This blog is part of our ongoing ‘Why I joined ThoughtSpot’ series, where we profile Spotters from around the world to learn who they are and why they chose a career at ThoughtSpot.
Tony Hammond has recently joined ThoughtSpot as the VP, Solutions Engineering for EMEA and is based in London, United Kingdom. At ThoughtSpot, Tony is responsible for building the growth engine for the EMEA Sales Engineering team, driving strategic sales initiatives across the entire organization, and developing go-to-market strategic and tactical plans. Welcome to ThoughtSpot!
Here’s what he has to say about #LifeAtThoughtSpot.
How did you hear about ThoughtSpot?
I have been in the BI and Analytics industry for over 20 years now, so I was very well aware about ThoughtSpot. However, the first time I really heard and researched about ThoughtSpot was when they came up as a competitor in the market during my time at Tableau. A lot of the market still believes that ThoughtSpot is this on-premise, expensive, specialist, Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool. I have done my due diligence, and I can say for a fact that people who really believe that are in for a big surprise. It’s hard to come across a company like ThoughSpot which is visionary in its approach, and that’s not always the easy path. But someone has to and will lead the way. ThoughtSpot is the Modern Analytics Cloud company with Live Analytics services that deliver personalized, actionable insights at the point of impact for every user, at every level.
What are your top reasons for joining ThoughtSpot?
Here, I do have to share a bit of a backstory. When I joined Tableau nine years ago from IBM Cognos, I knew I had found something special. Tableau was a successful US company but still a startup in EMEA at that point in time. It had a clear mission, great culture, strong product and an untapped market in this region. And being part of the EMEA team’s growth from less than 50 to over 1000 people was an amazing journey.
Today, the similarities that I see with ThoughSpot are absolutely striking - the size, mission, culture, product, people, and market all have been some of the reasons that have drawn me to the company. Tableau has done a great job of empowering data analysts and lessening the need for IT report-building factories, but for the average knowledge worker to ask and answer their own data questions, it’s still too hard. The analyst has become the new dashboard-building factory and a bottleneck to getting answers. ThoughtSpot is looking to solve some of the big problems in this space and their mission to build a fact-driven world gets me really excited about what’s to come.
The analytics industry is a close-knit community. So I knew many members of the team already. They helped me validate my decision and referenced the great culture that ThoughtSpot has.
I am thrilled to be able to join a company where we can build something special!
How do you plan to use ThoughtSpot in your day-to-day work?
Using analytics to run your business shouldn’t be, and isn’t, hard with ThoughSpot. Obviously, it’s still early days for me so understanding what data we have and then identifying what focused few metrics can make a big difference this year, is a priority. I was privileged to join Kendrick Heath’s team offsite where they ran through how the teams use ThoughtSpot to ensure they are a high performing Solutions Engineering team. It was impressive how much data this team has at its disposal and how it is used to make deal-changing decisions.
What advice do you have for new Spotters joining the team?
Call me and I’ll happily share my excitement over a coffee. Would be great to meet you!
Join our team and work with Tony! Check out the open opportunities on our careers page today.
