Gareth Visagie
Gareth Visagie, former Chief Architect for SNYK talks about the challenges he faced being part of a hyper-growth business. The switch he made from contributing the most code to leading and the unusual sources he uses for staying on top of his game.
“We have to get to the Star Trek future somehow, right?”
Gareth's tenure at SNYK was marked by monumental growth. He joined the company when it was just a team of 10, and by the time he left, it had expanded to a workforce of 1600. During his time at SNYK, the company witnessed a remarkable transformation from zero revenue to an impressive valuation of 8.6 billion dollars. Gareth's role was pivotal in steering the technological strategy that underpinned this extraordinary success.
Gareth's journey at SNYK was more than just a numbers game. He shared his passion for driving the platform's technology and functional strategy, ensuring that it was not only fit for the present but also poised for future challenges. As a technology leader, Gareth held a unique position—he was both the most senior individual contributor and part of the executive management team. This dual role allowed him to combine hands-on expertise with strategic vision.
Full Transcript *
Richard: I am delighted to welcome Gareth Visagie to the Technology Chiefs podcast. Gareth was most recently chief architect for SNYK which stands for; So Now You Know, the cybersecurity firm, the one with the logo that looks like a very effective guard dog. Gareth has previously worked in media, finance and some of the biggest government departments in senior technical leadership roles. Gareth, welcome to the Technology Chiefs podcast.
Gareth: Thanks, Rich. Great to be here.
Richard: Brilliant. Tell me a little bit about your most recent role at SNYK and anything you're doing now.
Gareth: Thanks. So yeah, as you said, I was at SNYK as chief architect from 2016 until November last year. SNYK was a hypergrowth startup. I joined when there were 10 of us, and when I left there were 1600. We also we went from no revenue at all to numbers, I can't say, but enough to give us a valuation when I left of 8.6 billion, which was quite a journey.
Lots of fun.
But also exhausting. So I have very much, the last six months have been, well, I'll say the last six months been on sabbatical for three months and then the last three months have been looking at doing it all over again, but this time as a co-founder rather than as an early employee.
So essentially looking into an as yet unnamed venture as CEO and co-founder this time, which will be kind of fun. Kind of looking forward to being accountable for all things, not just the technology. Yeah. So the, my old SNYK early days was very much, about making sure that tomorrow is going to come ultimately, right?
Like in the early days, there were 10 of us, basically, everybody except the, people that physically couldn't, were write in code in some way, shape, or form. But even then it's, you go from trying to find product market fits to. Trying to build a go-to market motion, trying to scale a go-to market motion and then try to scale outwards.
And the whole time you're riding this, you're trying to sort of tow this quality line essentially, where you've gotta deliver, you've gotta be bringing value to customers in a way that they can recognize, in the way that they prepare to pay for. And you also must not fall over next week and next month.
And that's essentially what my role's been all about, like making sure that the. The strategy that we have for the technology that underpins the platform and also two degrees for the platform itself from a functional perspective was fit for purpose now and fit for purpose tomorrow. There's a bit of a weird role in that.
Probably not unusual though, I suppose I was the most senior IC at the company, the individual contributor at the company the, the whole time. But even though I was an individual contributor, I was part of the original executive management team. Up, up until we got too big to have an IC on that team, I had folks reporting to me at various points in time when was needed.
Because the great thing about a startup is that he kind of needs must a little bit like it's, it doesn't really matter what your, your role is. Probably also interesting to your audience, I guess, is this was the role where I stopped programming, you know, as, as part of the job. So the last two, two and a half years, there was still a very small amount of code, but it was more when there's a particular hairy issue and I was helping to understand what the hell was going on and how we're gonna fix it.
Spelunking a little bit, but like I, I had went through that transition of. What can you build with your two hands and the excitement of programming? And look, look at the feature I've built and that's going out to users and all of that great stuff to like, oh, hang on a second. There's these much bigger things that we want to achieve here.
You know, if we're gonna grow with the scale that we need to, and I have this vision for what the technology should be and how it's gonna support us and keep us, keep us agile and keep, keep the optionality very high, which is fundamental for a startup. I can't do that with my two hands. I've gotta, I've gotta do it by maintaining relationships, maintaining a strategy that's real, that resonates with people, that resonates with the business.
