“Lisbon is a refreshing location, with a very inclusive culture”, says CEO of PagerDuty – Negócios
It started in San Francisco, where it was important for a technology company to be present to access funding, but PagerDuty is growing and wants to tackle the European market. Jennifer Tejada, CEO of the digital operations management company, believes there are many opportunities for growth and for that she will locate an innovation and development hub in Lisbon, where she is already recruiting.
The decision was made before the CEO of PagerDuty came to Web Summit 2021 as a speaker. The day before the interview with SAPO TeK, Jennifer Tejada had already met with Carlos Moedas, the new mayor of Lisbon to talk about investments and the location of the hub in the city.
And what were the reasons that motivated the choice? In the list of classifications identified to establish the city as the first company development center in Europe, Jennifer Tejada points to a culture of entrepreneurship, a high level training and the local technological ecosystem. “Lisbon is a very refreshing location, with a very inclusive culture and excellent conditions for a balanced lifestyle”, she said, defending that these elements fit well into the values of PagerDuty, which has always defended the integration of more women and also of different ethnicities and the LGBT community.
“This is a location where we want to locate one of our hubs where employees provide to collaborate and innovate,” argues Jennifer Tejada.
Jennifer Tejada has a unique background in the technology world and is one of the CEOs of a b2b technology company, but she was also the first woman in over a decade to bring a software company to listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Since its launch on the stock exchange, a PagerDuty has doubled its user base and the number of employees, recording an 80% increase in revenue in the last two years and having more than 18 thousand customers.
A CEO explained to SAPO TEK that he decided to go to Lisbon without making a physical visit, studying all the scenarios from a distance, but despite recognizing that there are no perfect cities, he is satisfied with a decision and confidence in the region’s capacity to become a magnet for entrepreneurship and more investment. What could be improved? “The traffic!” he said, explaining that it took an hour to make a journey of a few kilometers to reach the Altice Arena.
The company is already recruiting and the goal is to have 100 people in the Lisbon hub by the end of 2022. Recruitment profiles are in the area of software engineering and programmers but also finance and operations, but there are several opportunities that can be explored no recruiting site.
Europe is the fastest growing region for PagerDuty’s business, with 41% year-on-year growth in international revenues during the second quarter. For Jennifer Tejada, PagerDuty’s presence in Lisbon represents an opportunity to accelerate as hires, as the company reaches $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.
“We are excited to build our presence in Portugal in order to continue to expand our business in Europe”, he explains. In addition to the development and innovation area, he admits that he can also locate a customer support center in Lisbon.
PagerDuty already has offices in London, Atlanta, San Francisco, Sydney and Toronto and has 18,000 customers, including Portuguese companies such as Farfetch, AiFi, Mediatree, Miniclip, Unbabel and VictoriaPlum.
The company currently has around 1,000 employees and has been growing, but Jennifer Tejada wants to keep the company’s DNA, offering an attractive lifestyle for talented people and an opportunity to balance work and personal life.