Peder Ulander, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at MongoDB, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how MongoDB is paving the way for innovation. Corey and Peder discuss how Peder made the decision to go from working at Amazon to MongoDB, and Peder explains how MongoDB is seeking to differentiate itself by making it easier for developers to innovate without friction. Peder also describes why he feels databases are more ubiquitous than people realize, and what it truly takes to win the hearts and minds of developers. About Peder Peder Ulander, the maestro of marketing mayhem at MongoDB, juggles strategies like a tech wizard on caffeine. As the Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, he battles buzzwords, slays jargon dragons, and tends to developers with a wink. From pioneering Amazon's cloud heyday as Director of Enterprise and Developer Solutions Marketing to leading the brand behind cloud.com's insurgency, Peder's built a legacy as the swashbuckler of software, leaving a trail of market disruptions one vibrant outfit at a time. Peder is the Scarlett Johansson of tech marketing — always looking forward, always picking the edgy roles that drive what's next in technology.Links Referenced:MongoDB: https://mongodb.com
TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode of Screaming in the Cloud is brought to us by my friends and yours at MongoDB, and into my veritable verbal grist mill, they have sent Peder Ulander, their Chief Marketing Officer. Peder, an absolute pleasure to talk to you again.Peder: Always good to see you, Corey. Thanks for having me.Corey: So, once upon a time, you worked in marketing over at AWS, and then you transitioned off to Mongo to, again, work in marketing. Imagine that. Almost like there’s a narrative arc to your career. A lot of things change when you change companies, but before we dive into things, I just want to call out that you’re a bit of an aberration in that every single person that I have spoken to who has worked within your org has nothing but good things to say about you, which means you are incredibly effective at silencing dissent. Good work.Peder: Or it just shows that I’m a good marketer and make sure that we paint the right picture that the world needs to see.Corey: Exactly. “Do you have any proof of you being a great person to work for?” “No, just word of mouth,” and everyone, “Ah, that’s how marketing works.”Peder: Exactly. See, I’m glad you picked up somewhere.Corey: So, let’s dive into that a little bit. Why would you leave AWS to go work at Mongo. Again, my usual snark and sarcasm would come up with a half dozen different answers, each more offensive than the last. Let’s be serious for a second. At AWS, there’s an incredibly powerful engine that drives so much stuff, and the breadth is enormous.MongoDB, despite an increasingly broad catalog of offerings, is nowhere near that level of just universal applicability. Your product strategy is not a Post-It note with the word ‘yes’ written on it. There are things that you do across the board, but they all revolve around databases.Peder: Yeah. So, going back prior to MongoDB, I think you know, at AWS, I was across a number of different things, from the developer ecosystem, to the enterprise transformation, to the open-source work, et cetera, et cetera. And being privy to how customers were adopting technology to change their business or change the experiences that they were delivering to their customers or increase the value of the applications that they built, you know, there was a common thread of something that