You know, there's just so much more work and finding joy in that and finding like self-actualization in that was, was definitely like a cool journey to go through.
Richard: I bet. Yeah, some incredible scale challenges there. You, you've faced into, and yeah. How have you found that if you reflect now, obviously now you've, you've left. have you found having to step away you know, not cut code with your own hands? Did you manage to find joy overall from, from basically helping others achieve your vision, your goal, et cetera?
Gareth: I mean, yeah, very much so. I think to, to the point where now the new thing I'm, I'm kind of putting my hand up to be. Accountable for it all. You know, I, I've realized that like the system that is the business, including the people, including the value proposition, including the customers, is, is almost more interesting than in some ways than the system that is the technology.
SNYK acquired quite a few companies over that journey and quite a few of the technologist CEOs. This kind of became my peers, cuz they were like, I never want lawyers reporting to me again. Whereas where I'm sitting right now, I'm like, that sounds great. The ability to look very broadly but then dip into things where you need to dip into things.
But maintaining that broad perspective is something that's just. Super fun. As long as you can, cope with those slow feedback loops. Cuz I think that's the most jarring change, right? Programming you're, you're writing a test, that test is failing and then that test is passing you or you know, you're shipping a feature and there it is.
Whereas like, hey, this is what the market movement, this is what the market's doing, this is what our existing set of IP gives us a strategic advantage, here's how we evolve. That is a far slower process of feedback, you know?
Richard: Mm. Interesting. Yeah. Some, some great stuff for you to wrestle with there, but it sounds like you've come through that journey and You're enjoying where you've got to, so that, that's brilliant. If we wind it back a little bit though , what made you pursue a career in technology, Gareth?
Gareth: It's sort of luck slash a bit of privilege on reflection, right? My, I've been programming as long as I can remember, basically, as long as I could read, like and that's what I mean by the kind of privilege of having a parent who's interested in technology. Like my dad bought a computer home when I was six which is the first year of school in South Africa where I'm from.
I showed a bit of interest and aptitude in just, you know, trying to games working and, and the like. And so he bought me a DOS 3 book and then a DOS 5 book and next thing you know, I'm teaching myself Turbo Pascal and Assembly and C
I've just never not done it. Weirdly though, I did do a business degree, not a computer science degree, but I went to university Yeah, with, with a specialism in information systems programming.
So, I mean, there's lots of hands-on code and we did a bunch of computer science modules, but Programming's just always been the thing that I've done for fun.
Well, not the only thing that I've done for fun, but you know, it's, it's always been this, this creative outlet for me from just a very young age.
And then in 2000 you kind of discover like, Hey, this thing that I like doing, Is also quite a cushy job. Like as a, you're not, you're not working these crazy long hours and you can wear shorts to work and be a ragamuffin and then, hang on, I'm getting paid more than my friends. Like, what's going on here?
And, you know I, I just think it's the right place, right time kind of thing. Like once you're, once you're in the career, why would you leave it? so much fun.
Richard: Absolutely. And, maybe that business degree is just about to come in very, very useful with your new venture, et cetera. You
Gareth: mean, yeah, we'll see. It was a long time ago. The, theory and the practice are probably quite different, but yeah.
Richard: So Maybe you can apply this to your, your new venture, or maybe you can look backwards a little bit. But sort of what are your top priorities, challenges that you're, you're sort of facing into?
Gareth: Yeah. I think I'll talk about both SNYK and the new venture. I think that that's probably interesting, like. It started, we were on, of course, as a, a high-growth startup SNYK was about to do a series G when I left because the previous journey we'd been on was an IPO one.
So it was all about being truly IPO ready despite what the market was doing, so that if there was an opportunity to execute on that and to have it be the right business call that we could, that, that the IPO decision was not held back by the technology staff or the technology motion at any point.
Definitely the top one. Second is that's of course a huge distraction. Everybody in the company is aware of it, even if, even if you know, no one's talking about it. So second part, you're seeing beyond. Any kind of IPO and making sure that the market dominating motions that SNYK is trying to make, you know, they really do wanna be the developer first security company.
