Sep 3, 2026 · 47 min · 11 segments
Marie Burke Brown spent the first stretch of her career inside enterprise giants like NetApp and VMware, building programs for products she didn't build and didn't choose. Then she did something…
So they're obviously three different companies, but there's a, like, I think there's a thread there.
My career started at NetApp and that was really, it was a management suite at the time, but it was also backup to cloud and I worked on some data protection products and I followed a colleague over to cloud health, which was really at the time cloud management platform, and eventually honed in on the cost management discipline and FinOps.
So the cost management and FinOps product was the bread and butter that I was acquired into VMware with,
had the opportunity to work with security products, performance monitoring products.
But then, yeah, when I decided to leave VMware, it was a toss up, right? Of, Ooh, do I keep going with the same type of company? Do I get kind of typecasted into you're the FinOps marketer? And it was something I thought really long and hard about.
And I did interview with many different companies in various spaces and markets.
But when the Ternary team reached out to me, it was just, it was a great opportunity.
And I did really want a series A company that I interviewed a lot of different size companies, but I did really want that series A.
And it's hard to be an early marketer, right? Most companies usually already have someone in the seat.
And so, yeah, the ternary opportunity was great and just something I couldn't pass up.
So then I ended up sticking with the FinOps route and then Kipo came along.
And so still has a cost focus to it as well, but really also looking more from an efficiency standpoint and pertaining to data clouds like Snowflake and Databricks.
So it's been a, I didn't stray too far from what I've already worked on, but it is a nice kind of new angle to work.
So they're obviously three different companies, but there's a, like, I think there's a thread there.
My career started at NetApp and that was really, it was a management suite at the time, but it was also backup to cloud and I worked on some data protection products and I followed a colleague over to cloud health, which was really at the time cloud management platform, and eventually honed in on the cost management discipline and FinOps.
So the cost management and FinOps product was the bread and butter that I was acquired into VMware with,
had the opportunity to work with security products, performance monitoring products.
But then, yeah, when I decided to leave VMware, it was a toss up, right? Of, Ooh, do I keep going with the same type of company? Do I get kind of typecasted into you're the FinOps marketer? And it was something I thought really long and hard about.
And I did interview with many different companies in various spaces and markets.
But when the Ternary team reached out to me, it was just, it was a great opportunity.
And I did really want a series A company that I interviewed a lot of different size companies, but I did really want that series A.
And it's hard to be an early marketer, right? Most companies usually already have someone in the seat.
And so, yeah, the ternary opportunity was great and just something I couldn't pass up.
So then I ended up sticking with the FinOps route and then Kipo came along.
And so still has a cost focus to it as well, but really also looking more from an efficiency standpoint and pertaining to data clouds like Snowflake and Databricks.
So it's been a, I didn't stray too far from what I've already worked on, but it is a nice kind of new angle to work.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.