, thank you for having me. You bet it’s been a lot of fun.