You know, that work is not like an IPO not an end point. You know, like it's just, it's this thing that's going to enable you to do more. And so in terms of like making that a bit more tangible, I suppose I guess I'm still talking in principles here. It's, it's, it was all about creating defensible moats around the business, if that makes sense.
You know, like, so, and those arise from investments in technology. Like we have, Steve's got some startup analysis technology that, that's sort of market leading to some of the top, academics in the world that are working on that tech in that space. What or what can we do with it that that means that competitors just can't touch us?
Richard: Very good.
Gareth: Yeah. New venture product market fit. You know, that's, that's the thing, like, that's where we're at. We're, we're still pre-seed. We're trying to figure out how much money we need to raise, what can we build to show traction before that. So it's just talking to customers, talking to users, researching the competitive space and I guess assembling the right founding team.
Richard: Yes.
Gareth: we're also fundamental but all of which is going pretty well, I'd say.
Richard: Excellent. Okay, so how do you see the role of the technology leader changing over the next few years?
Gareth: So in the, in the notes you sent, you said three years, which I kind of thought to myself, that's a very short time period. That's almost just a project.
No. But then I, you know, thinking about SNYK three years as a lifetime look, Disruption from AI feels kind of inevitable, right?
Like it's impossible to talk about this and, you know, talk about technology trends without talking about AI these days. But there is always disruption from something going on. I think the fundamental question right now is how big is the impact gonna be? You know, the a world in which the kind of, this is gonna sound very brutal, but the world in which your mediocre developers and your poor developers are suddenly either out of the industry because they're not necessary, because you are more not experienced, but talented engineers are so productive because of AI is gonna look fundamentally different. You know, how do you lead that kind of organization?
But similarly, a world in which your mediocre developers are certainly fantastic developers because AI assistance. Has made them productive in terms of their outcomes is also gonna be fundamentally different. I think the kind of challenges of leading an organization like that are, are, are inevitably going to stress technology leaders.
The technology leaders we have today, by definition, don't have experience in that, right? Like cuz nobody does. And how are you gonna maintain credibility as a leader in the face of that massive disruption?
So yeah, I think it'll be interesting. And I was discussing this with Andrew Gordon Brooks earlier this morning. And he's, he raised an interesting point that I think I agree with. Like, we're seeing a lot of people coming into leadership roles through Dev roles, myself included, and I think that's quite different to 20 years ago where, you know, the management track was the track into being a CTO, into being a VP engineering.
And that moving from Dev roles more into leadership and, and management is something that requires a different set of support from the people around, the leader, from the organization around the leader. But I think is a way to, I think those people can be extremely effective leaders. I mean, obviously I think that, I guess I'm putting my money, but my mouth is backing myself doing it, but
Richard: Yeah. You'd hope so, wouldn't you?
AI because it's, it's sympathetic in the fact that it, you can ask it the same question or it can keep providing support without getting frustrated. Maybe actually good for some of those leaders as well.
Gareth: Definitely.
Richard: actually learn from it. So, yeah, that, that's really interesting. I guess that probably moves us on to the sort of trends you're most excited about and why. and potentially AI is gonna feature in that somewhere.
Gareth: Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's impossible again, to talk about the stuff without talking about ai. Like the. AI's been in our products for ages. I mean, I say ages less than 10 years, but still, like the YouTube algorithm is there.
Gareth:
It's been there for longer than most people would acknowledge. But generations of ai, you know, the Zeitgeist right now has. chatGPT turned it from a thing that select engineers are using in their product. The examples I was just given to something that engineers are using, like, like engineers are the customers, product people are the customers of ai and I think that's gonna have a profound effect both on what we were talking about previously, just the, the productivity of that, but also the exposure to the possibilities sparks ideas with your r d folks.
And so I think the adoption of what's going on there and the, the ability to amplify. Products amplify the effectiveness of the value that you're bringing to your end users is only gonna increase because, not just cause of generous of AI itself, but cause of exposure and the ecosystem around it.
Richard: Mm.
Gareth: Hacker News at the moment is just full of. Look what I've done with ai, X, Y, Z because I had this problem. And that's, you know, you can see, never read the comments, but maybe do on some of these threads. You can see almost the ideation happening in real time. But, but in a way, my answer to this question has, hasn't really changed for the last 10 years because it's all about, democratization of technology and lowering the bar for higher productivity.
