Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Henry, thanks so much for joining us.
Henry Levy, Veeva
It's very nice to be here. Thank you.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So we're going to talk about Veeva Systems, which is the industry cloud for Life Sciences. So there's a lot behind that, which I'm excited to unpack. But it's a publicly traded company that is expanding aggressively headquartered on the west coast, but expanding aggressively on the East Coast, more specifically to the Boston tech scene. So I'm excited to brief our audience on Veeva Systems and what you guys do, so why don't we just get into it. So talk about Veeva and what the company does?
Henry Levy, Veeva
Sure. Thank you, again, for having me. Veeva, is a 14 year old company, so relatively young, it started in 2007, with a focus on the pharmaceutical industry, and on bringing the cloud to that industry. If you think about industries that need progression in technology, space, the pharmaceutical industry is one of them. And it's been kind of interesting as we hit the COVID pandemic, that it has highlighted both the difficulties that the industry had because it had not moved to the cloud, but it actually has a silver lining that it's pushed the industry towards that. But Veeva has been in the pharmaceutical industry first helping companies in selling drugs, and in actually educating physicians so that they know how to put drugs in front of patients. And then since 2010, we focused on the development of drugs of actually bringing new drugs to market. And that's where we've made a massive amount of progress. And it's one of the main reasons why we're coming to Boston heavily. Boston is, in many ways, a mecca of biotech business, a lot of people talk about Silicon Valley and, and the West Coast as a, as a key driver of biotech. But actually Boston has as many if not more biotechs, in between Cambridge, Boston and the surrounding area. It is such an exciting combination of academia, healthcare, and technology, that it was just a pretty obvious place for us to expand.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Yeah, and it just makes a world of sense, like you said, you know, Boston is pretty much the epicenter of where so much is happening. So, along with that, I mean, there's some aggressive growth plans ahead for the Boston office, correct?
Henry Levy, Veeva
Yes. So Veeva is today about 4,300 4,400 employees. And we have 900 open positions today, which we are targeting 200 for Boston. And really, that could be more because we've just recently internally talked about what we call work anywhere, as COVID has hit and we moved relatively quickly to pretty much completely remote, it became clear that we could actually expand a little bit further. So those 200 that we have in Boston could be, you know, three to 400, if we, you know, hire into Rhode Island and into other areas where they can come to the office maybe every every month or every two months, but can work from home. So we have 200 positions, mostly in technology and in software development. So we're looking for engineers, for product managers, for people that really understand building good cloud software. And of course, if they have an understanding of the clinical trial process of the regulatory process of the overall space, it would be incredible. So we hope that we'll have you know, a couple of hundred people over the next six to nine months, which will be fun.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, Henry, you're a general manager at Veeva. So talk about your professional background, and what led you to join the company.
Henry Levy, Veeva
So I've always been in the financial industry started in consulting, and I did that for 21 years. And once I did what I thought was enough, in the consulting space, I thought I have to be in the services that actually do something. So I moved to the services side in an area that runs clinical trials for the industry. And four years ago, just a couple days ago, I was lucky enough to look into Veeva to know some people there. And when I saw what Veeva was trying to do, it was clear that I needed to come here mostly for two main reasons. One is the objective, which is to bring the industry cloud to life sciences, in essence means we are here to help the life sciences industry bring drugs to market faster and more effectively. And I feel a passion to that I'm the son of a physician. And I personally have been, I'll say saved by this industry based on some family history that I have. So that's number one. And then number two is the culture Veeva is not just the prototypical technology companies somewhat dynamic and an exciting, but also it has created a culture. That is really, I'll say differentiated, I think it's going to resonate with the Boston area for a couple of reasons. We have some key values. The first one is, and it's the first one is do the right thing. We believe in working in an ethical way, you may have seen a press release a few weeks ago that we're exploring the probability of becoming a public benefit corporation, that means that as a company in our in our incorporation, our focus doesn't have to be just on shareholders, but also on the industry we serve on the communities we belong to. And it's because we care about doing the right thing we care about doing what's right. Number two, our second most important value is customer success. We are committed to doing good work for our customers building good product that is always going to serve them, which is the only way to the cloud, when you're in the cloud, it has incredible value. But it also like the issues get exposed, you have one bug everybody has. So we really focus on high quality and that differentiation of delivering customer successes, is why the industry kind of likes us. And then the last one is employee success, we cannot do it without employees. And then the last one which permeates everything we do is speed, we move and I've been in massive companies, small companies, the speed at which we move the speed at which we make decisions is unlike any other company I have ever been in, and and it's why I'm here.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, the the market, you know, is is definitely you know, very active, especially in the Boston tech scene. It's very competitive. You know, there's lots of great startups and tech companies at all different sizes, shapes, and forms, all competing for talent. So, you know, if someone's considering an opportunity with Veeva, like why is now the ideal time to join the company,
Henry Levy, Veeva
it's, it's, the way that I would put it is one of the most exciting parts of a startup is that building something new building from scratch speed, one of the downsides of a startup is uncertainty. You don't know if the money is going to be there next month. And if you don't close that customer, that client, maybe you don't have enough capital to take the next step. The way that I look at Veeva, the way I talk to many of our prospective employees is we are we behave like a startup, but we have the certainty of having a lot of cash on hand and good revenue and good growth. So we behave like a startup, we always talk about being Veeva, our goal for 2025 is to be 10,000 employees, and still be Veeva. So we try to continue that kind of startup mentality speed. We have some really interesting internal, I'll say mantras, one of them is autonomy over alignment. That means that when we work, we try to do whatever it takes to go fast, and not try to get everybody aligned perfectly. And that it really creates an environment where you feel like you're in a startup even though we are 4,300 people and, and somewhere on 1.3 $1.4 billion in revenue, it still feels that way. So for those people in Boston that have that startup mentality, we want you because you're going to feel it. But you're not going to be nervous every day that maybe this startup falls apart.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Veeva, as Harry mentioned, they are aggressively growing the Boston office. So there's plenty plenty of job opportunities to check out, go to their company page on VentureFizz, which is venturefizz.com/veeva, and you'll see all their listings there. And you know, it's a company that's doing incredibly meaningful work in the life sciences industry. So make sure you check it out. Henry, thanks so much for giving us the inside look of what's happening at Viva.
Henry Levy, Veeva
Thank you very much. It's been great.
