Meet Brandon Warshaw, VP Partner & Customer Success
Here’s your opportunity to learn a little more about Brandon Warshaw, an inspiring leader and a truly special guy. We sat down for a quick interview to talk all things Harmonya — his role, what motivates him, and a few of the hobbies he makes time for outside the office.
What do you do at Harmonya?
I lead Partner & Customer Success for Harmonya — so I spend a LOT of time with our friends outside of the company to build strong and productive relationships.
On the partnership side, I mainly work with tech and CPG industry players. The tech companies we work with are helping us build better products and make it easier to work with our mutual customers with their preferred tools. We’re also building a presence on the various data marketplaces that are building momentum on the major tech platforms to make it easier for partners and customers to discover our data and streamline the process to integrate it into their operations.
We’ve also been building alliances with the major CPG industry data providers to make it as easy as possible to help our mutual customers succeed. Our product data enrichment offerings are often paired with syndicated data from the major players like Nielsen and IRI. The relationships we’re building with these companies are critically important to us so we can help our mutual customers maximize the value and impact from their data.
On the customer side, I work closely with new and existing customers to help them scope engagements, onboard to our data and applications, and identify opportunities to expand our relationships to new parts of the business. I’ve worked on both sides of the fence — as a service provider and buyer of data & analytics — so I appreciate the challenges that our customers face! It’s awesome to see first hand how our customers are using our data and capabilities to solve longstanding problems in new and exciting ways.
While it may sound like most of my job is focused externally, I spend a lot of time with our Product, Infra, and Data science teams, too. They are the true stars of the show. I work closely with them to make sure our customer and partner requirements are satisfied and to help bring the industry context to life for our technical teams in Tel Aviv.
Hear Brandon’s Answers to the Lightning Round Below
How would you describe the culture at Harmonya?
The culture in Harmonya is one of the key reasons I joined the company. I’ve spent a lot of time in large companies — I was one of 300,000 employees in my last company. This meant a lot of meetings, a lot of processes, and a lot of resources. I still have a lot of meetings (I do it to myself), but the rest is pretty different. There is a huge amount of autonomy to do what needs to be done creatively. We are building everything from the ground up, so there is a healthy appetite for experimentation and incremental progress. Everyone is super collaborative and brilliant, so we’re all constantly learning from each other.
What inspires you about your work at Harmonya?
I’ve been in the CPG universe a long time, on both the agency and manufacturer sides. I’ve worked with product data consistently the entire time, and I have gotten immense value from it. Like all industries, it’s a time of incredible acceleration in the quality and quantity of data that everyone is able to access and analyze to drive better outcomes. The pace of innovation in the CPG product data space hasn’t kept pace with some of the other subjects like media, PII, etc. So when I first met the Harmonya founders as a customer I was super excited by what they were building. And as time went on and the conversations continued I was so excited by what they were setting out to achieve. I felt like I could help bring a unique perspective and value to the efforts, and it’s been such a rewarding experience to help build our capabilities and relationships with customers from the ground up. There is nobody else in the CPG product data space doing what we’re doing, and the feedback from our customers and partners keeps me energized and motivated.
What do you do for fun outside of work?
I love spending time on or by the water with my family. I am fortunate to live about 10 minutes from the Long Island Sound, so it’s pretty easy to go fishing, paddle boarding, kayaking, or just hang out at the beach. Now that my kids are a little older (11 and 8.5) we have also been more ambitious with travel. We take a lot of day trips, a few road trips each year, and are taking the kids to Europe for the first time next year. I’ve also started taking really long walks early in the morning where I enjoy listening to podcasts and audiobooks (mostly filthy comedians and low brow entertainment).
What’s something on your bucket list?
I would love to sail the Caribbean on a catamaran. I don’t sail, but I have spent a lot of time on boats throughout my life. There is something about the idea of being able to bounce around from island to island with the beautiful weather and clear water that just works for me.
What advice do you have for someone who is just joining Harmonya?
Dive into the industry context so you can really understand the customers! The world of CPG is a unique space, and the data we provide is relevant across so many industry use cases. Each of our brand and retailer customers has their own flavor of needs and opportunities to use what Harmonya offers to accelerate growth. There is no substitute for spending time with people who have first-hand experience using CPG data to solve problems. We have super ambitious plans for 2023, and it’s going to be an incredibly exciting time to help us build and scale.
Who do you want to nominate to be interviewed next month?
Nadav Mermer! I spent a fun day at the Google HQ in Tel Aviv with him a few weeks ago.
Interested in bringing your talents to Harmonya and helping us build the next big commerce startup? Take a look at our open roles!