You know, like, and whether that's democratization of tech in terms of developers, like it's just, it's a hell of a lot easier to Just kick something out that's working, whether it's WordPress, you know, or Ruby on Rails. Do some old examples, but had massive implications for the industry. Yes. Okay. We've lost our way with things like what frontend development looks like these days in terms of that setup complexity, but it, the bar for being an engineer is much lower than if it has been, but I think it's also.
The way in which we build tools to amplify the expertise of others is something that is only increased. You just think about the, the bar of productivity across all knowledge base fields continues to lower, and I think that is just, I know it's good. We're gonna get to the Star Trek future somehow. Right?
And I think that gets us there.
Richard: I think the really important part of, when you say lowering the bar, is to increasing high performance. That, was the really important side of that because you're right, we, we can do so much more quicker with less, knowledge that's actually needed to be actually become productive.
That's the way I look at it, you know, you don't have to have had all these reams of knowledge to become productive. And grow. What I guess in essence is the actual products you're looking to develop
Gareth: I mean, what it allows is just, it's. Specialization Beyond that knowledge, it's, it's, it's not that the knowledge that was there was needed wasn't important. It's just that if you can treat it as an enabling baseline, that's almost being productized for you. You can go so much further in whatever it is that you're trying to do.
I think that's just awesome.
Richard: Brilliant. that's really, really good to hear. What three skills should a technology leader look to develop? Gareth?
Gareth:So I presume you mean an aspiring leader.
Richard: Yes,
Gareth: Yeah, that's, I think I've probably alluded to a lot of this so far already, but empathy and people skills would probably be, be my first one. You know, like both listening and talking. And you really need to be able to put yourself in other folks' shoes even if you don't sympathize with them.
You know, they could be, but, but you've gotta be able to understand where they're coming from. And you've gotta be able to, Engage. I think if you want to be a kind of humane and effective leader. There are, there are other ways, but you know, don't, don't, don't do that. Don't do that.
Yeah. Kind of related, but I, I think a different skill is Maybe as leadership, but that's a too cop.
What I mean specifically is like the ability to inspire confidence, you know, both to the, both to those that you work with and report to, you know, your, your, your leadership team around you and your, your executive team or your board, but also to the, the folks that are following your lead, you know, like a, a great strategy, a great direction.
A great goal is meaningless if you can't. Get an organization to galvanize around it and effectively execute on that thing. Right. And I think a big part of being a leader is not just being right, it's about taking people with you. Otherwise you're not a leader, you're not leading. And last one.
Strategic thinking and maybe specifically business acumen, but that's probably just my slight bias cause of my career. Yeah, strategic thinking I think is just fundamental, like making that cross from like, like how far are you gonna be able to look into the future? And it's not about predicting the future, it's not about creating these concrete plans.
It's about having a strategy. That it's appropriate for what, whatever your business needs are, whatever your long-term, you know, strategic initiatives are in terms of the overall business. And that means learning your industry, thinking beyond projects, thinking beyond immediate execution, understanding things in terms of value and impact rather than just progress, like progress to what.
But then of course, you know, domain into the previous two points, like being able to bring that back to the now. And helping an organization execute within that strategic context. And you've gotta be able to think, think strategically, inspire confidence with that, and then engage with your people.
Otherwise, you'll, well, otherwise, you're just,
Richard: I think, I think they're brilliantly sums up Gareth, to be honest with you. Yeah. I I think they're fabulous. Skills that people should look into. There's loads of information out there, and as a, as a bit of a techy’s techie as I'd like to call you Gareth, whether you'd like to identify as that, as a, as another
Gareth: No, no. I'll take it. I'll take it. I like that.
Richard: Who, who do you follow and which sites do you follow at as a source of trusted information?
Gareth: once upon a time, you know, when you knew me as a much younger man, I, I would've had individual blogs and particularly in the .net ecosystem that we used to work in, like, but these days, Hacker News. I, I still rarely like Hacker News. And also read the comments. You know, you've gotta put your, you put a peg on your nose perhaps, but there's, there's useful discussion often in that the YouTube algorithm, I, that's still gonna sound absolutely ridiculous, but just you, I, I find that Because YouTube understands my interests, both in terms of professional interest and in terms of just being random stuff I'm watching on watching it.
