Introducing Heavybit’s New VP of Marketing: Andrea Echstenkamper

I am thrilled to join Heavybit as VP of Marketing. We’re poised to have a tremendous year of growth, and I can’t wait to get started. In this new role I’ll be working closely with Heavybit’s portfolio companies and scaling our own go-to-market efforts.

As the first GTM hire (employee #5) at alumni company LaunchDarkly, I spent the last 6.5 years leading early messaging, launches and thought leadership to scale the unicorn company to where it is today. Most recently, I was serving as Director of Corporate Marketing.

It’s rare for a GTM hire to join as early as I did, and particularly rare for this hire to be a marketer. LaunchDarkly CEO and Founder Edith Harbaugh knew marketing investments were high leverage, particularly to a company with no existing market. There, I had the amazing experience of defining the feature flagging space and building it all the way through to the events that signaled true category creation and dominance. Movement-led growth-- like LaunchDarkly and Feature Flagging, Netlify and Jamstack, Snyk and DevSecOps--  has become a hallmark for the Heavybit portfolio.

It should come as no surprise that developer-first companies are taking up an increasing number of seats at the unicorn table. “Software is eating the world” is a given; investing in cutting-edge devtools gives companies a competitive and comparative advantage, and this will only become more important over time.

At LaunchDarkly I saw first-hand the impact Heavybit’s team and network can have on a burgeoning dev-first company. The developer market is unlike any other, and no one gets these unique challenges more than Heavybit and the community that they have built. As an advisor, I’ve done office hours and given Speaker Series presentations. Heavybit is a dream place for me to work as I get to help many of these incredible dev-first startups at once.

If you’re part of the Heavybit community, I look forward to working more closely with you. If you aren’t, we welcome you to join. See upcoming events here and  sign up for the newsletter to be notified of other opportunities to learn and connect. I am based in San Francisco and am excited to get to know folks here in the Bay Area and across the globe alike. Don’t be a stranger, feel free to reach me at andrea@heavybit.com.

P.S. We’re adding to the team in content and community. Please let me know if you’re interested!