The explosive growth of the digital economy is driving a profound transformation in the way data is managed and user experiences are delivered. California-based Couchbase is disrupting the $40B database market with its data platform that revolutionizes digital innovation. As the President and CEO of Couchbase, Matt Cain is parlaying nearly 20 years of leadership experience to steer the company’s upward trajectory by helping its customers create amazing experiences for their own customers.
A Global Leader with History of Building Teams
With nearly two decades of experience in leading global organizations, Matt is a proven technology executive and general manager. Prior to Couchbase, he served as the President of Worldwide Field Operations for Veritas Technologies LLC, where he led a 4,200 person team responsible for all aspects of sales, customer retention, channels, services, and support. Before that, as the Chief Product Officer for Veritas’ $2.5B business, he led strategy, product management, product marketing, engineering, support, hardware operations, and cloud delivery. During his tenure, he revitalized the company strategy, increased operational efficiency, delivered growth across the portfolio, and was instrumental in the separation of Veritas from Symantec. Matt previously held a variety of senior leadership positions at Symantec Corporation and Cisco Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Handling Couchbase with Unique Leadership Style
Matt believes that everything he does is in service of creating the best company for his employees, customers, partners, and shareholders. Having deep love and passion for teamwork, Matt committed himself to setting up at least 100 one-on-ones and team meetings with employees of all levels, customers, investors, partners, vendors, and analysts. Likewise, the energetic CEO of Couchbase set expectations on his first day about this agenda so people would be ready with their feedback and surprisingly, he got a good response.
It’s critical for employees to consistently have a good level of visibility into where the company is thriving, as well as areas that require improvement, and it’s equally important that they have the confidence to voice their opinions. To bring such visibility, Matt has implemented the open-door policy in the office and also pushed open the “virtual door” by communicating activities and progress at an early stage which set precedence for transparency.
Building Healthy Employee and Customer Relationships
While working in any company, positive motivations like encouragement, development, teamwork, etc. beat the fatigue and negative motivations. Believing in these positive energies, Matt ensures his employees that they are a part of a team that works together and empowers each other.
According to Matt, openness, actions, and follow-ups are keys for building relationships with customers and partners as well. His employees know where to find him to share their ideas, thoughts, and feedback, whether positive or negative. At Couchbase, people work for one another and celebrate collectively, because everyone believes that it’s in the best interest of the company, and it creates a place that allows them to be fulfilled in their work.
It’s the energy and positive belief of employees in Couchbase that makes Matt most proud. The positive CEO of Couchbase tells people about his ideas, goals, and what he learned from his past experiences. This open thinking enables his co-workers to see what can be possible with a team’s collective efforts, which makes them believe that communicating transparently about the objectives and goals is very crucial for the company’s productivity and overall development.
Wide-Ranging Cloud Offerings at Couchbase
Couchbase’s mission is to be the data platform that revolutionizes digital innovation. To make this possible, the leading cloud solutions provider company created the world’s first Engagement Database to help deliver ever-rich and personalized customer and employee experiences. Built with the most powerful NoSQL technology, the Couchbase Data Platform is architected on top of an open source foundation for the massively interactive enterprise. Additionally, its geo-distributed Engagement Database provides unmatched developer agility and manageability, as well as unparalleled performance at any scale from any cloud to the edge.
Couchbase is powering a broad range of business applications and solutions, including Customer 360, Catalog & Inventory Management, Field Service and IoT Data Management, across a wide range of industries, from retail & e-commerce, to travel & hospitality, healthcare, financial services, telecommunications and media & entertainment.
Ease of Managing Distributed Databases
Distributed databases are hard and the team at Couchbase makes it easy. Couchbase’s comprehensive platform integrates storage, access, transport, and enterprise-grade security on premises, across multiple clouds, as well as mobile devices. Moreover, administration and maintenance is abstracted from the application behavior. Users can scale out, in, or up, replicate around the globe, upgrade versions, and recover from failures with zero downtime or application changes accompanied by features like global deployment, full stack security, and consistent performance when adding microservices.
Facing Challenges in Fast Changing World
Today, the rate of change in technology is unmatched. Companies are constantly being funded, getting acquired and, unfortunately, some are going out of business. These dynamic conditions create perpetual challenges, and opportunities, that can feel like insurmountable obstacles. In times of change, leaders are ultimately responsible for driving the company forward, but teams make the big difference. When it comes to overcoming business obstacles, Matt believes in tackling challenges alongside his world class team. His culture of openness, transparency, and trust plays a big role in delivering positive results.
One Who Respects Others Opinions and Views Makes a Good Leader
Matt emphasizes on the importance of letting others speak and express their views. He listens to his employees and respects their opinions. The open-minded CEO of Couchbase says, “While many leaders are often prominent communicators, the importance of listening is often undervalued, overlooked, and underused. Listening gives you a sense of the existing culture, and ultimately informs your strategic agenda of moving forward. It’s important to deal with the world the way it is, not the way you want it to be. Humility is a critical asset in doing this well.”