I tend to like take interesting industry titbits from things like, you know, watching Linus Tech tips, like they're building a new pc, and the conversation around that sparks something around. What's happening with Apple silicon and what that's gonna do to develop productivity and the cost of equipping your workforce?
And now you know, you're now on some, not you're off of YouTube, but you're on some tangent that's interesting and relevant. And I think the reason I bring it up is because one of the things about being a technology leader versus being just an IC is that you do have to be able to broaden your perspective.
You know, you can't, you can't just pigeon yourself into only looking at tech and only looking at your industry. You have to do that as well. But yeah, I also, I have a three-year-old, so the, what, like how do I keep myself up to date is almost like, I don't know anymore. I just chase after a child with YouTube in the background.
So it's a, my answers here are a bit out date
Richard: I think you'll find inspiration in the funniest places, to be honest when it comes to researching and, where those sparks of creativity come from. Brilliant. Is there a particular book or set of books you'd recommend for someone looking to get on in their technology career
Gareth: definitely. A book called The Goal. By I'm gonna butcher his first name, but by I, i, Yahoo Goldratt, the gold by gold rat. Essentially g o l d r a t t old from the eighties. It's like a novel around essentially lean manufacturing. Ultimately if you've read The Phoenix Project, which is a sort of DevOps novel, very clearly inspired by its style.
The Phoenix project was also great, but the goal is a little bit more. yeah, the goal is a little bit more. Broad than the Phoenix Project, and it's, it's a lesson in value thinking, a lesson in lean thinking and outcomes, creativity, problem solving. It's really, really great. Highly recommend it.
Like in fact, I'd say any, any leadership team should read that and discuss it, you know, that it's, it's a really, really useful way to reflect on just what are we actually trying to do here and like, follow through a business through multiple, multiple itterations or throw, follow a group of people rather through multiple iterations of that.
I kind of like reading about manufacturing. Sorry.
Gareth: It to take inspiration for technology. Like not in a, not in a technical sense, cuz of course, you know, building products and factory manufacturing are fundamentally different. But in terms of that business motion and in terms of the outcome thinking, it, it's, the parallels are enormous and it's kind of useful to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes for a different problem then get out of the rut of thinking about your own problem, you know?
Richard: Yeah, great answers and I'll, I'll definitely put in the show notes a link to those books. If you could tell yourself or tell your 20 year old self one bit of information, and just to give you, inspire you with confidence. If you, if you go back and give yourself a little bit of information that's gonna make your life easier, what would it be? And why?
Gareth: like, don't be afraid to stop coding, guess, Like
Don't be afraid to code less.
Gareth:it's hard because I think my ability to be effective is because I've coded for so long. I think to be an effective leader to to have credibility with developers is something that I've had for a long time and I haven't really lost.
But by the same token, I've definitely gone through angst multiple times when I've had pressure sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, to just. Don't ship a feature or don't ship, don't, don't do something in code that's gonna enable people. And yeah, I think that there was no need to fear that.
when it was, when the time was right for me, the transition was fine, you know?
Richard: Yeah, it comes naturally, doesn't it? I mean, probably mine came a little bit earlier in my career than yours. But yeah, it, it, it kind of happens and you, you do start out by, by stuff writing code, but you do, you still do a lot of debugging. You still end up jumping in when, when things happen and then, then that actually, that gradually changed shifts over time as well.
Gareth: Yeah. Coding just creates, it becomes part of your identity. Right. And I think you have to be able to kind of let that go. Be like, look, I'm still a programmer. Fundamentally, even if I don't do that for.
Richard: Yeah. Yeah. Ah, look, they, they were some fabulous answers. Thank you so much for sharing those, Gareth. I know that our listeners will follow those really, really inspiring and, and, and helpful. So look, I just wanna thank you so much for your time.
Gareth: Sure thing. It was really fun to think about all stuff and chat about it.
*Please note that this transcript is produced by AI and will likely contain some errors