When Forbes devotes its daily cover to how your company came to be worth $5.6 billion, it’s a good day. Data company Fivetran was named to Forbes’ “The Cloud 100” list in 2022 after acquiring its way into the stratosphere. The initial idea—to help companies grab data from everything from credit card transitions to Twitter mentions—has paid off exponentially.
“The past year has been another incredible growth period for Fivetran, and we’re honored to be included in the Forbes Cloud 100 list for the third consecutive time,” George Fraser, CEO of Fivetran said in a prepared statement. “With the acquisition of real-time database replication leader HVR as well as having delivered significant product advancements, we’ve taken major strides toward our mission to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. To be listed alongside some of the world’s most innovative companies is a testament to our progress and the entire team’s commitment to serving our customers.”
The expansive growth and valuation of Fivetran led the company to seek out the best and brightest. Enter Thiago Silva, a talent acquisition leader with over twenty years of experience building and leading world-class teams for tech and nontech companies alike. Silva came to Fivetran in 2021 tasked with revamping Fivetran’s recruiting strategy while also amplifying the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy by seeking out a new director for those efforts.
Silva’s creative, aggressive, and technical-savvy approach is married to a consistent track record of implementing strategic hiring methods and bringing in top candidates. Prior to coming to Fivetran, the leader asked himself what he really wanted to help create at the company and how he could best put people in the right positions to drive success.
Since coming to Fivetran, Silva has grown his team from eighteen to thirty-five people with three direct reports. The growth is an extension of Fivetran’s expanding footprint and need to keep its talent sourcing and pipeline creation on par with the caliber of talent they are seeking.
Silva’s résuméruns deep, from extensive consulting to in-house roles at HP, Tesla, Kellogg, US Cellular, and Nevro. Prior to Fivetran, Silva spent two years working as his own boss, partnering with early and mid-stage high-growth companies to design talent strategies. But the allure of working with a company growing as quickly as Fivetran was too good to pass up.
The year 2022 brought more highlights for both Silva and Fivetran. The company was rated number seven on Fortune’s “100 Best Medium Workplaces” with a 98 percent employee satisfaction rating. The organization also ranked number six in “Best Workplaces for Millennials” and number two in “Best Workplaces in the Bay Area,” both rankings given by Fortune and Great Place to Work.
One employee review in the Fortune Best Medium Workplaces listing paints a clear picture of just how the company has managed to earn its reputation as an employer of choice: “Our culture is unbeatable. We have numerous ERP groups for employees to participate in, and our company gets together each year for Camp Fivetran. This year, the company booked out an entire five-star resort in Cancun for employees from around the world to gather and meet—no work, just quality time with each other.”
Silva obviously had a very strong company culture to build on, but it just makes the challenge of continuing to grow the organization with that culture still embedded all the more high-stakes. He appears to be well on his way.
