$600 million developer startup Segment just snagged a key executive from Twilio as its first chief financial officer

Segment

Segment's new CFO Sandra Smith and CEO Peter Reinhardt

• Segment, a $600 million data infrastructure company, just hired its first chief financial officer.
• Sandra Smith joined Segment from Twilio, where she spent five years helping grow the company from $50 million in revenue to $500 million.
• At Segment, Smith is tasked with leading the company through its next stage of hypergrowth.

Some people like to start companies. Others like to run them once they're established. But for Sandra Smith, the newly hired chief financial officer at Segment, the real fun happens when a company starts scaling.

Smith joined Segment, a marketing data infrastructure startup, last month after five years as vice president of financial, planning and analysis at Twilio.

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While Twilio has since transformed into a $6 billion public company, Smith joined right after its Series B funding and helped transform it from a developer-centric, user-first cloud communication tool, to one which had a lot of success with large enterprise customers. During her time at Twilio, the company grew from $50 million in revenue to $500 million.

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Now, Smith is tasked with leading a similar shift at Segment, which was last valued at $600 million in a 2017 Series C led by Y Combinator and GV.

"I think Segment is really positioned very optimally in the sense that they have a product that has an amazing amount of credibility with the technologists who handle data inside a company," Smith told Business Insider.

One thing that drew her to Segment was its leadership team, Smith said, which is led by CEO Peter Reinhardt, the 28-year-old who left MIT to cofound Segment in 2011.

"We're going to have to go through a lot of change and a lot of adaptation as we grow and scale, and we need people who are going to be super adaptable. And there's a leadership team here that's thirsty for that," Smith said.

Reinhardt said that Segment intends to grow its staff from 300 to 400 employees in the next year, and expand its presence in Dublin, where it recently opened its European headquarters. In addition to adding staff, Segment is growing its clientele and now has 19,000 customers.

"Segment is growing a lot." Reinhardt said. "The operations requires a really strong senior leadership operational foundation there...and we took our time finding someone really fantastic who would scale and help drive the company's growth for many years to come."

When asked about how hiring a CFO could play into a "exit" such as an IPO or a sale, Reinhardt said the primary focus is on building a "long term, independent business."

Smith, who spent the first part of her career practicing law as a corporate attorney, also spent time at Akamai Technologies, which is now publicly traded with a market cap of $10 billion.

While she is still getting acquainted with Segment as a business, Smith said there is one thing that's stood out to her about life at Segment from the get-go.

"There are plants absolutely everywhere," Smith said, adding that the founders incorporate plants in an effort to improve the air quality around the office. "It's just charming. It's such a warm environment because the plants are surrounding you. So it's quite homey."