Olivier Pomel on Building Datadog and Scaling Through Discipline

The Origins of Resilience

Olivier Pomel’s journey with Datadog began with a rejection from Y Combinator in 2010. Rather than viewing this as a failure, Pomel credits the initial lack of external validation with forcing the company to build a self-sustaining, product-obsessed culture. Having worked with co-founder Alexis Lê-Quôc for over a decade prior to founding Datadog, Pomel highlights that their partnership was forged through shared technical challenges and a deep, pre-existing trust. This foundation allowed them to navigate high-stakes decisions—such as whether to accept acquisition offers—by maintaining open, agenda-free communication channels.

Staying Grounded as a Founder

As Datadog scaled to 8,000 employees, Pomel identified a common organizational trap: the tendency for middle management to "manage up" by filtering information to present only positive narratives. To combat this, Pomel actively forces himself and his leadership team to "look down." He maintains a direct pulse on the company by sampling support tickets, sales conversations, and product briefs. This practice serves two purposes: it provides him with unfiltered reality and signals to the organization that leadership is paying attention to the details, discouraging the creation of superficial "beautiful stories."

Product Strategy and Innovation

Datadog’s product expansion follows a three-pronged approach. First, customer feedback drives incremental improvements and integrations. Second, top-down strategic initiatives allow the company to enter new markets where they see long-term potential, even if direct customer demand is not yet fully formed. Third, and critically, the company reserves space for bottom-up innovation, where engineering teams build solutions to problems they encounter themselves. This ensures that the company remains agile and capable of internalizing new technologies rather than becoming a rigid, top-down bureaucracy.

Navigating the AI Shift

Pomel views AI as both a product opportunity and a technical challenge. Datadog approaches AI through two lenses: building tools for companies developing AI models, and integrating AI into their own platform to automate observability tasks. Despite market volatility and the pressure of being a public company, Pomel maintains a long-term perspective, reminding his team that while the stock market is a "voting machine" in the short term, it is a "weighing machine" in the long term. Success, in his view, remains tied to delivering tangible value to customers rather than reacting to short-term market sentiment.