Brady Meltzer joins fast-growing Montana startup, Submittable, as Vice President of Sales

“Easily the most gratifying and engaging part of my job at Submittable has been getting to hire some the best people I’ve ever met. We were recently able to recruit a Missoula native and RightNow alum, Brady Meltzer, from Oracle to be our first VP of Sales. He’s joined our existing sales management, JR Plate, Caroline Smith Simms, and Caitlin Stainken Buhl to help grow the team from 6 to about 35 people in the last year. It’s been a massive challenge and, mostly due to my own shortcomings, not without a few bumps.

For this position, we received hundreds of applicants and interviewed over 40 people before finally getting to someone who had both the professional experience of having grown a small startup to a larger more mature company, and an understanding of what they’d be getting into with a tech startup in Montana.
I’ve been trying to be conscious about hiring people with much different experience and mindsets than John, Bruce, and myself.

Brady has a MA in Communications which we found unique in an applicant pool primarily of MBAs but made me pause because I worried I was hiring another hippie like ourselves. Rock-climbing and meditation came up in the interviews a few too many times.

We had a fairly critical discussion about the professionalization of children’s sports. (Brady & I both coached our kids’ lacrosse teams.) I kept thinking, I really like this person but we don’t need anymore friends. We need people who know things we don’t, keep us on our toes, and can force us to expand how we think about the company. Then, in one of the final interviews, I asked him about long term goals. He said, without pause, and only a slight smile, I want your job.

🙂 Done!

Anyway, I’m super proud and grateful to be able to announce this:”