Introducing Pendo’s new chief product officer

When it comes to what makes a great product, Pendo’s new CPO doesn’t mince words: “It’s a product that solves a real problem in a way that’s easy to use.” 

Trisha Price comes to Pendo having spent over 20 years making great products. It’s been a journey that encompasses an impressive range of roles–everything from software engineering, to sales, to customer success–at an impressive range of companies. Common to all these experiences has been the opportunity for continued personal growth and development.  “I’ve always looked at my career as more of a jungle gym than a ladder–really trying to stretch and learn and build new muscle that I didn’t have before,” Trisha says.

Trisha joins Pendo from nCino, a fast-growth cloud banking software company where she led the product team. At nCino, Price would have an opportunity to push her own limits as she helped guide the startup to a successful IPO in July 2020–right at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a remarkable feat in unprecedented times.   

Trisha began her career as a software engineer after graduating from NC State University. From the start, she was drawn to the strategic aspect of the work. “I was quick to be able to understand the business problem we were trying to solve and then [utilize] technology as a way to solve that business problem,” she says. This passion for being at the intersection of business strategy and technology is what eventually drew her to product management. 

After spending years in product leadership roles at Primatics Financial, a financial services software firm, Price had the chance to move her young family and open a new office for the company in Salt Lake City, where she would lead sales, account management, and customer success for the Western region of the United States. She jumped at the opportunity, and believes the experience she gained helped make her an even better product leader.

“I have better empathy for what it feels like to be in customer support when product still hasn’t fixed that bug and your customer’s calling, or when you’re in sales and you’ve got a quota. It just gives you better empathy to think about the rest of the company as you lead product,” she reflects.

Trisha considers diversity of experience to be a strength when it comes to product teams, something that informs her hiring philosophy. “There are people who are very UX-focused, people who have been in B2B, people who have been in B2C, there are super technical people, etc. I think that when you get a diverse set of points of view around the table who are empowered to challenge each other, that’s how you’re going to come up with the best product.”

What drew Trisha to Pendo was her understanding of the value it provides and the needs its products meet. Having the right tools to help customers adopt your product is essential, she explains. ““Along my product management journey, I did not always have the best tools to optimize my products. Pendo has created an amazing platform and I am excited to build on it and create the best product management tools for a world quickly going digital.”

Being able to oversee the development and improvement of Pendo’s products is a special opportunity for Trisha. “One of the things that really attracted me to being the chief product officer at Pendo is being the chief product officer of the tool that product managers use,” she says.  

Trisha joins Pendo at an exciting time. The business world is changing. Companies increasingly look to product managers to take the lead in driving growth and bringing about change. “I believe that product-led growth is a strategy that is gaining momentum and is going to be a big differentiator for those who successfully implement it,” Trisha says. As CPO of Pendo, she’ll be working every day to help our family of customers make their products even better and their successes lasting.