Dev Ittycheria
Former President & CEO, MongoDB. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executivefounderinvestor@dittycheria ↗LinkedIn ↗mongodb.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Dev Ittycheria led MongoDB as President and CEO from 2014 to 2025, taking the database company public in 2017 and overseeing the launch of MongoDB Atlas. Previously, he co-founded and served as CEO of BladeLogic and worked as an investor at Greylock Partners and OpenView Venture Partners.
2shows
2appearances
31statements
8resolved
8supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
43said about them ↓ Everything Dev Ittycheria said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria calls Oracle the most hated tech vendor
“Oracle is the most hated vendor in our tech industry. In the tech industry today”
Ittycheria: In California, venture capital flows directly from LPs to landlords
“The cost structure in California has got to such a point that it's very hard to build a business because when you map the money flows, you can basically see the money flowing from LPs to landlords because you have to pay new grants so much more because their c…”
Managed cloud services are the optimal open-source monetization strategy
“The best way to monetize open source is open source as a service.”
MongoDB replaced six C-level executives in the three years post-IPO
“It's a, it's not a secret, but since we've gone public three and a half years ago, we've had six C-level changes, right?”
Ittycheria: MongoDB had broken GTM and leadership when he joined as CEO
“And when I started doing some diligence, what became clear to me, it was while the company had great product market fit, there were a lot of things that were broken inside the company. Its go-to-market was broken, and frankly, the leadership team, there were a…”
Ittycheria: Selling to VC portfolio companies never works for startups
“A lot of investors say, well, I have this portfolio of companies you can talk to and maybe they'll become customers. That never works because no company is going to buy from you because there's some interconnection between a common investor.”
MongoDB spent over $700M on R&D, dedicating half to free software
“We've invested over seven hundred million in R&D since we started the company, and more than 50% of that goes with the free product.”
Open-source companies must target massive markets to offset unmonetized usage
“The most successful open source companies go after big markets because by definition you can't monetize all your usage.”
Ittycheria: Roelof Botha listens instead of dominating board conversations
“I found in many other companies, the largest investor always feels like they have the bully pulpit. They talk the most and they dominate the board conversations. Roloff was very different. He spoke very little. He listened very hard. And when he spoke, he had …”
Ittycheria: Test investors by their value-to-overhead ratio
“And to me, the real test of a investor and a board member is what I call the value to overhead ratio. Adding new investors and board members creates more overhead for the CEO. So why is that overhead worth it? Well, what's the value that they're providing?”
MongoDB grew from $30M to $700M run rate under Dev Ittycheria
“The business would then was roughly about 250 people trailing about 30 plus million in revenue, and today we're approaching 4000 people and about seven hundred million dollars in run rate.”
Dev Ittycheria hired MongoDB's first CRO and CMO on West Coast
“In the early days when I joined actually my first CRO, my first CMO were actually on the West coast because I couldn't find enough depth and experience in New York city.”
MongoDB Atlas hit $350M run rate with 66 percent annualized growth
“So it went from zero To a three hundred fifty million dollar run rate business, you know, when we announced our last quarter's earnings. And it's growing at about a 66% annualized growth rate.”
Snowflake S-1 filing entirely omitted the word developer
“If you read Snowflake's S-One, they never mentioned the word developer. That's all about the business analysts, The data scientists, et cetera, to help them kind of get, you know, insight into the data.”
MongoDB had more software downloads in 2020 than its first decade combined
“Last year we had more downloads of our software than in the first 10 years of the company's history.”
Ittycheria: Claiming everything is perfect signals ignorance or dishonesty to investors
“And any seasoned investor, if they hear that things are going perfectly well, will either worry, one, that you don't know what you don't know, or two, that you're lying to them.”
Ittycheria: Sharing bad news early builds board trust and drives problem-solving
“So with my board, I share bad news very, very early, and it does a couple things. One, they then trust me because I'm not trying to hide information. And two, now they're really motivated to help me actually solve all those problems.”
