Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Sps Commerce
Search every verified Jamie Thingelstad interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jamie Thingelstad, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at SPS Commerce, has discussed the company's growth and his approach to technology leadership. He stated that SPS Commerce runs a retail network connecting more than 990,000 companies and celebrated its 78th quarter of consecutive growth. Thingelstad described leading a global technology team spanning four continents and noted that during the pandemic, the company used a portfolio approach, re-evaluating product investments and pulling its horizon to 12 to 18 months to remain nimble. He also emphasized the importance of building learning organizations and bringing in diversity through bootcamps or internship programs. Thingelstad has shared personal productivity methods, including using tags in OmniFocus to organize interactions with colleagues and managing "tag overload" by regularly reviewing and removing unused tags. He expressed concern about privacy and "constant surveillance," stating he is excited about technology being developed to help individuals manage their privacy. Thingelstad also reflected on his career, noting that timing and luck played a role and that he looks for companies building platforms at the center of an ecosystem.
“For me there are a lot of things that I'm doing that I need to be with a person to do, and so I put in a tag that is specifically for all the people that I work with frequently at the office.”
“I know okay I'm going to visit that tag anytime I have an interaction with that person and so that I can put my 'waiting fors' and my agendas all associated with that tag.”
“I do find that I can get tag overload — I kind of visit my tags regularly and make sure am I using them, 'cause if I'm not using them, let's get rid of them.”
“I used to have a repeating tag but thanks to OmniFocus 4.2 I don't need that anymore because I can now have a perspective that's filtered on is repeating.”
“SPS Commerce runs the retail network that connects more than 990,000 companies in retail together and allows them to work more efficiently across all of their trading partner connections — we're a publicly traded company and we just celebrated our 78th quarter of consecutive growth.”
“When you apply a public lens to that it really just increases the scrutiny on all of that because you have the public markets weighing in on how fast are you doing that — making sure that you hit your quarterly results is incredibly important.”
“We have a global technology team — people in Eastern Europe with a large presence in Kyiv, Ukraine, a large number of team members in India, locations in North America including Toronto, Little Falls, New Jersey, our headquarters in Minneapolis, and a presence in Melbourne, Australia.”
“What we've seen with the pandemic is that it's accelerated the future — the retail landscape has moved years and months in a very quick timeline, from curbside pickup to the need for online product information, and even corner retailers suddenly needed an online presence.”
“We used a portfolio approach during the pandemic — we re-evaluated product investments and pulled our horizon back to more like 12 to 18 months so we could be more nimble and dynamic as things changed.”
“I'm a huge proponent of technology and the web, but I worry a lot about our privacy and what I refer to as constant surveillance — I'm excited about technology being developed to help people manage their privacy and defend against surveillance.”
“My biggest learning as a CTO has been how important core leadership is in technology teams — not just focusing on tech, but on the business problems you're trying to solve and how you connect with the people solving those problems.”
“When everyone is on Zoom it levels the playing field — whether you're a mile away or 3,000 miles away, you have the same access to information, and our global team members now feel more connected than they ever have before; we've relied heavily on Zoom, Slack, the Atlassian suite and Salesforce.”
“For SPS our products are the people, the processes and the technology — we productize as much as we possibly can to deliver leverage to thousands of customers, but we leave hooks open so teams and customers can extend solutions for specific niches.”
“All great technology teams are fundamentally learning organizations — you need lifelong learners, and bringing in diversity through bootcamps or internship programs often brings very innovative thinking into the team.”
“At SPS we run the world's largest retail network connecting 65,000 people in retail to exchange fulfillment information, order products, find new products and partners, and understand how products are selling.”
On this episode, we interview Jamie Thingelstad, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of SPS Commerce.
Jac Stark (community manager, tech.mn) and Nels Pederson (Partnerships, Livefront) sit down with Jamie Thingelstad to chat ...
Business is moving faster than ever, in tech it is moving even faster. In order to stay ahead we need to be constantly learning.
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