After a 13-year journey with Seattle-based Tableau Software — which grew from a small startup into a public company that was eventually acquired by Salesforce — Francois Ajenstat is setting off on a new adventure.
The longtime Tableau product leader has joined San Francisco-based Amplitude as its chief product officer.
Founded in 2012, Amplitude helps companies analyze internal data to understand how people use their products. It has more than 2,400 customers including Atlassian, NBCUniversal, Shopify, and Under Armour. The company went public in September 2021 via a direct offering.
Ajenstat is no stranger to data analysis thanks to his stint with Tableau, a leader in the data visualization sector that was acquired by Salesforce for $15.7 billion in 2019. He also spent a decade at Microsoft working on products including Office and SQL Server.
“I’ve always believed that data is the difference between success and failure,” Ajenstat said in an interview with GeekWire. He said that belief is even more applicable as companies start using more AI-powered software and tools.
“There is no AI without data,” he said.
Ajenstat was drawn to Amplitude after seeing how the company’s software provides recommendations to help product leaders like himself build better products and improve customer experiences.
He specifically called out the company’s Behavioral Graph, which draws connections between product features and user interactions — identifying key takeaways and recommending changes.
“From that, you can use generative AI in so many interesting ways,” he said.
Ajenstat said it was hard to leave Tableau, where he was senior director of product management and a vice president before becoming chief product officer in 2016. He was named chief customer officer this past June.
“But I still have this itch to go build and create and see how can I take all of those learnings and apply it to another company to make them even more successful,” he said.
Some of his key lessons from Tableau include a relentless focus on the customer; being adaptable and flexible as companies go through different stages; and maintaining a growth mindset versus a fixed one.
Tableau named Salesforce veteran Ryan Aytay as CEO in May, replacing former CEO Mark Nelson, who stepped down about a year ago.
Most of the Tableau executives listed on its leadership site when the acquisition by Salesforce was announced have left the company, Bloomberg reported in January.
Salesforce in January made a series of cost-cutting moves, including a 10% workforce reduction that impacted many longtime Tableau employees and senior leaders. Salesforce this year also put Tableau office space in Seattle up for sublease.
Ajenstat will remain in Seattle. He replaces former Amplitude CPO Justin Bauer, who is leaving the company. Amplitude does not have an office in the Seattle region.
