Todd Olson

Todd Olson co-founded Pendo.io in October 2013, building the company into a leader in the digital adoption space with over 2300 customers and 900 employees globally. Based out of Raleigh, North Carolina, Olson has been at the helm of Pendo since its inception, leading the company for approximately a decade. Under his leadership, Pendo has raised $356 million in venture capital, and generates over $200 million in annual recurring revenue.

Olson attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science from January 1994 to January 1997. By the time he graduated from Carnegie Mellon University he'd invented a data integration product, co-founded Cerebellum Software, and raised seed capital. Todd Olson became a proficient coder by the age of 14, establishing early technical expertise that would define his career.

Career History

• Red Hat, Cisco, and Google — key positions before Pendo (post-college roles)
• Borland — Chief Scientist role from January 2003 through June 2004
• 6th Sense Software — CTO and Co-Founder from 2004 to 2008
• Rally Software — Vice-President of Products (led company through its public offering)
• Pendo.io — CEO and Co-Founder since October 2013

Olson is recognized for exceptional entrepreneurial achievement across multiple ventures. In 2017, Pendo was named a Top 50 US Startup by LinkedIn, and in 2018, Todd was named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Finalist in the Southeast. He is also the author of "The Product-Led Organization," a book that underscores his commitment to enhancing customer experiences through product-centric strategies.

What Todd Olson could bring to his role at Pendo: As a three-time entrepreneur with experience running fast-growth technology companies, Olson brings deep expertise in building product-led organizations from scratch through scale. His documented obsession with product-market fit, proven ability to execute founder-led sales and pricing strategies, and customer-centric leadership philosophy position him to continue scaling Pendo as a dominant force in the product analytics and digital adoption space. His track record of validating product-market fit through rigorous metrics and refusing to scale prematurely demonstrates disciplined capital-efficient growth, while his learning from prior startup failures has shaped his obsession with achieving sustainable, profitable growth at scale.