Ittycheria: Bad news travels slowly and is always worse than reported
“Bad news travels very slowly, especially up the organization. And it's far worse than what people are telling you. So whenever I see bad news or hear about bad news, I assume two things. One, I'm the last to know. And two, it's far worse than what people are t…”
Dev Ittycheria: Leaders must sometimes be inefficient to build team buy-in
“There's times when I do think that being a little more patient and recognizing that sometimes you have to be inefficient to be effective is an important attribute, and that's something I constantly need to work on. That the best answer is not the shortest path…”
Ittycheria: Scaling leaders must be 'students of the game', not masters
“One of the attributes I think of is really important for leaders who can scale is that they're students of the game and not the master of the game. And what I mean by that is that you have to have the attitude that you don't have all the answers. That you have…”
MongoDB Atlas reached a $200M+ run rate following its 2016 launch
“Literally from a standing start, that business was started in 2016 now is north of a two hundred million dollar run rate business, and it's really helped fuel our growth.”
Ittycheria: Leaders overlook data asymmetry in internal versus external hiring
“One of the classic mistakes I see a lot of people make is when they're assessing an internal candidate versus an external candidate, and the biggest mistake they make is they don't fully appreciate the asymmetry of data that they have between the internal cand…”
Ittycheria: Employees fail due to either skill gaps or motivation gaps
“And as I said, there's really two reasons why people fail. One is either they have the skills to do the job, or they don't have the will or the motivation to do the job.”
Ittycheria: Drive-by diligence investors panic during company speed bumps
“It's those investors who've done drive-by diligence, just wanting to be part of a party round, they're the ones who are going to panic when something goes wrong because they just don't have that inner conviction about your business.”
The other half of the tape: Dev Ittycheria's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 41 times in 15 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 20John McMahon 7Jason Lemkin 5Kevin Ryan 3Ishan Mukherjee 3Neeraj Agrawal 1Matt Turck 1
Statements about Dev Ittycheria, by other people (2)
McMahon: Dev Ittycheria's intimidating style limits critical information sharing at MongoDB
“Dave is very intimidating to a lot of people, really intimidating... Brian can get probably more information out of you, whereas I think that some people, if they're intimidated by Dave, they don't give him the information that he should get as a CEO”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 40
the MAD Podcast 1
2025 17 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- 20Sales: John McMahon on How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Sales Reps | How Sales Changes in a World of AI | Sales Lessons from Snowflake and MongoDB | How to Create and Drive a Sales Process with Urgency
- Is a $4.5BN Exit Enough in VC? & Harvey Raises $150M & Why Google is a Buy and Amazon is a Sell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20Sales: How the Best Sales Teams Use AI to Win Enterprise Deals | Sales Teams Will Be Dramatically Smaller | How to Ramps Sales Reps Way Faster | Why Unpaid Design Partners are BS | Why this Generation of Sales is Soft with Ishan Mukherjee @ Rox
- Anthropic Raises $13BN & OpenAI Buys Statsig for $1.1BN All Stock · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Carlos Delatorre, CRO @Harness: Why Every Sales Rep Should Do Pipeline Generation | E1251 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 13 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
- Kevin Ryan: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers & Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC|E1138 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Dave Kellogg: How to Forecast in 2024 & Why CaC Payback is Flawed and CAC Ratio is Better | E1110 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Steve Goldberg: Core Questions All CFOs Ask Today When Buying | E1094 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ophelia Brown: How We Raised $432M in a Pandemic; What's New in European Venture Capital | E990 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2021 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on The Scaling Journey to a $26Bn Market Cap, The Challenges in Moving From Single To Multi-Product Company & How To Scale Efficiently into $M+ Enterprise Deals
- 20VC: Spotify Founder Daniel Ek on Optimising Decision-Making, Structuring Effective Learning Processes, The Trials and Tribulations in The Transition From Founder To CEO & The Future of Building Prima Materia with Shakil Khan
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Dev's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Former President & CEO, MongoDB | 1 | 18 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |
| MADLEDGER | Former President & CEO, MongoDB | 1 | 13 | 100% 5/5 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |