An Executive Whisperer
Didi Dayton is a partner at Wing Venture Capital responsible for Customer Network and Business Development. Prior to Wing, Didi spent 20 years in the Cyber Security field specializing in building Go-To-Market and routes to market for hyper-growth organizations such as Websense, FireEye, Tanium and Cylance.
She successfully led sales and channel teams at various Companies like Symantec, Arrow and Cylance (now Blackberry) through 12 M&A and integration activities. Her focus and execution on Alliances and Managed Service Providers directly assisted FireEye with a successful IPO. She has been awarded the prestigious Channel Chief award 4 years running, the 50 most Influential Channel Chiefs and in 2019 Didi made it to the Power 100 Women of the Channel. More recently, Didi has acted as advisor to the board of JASK and 1011 Ventures.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
What languages Didi speaks based on growing up in Europe
The breakdown of what venture capital is about
How analyzing history can help prepare for the future
Why attitude is the best quality to look for in an applicant or recruit
The realities of burnout
The necessity of intentional diversity building within your organization
Why you should give voice to the people not yet empowered in your business
How Didi finds leadership inspiration in the story of Shackleton and the Endurance
In this episode….
Didi Dayton grew up in Europe and after schooling in France, worked her way through sales to leadership. She has always been fascinated with “human behavior, psychology, and what motivates people” which she says is what led her to sales. Her specialty is operationalizing a business: keeping things moving forward and in understanding the psychology of that business. She is currently a partner at Wing Venture Capital where she says she runs community for the firm, in effect matchmaking between IT buyers, advisors, and portfolio companies.
Didi’s work in venture capital requires a gaze set to the future and she says Wing’s very name indicates that they operate as a co-pilot with their companies and, like her, are passionate about innovation. She understands the vast amount of data, research, and analysis required to be effective and uses this informational ability to assist people in solving problems. The ability to compute on the fly, catalog and analyze data, and defend a position are key skills in the job. Yet both Didi and Martin stress that attitude matters most.
In this episode of What CEOs Talk About, host Martin Hunter and Didi Dayton break down what venture capital actually is and what it does, why every successful executive or leader needs a “whisperer”, and the innate value in learning how to tell a good story. They discuss the prevalent concern of burnout within the industry and draw comparisons between the intricacies of teenage sports teamwork to early stage business dynamics.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Contact email: info@urgeo.com
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