I’m happy to announce that Megan Gleason, formerly Head of Product at Honeycomb, has been promoted to VP of Product. Prior to Honeycomb, Megan was Director of Product at both Auth0 and Chef Software. This promotion marks her first formal executive role.
This is the second time we’ve grown an executive from within. One year ago, I wrote a similar post welcoming Emily Nakashima to her new role as VP of Engineering. At Honeycomb, it’s important to me that we promote people and hire from within, and that we be transparent about what we choose to reward as an organization.
Since Honeycomb’s earliest days, I’d been reluctant to give away control of product strategy. I often heard users asking for faster horses and buggies, not the speedy roadsters I wanted them to have. How we approached product management was critical to the success of this crazy new thing we were calling observability.
But in early 2019, the biggest challenges in our way were the gaps in connecting the dots between engineering, sales, and marketing efforts. We had confusion where we should have had alignment. The features we were delivering weren’t landing with the impact we needed. And then we had the good fortune of hiring Megan as our first product leader.
As an individual contributor, Megan came on board and immediately gained credibility by shepherding long-running and awkward projects to graceful and impactful conclusions. She listened more than she spoke and was careful to keep and not try to change the things that were already working out well for us. Megan expanded outreach efforts by methodically introducing more creative avenues for involving our customers in shaping the future of the product. She worked collaboratively and guided us toward our first fully documented and elegant product strategy that we later used to continue informing many downstream decisions. Her work directly contributed to key successes, like helping us raise an inside round, six months well ahead of schedule. Rather than feeling like we were losing control of product direction, Megan added a sense of fulfillment to the vision Christine and I share.
Megan also exemplifies Honeycomb values, and we’ve seen many great changes with her at the helm. She models work/life balance, as well as intensity and passion for her work. She’s vocal when she needs help. She always provides feedback, even when it’s uncomfortable. She also displays a sharp sense of ownership and responsibility, aggressively champions her direct reports, and deftly handles the changes in season as we grow.
Megan started joining executive staff meetings and immediately made her presence at the table valuable. Our team conversations became more meaningful and strategic as we worked through difficult problems grounded in hard choices. We started to realize that executive leadership at Honeycomb had a product-shaped hole that came into focus as Megan filled it.
For all these reasons and more, I am delighted to make it official, and welcome Megan as our first VP of Product!
