Yesterday I finished the last day of my final operating role, which made me think back on the incredible leaders I've been fortunate to work with over the last 35 years. I learned so much from my first (and best ever) manager at Sun Microsystems, Marco Riera. The world is poorer since he left us far too soon. I still remember my first review conversation with James Gwertzman, a rising superstar at Microsoft who was the first person I managed. I learned as much from him as he did from me. And the wisdom and patience of James Hamilton and Dave Campbell at Microsoft as they taught the new guy how a database worked, while personifying humble leadership. Corey Thomas was the heart of our team on SQL Server, and I was doubly blessed to have a chance to work with him again at Rapid7 where we built the foundation of the business together before he took it to an entirely new level after I left. Richard Li helped us figure out how the security market really worked, and built a winning strategy. At Talend I had a chance to work with two world class CFOs in Thomas Tuchscherer and Adam Meister. Thomas taught me how completely insane French corporate law can be, and as a banker at Goldman Sachs Adam taught both of us how to take a company public before joining us full time to succeed Thomas. Ashley Stirrup remains my benchmark for best collaborative team member I've ever worked with. Brad Stratton's intro to the Talend sales team at our SKO was literally falling down funny (fortunately he recovered quickly from that stunt, before completely rebuilding and upleveling our sales hiring approach). Speaking of which, our movie themed SKOs were legendary. I'll never forget flying loops and low level terrain following in a jet trainer with a former soviet bloc pilot (who seemed to have a history of training African nations on the wrong side of history) with Brad and Nello Franco. We had as much fun preparing for our Top Gun themed SKO as delivering it! In addition to daredevil piloting, Nello built terrific Customer Success teams at both Talend and Onfido. Terry Denzer did a terrific job leading our Americas team at both Talend and Onfido, before taking over as CRO. Francesca Porter is a true superstar who grew into the best GC I've worked with. She will do amazing things. Yuelin Li is a walking supercomputer who grew as fast as anyone I've ever worked with. Nate Skinner brought a straightforward, pragmatic, GSD approach that revolutionized our marketing. Olivier Koch is a genius who built the world's best gen AI driven identity system, and somehow found time to teach me how all the rapidly evolving rocket science works along the way. Miguel Vitorino and Sami Touil built world class teams and market leading products. And Faisal Chughtai kept us on the rails with a thoughtful and incredibly detail oriented approach. These are only a small sample of the incredible people who I had a chance to work with. For everyone I worked with: Thank You!!
Mike Tuchen - I really miss the good old days back in Talend. I like your honest & down to earth approach when it comes to leadership & communicating to the employee. What you said you will do, you will execute which makes me admire your leadership style. There are leaders who say something but do something else which lose employee trust. It makes it easy for us to feedback to you when we see something not right.
Ajay Agarwal
3w
Congrats on an amazing run!
Congratulations Mike Tuchen ! What a career so far - truly impressive ! You are a truly inspiring business and technology leader. It's been a privilege to work with a leader who fosters such a collaborative and growth-oriented environment. On top of being a very empowering leader you transformed my view of Californian wines my friend 😉 I learned so much from you and thanks for always making the time to mentor me. Wishing you all the best in your exciting new venture! Looking forward to catching up soon!
Mike - thank you so much for everything, enjoy your well deserved retirement. I will miss working together. I can’t wait to hear about your next achievements, I have a sense many will be forthcoming…!
Shawn James
3w
A great career and the best CEO that I've had the most pleasure to work for and with. Talend was the pinnacle of my career, thanks to you. You're the best! Let's go golf!
Yuelin Li
3w
What an amazing run! Thank you for the support and opportunities you’ve offered me the past 3.5 years - it’s been hard but immense fun, which I hear is similar to running a winery 😅
Nello Franco
3w
Congrats Mike Tuchen on a fantastic career. Thanks for the votes of confidence and support that allowed me to be a part of two of those chapters. Looking forward to catching up again soon for some golf, and maybe another flight that doesn’t involve 5 Gs and being inverted.
Amber DeVine
3w
Mike Tuchen I remember as a young designer sitting at a make shift card table with you and the brokers discussing design for your first big office build out for Talend. What a great group to work with and fantastic project to collaborate on. Thank you for the opportunity, and support in doing so, it was an honor. Cheers to a fabulous retirement and many Congratulations.
What an incredible ride, Mike I still the remember the day I stepped in your office for the first time, trying to give you a comprehensive report on a key situation on a large account, and your first sentence was “Abhi, where can I help?” That changed everything on that that account and places we went together. The world needs more leaders like you!
Wow what a career. I had so much fun building a world class team with you and the Talend leadership team. I am glad we built a a lasting freindship as part of this journey. Now you can work on your pickleball and golf skills to try to challenge me this fall:)