David Quattrone, M&T’95, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer at Cvent
Not long after he graduated from Penn’s M&T Program, David Quattrone co-founded Cvent, an industry leading meetings, events, and hospitality technology provider. The company was founded in 1999 and today, Mr. Quattrone leads a technology and product team of over 2,000 employees around the world and oversees the Company’s engineering, product management, cloud infrastructure and corporate systems. Under his leadership, the team continues to expand and elevate Cvent’s robust event marketing and management platform and deliver product enhancements that drive adoption, usability, and customer satisfaction across Cvent’s broad portfolio of products.
“What I love about my work is that it allows me to think strategically about our industry, space and customers, while balancing technological changes and challenges so we can continually deliver for our customers and their constituents. I’m using the latest technology to help solve critical business problems and challenges, which is exactly what M&T prepared me to do,” he says.
Mr. Quattrone has always liked technology, software, and computers, and recognized early on their ability to enhance and change things. “I always thought there was a tremendous opportunity to help create value with a business lens on it,” he says, emphasizing that successful businesses are those that spend more time with customers and on creating value rather than running things. Still, as a high school student, he wasn’t sure how his interests would manifest themselves from a career standpoint.
“Back in 1990, when I was looking at universities, I basically had to choose between business and engineering programs. Penn was the only school that offered a formalized program that brought together the two disciplines in a singular way. Still today, the Penn M&T Program demonstrates a level of excellence in this space that no one comes close to.”
Once at Penn and in the M&T Program, he pursued degrees in electrical engineering, finance and strategic management. He also took computer science electives because he liked the idea of using technology to make a difference with business or personal goals in mind and not just for the sake of the technology. Mr. Quattrone’s education and early career coincided with the rapid rise of technology. When he first arrived at Penn, students didn’t have email addresses, and when he graduated, people were just starting to go online. As a result, his work with Cvent was ahead of its time.
“When we started the company in 1999, people did not use the internet to manage software for events, conferences, trade shows, etc. We were multi-tenant and housed in the cloud out of the gate, before any of the cloud providers existed. We built, racked and stacked our own data centers, basically skated to where the puck was going,” he says. “In the early days, we’d go to companies and talk about what we could give them, and they wanted a CD to install the software, and we were saying no, no, this is cloud-based, and you can get updates for free.”
He credits Penn and the M&T program with helping him become a technological disruptor and someone who could talk to the business side as well.
Now, as artificial intelligence (AI) infiltrates nearly every aspect of our lives, he acknowledges this is not only the fourth major technological shift he’s witnessed in his career, but also, the most exciting. “I’ve watched the internet move into the cloud, the shift to mobile, the move to virtual workflows during the Covid pandemic, and now we’re seeing AI,” he says.
He explains that unlike previous trends, this shift to AI, will not only impact the products and experiences we deliver to our customer but also how our employees function in their day to day jobs.
“I think AI presents a tremendous opportunity to drive growth and value creation. We’re revisiting what we do to better deliver to customers via a change in our workflows. My software engineers’ roles are going to evolve, as well as that of my product managers and designers. Hopefully, they will be able to do their jobs more effectively, because of this shift.”
Looking back on his career and the journey he’s taken this far, Mr. Quattrone advises current Penn M&T students to take advantage of all the “wonderful opportunities” at Penn. He encourages students to explore opportunities both inside of the program and across the university overall – and not just academically.
“Take electives, hear the speakers that come to campus, get involved in activity groups,” he says. “The more involved you are, the better off you’ll be.”
He also advises Penn M&T students to explore the many entrepreneurial opportunities the program has to offer.
“Be willing to take risks,” he says. “You won’t always get it right. Your journey will ebb and flow – it is never a straight moon shot – so don’t be discouraged by the inevitable bumps along the way.”