Whether it’s his affinity for competition, brotherly love, or solving puzzles, Mark Hardy has always been destined for the camaraderie of a startup. Having transitioned from growth equity investing to the world of early-stage companies, Mark currently serves as the Director of Revenue Operations at Black Kite, a high-growth cybersecurity startup headquartered in Boston. Black Kite offers the premiere third-party risk intelligence platform, and Mark works alongside the sales, marketing and customer success teams to create more cohesive go-to-market strategies for the company.
Mark was born in Oklahoma City and spent his early childhood there before his family moved to the Bay Area. He is the second of four boys and often takes on the role of peacemaker among his siblings, although he’s not above causing mischief himself. Mark’s father worked in real estate and, when given a choice of relocation options for his career, he and Mark’s mother opted for the Bay Area, believing it would offer their family the best opportunities. Mark grew up in Menlo Park, at the heart of Silicon Valley, and lived just a stone’s throw away from Sand Hill Road. He was exposed to a wealth of knowledge and experience from the many entrepreneurs and investors in the area, providing him with a rich learning environment.
Mark’s mother is an accomplished MBA-trained executive who formerly headed up marketing at Oklahoma’s largest hospital network. However, after relocating to California and welcoming her fourth son, she transitioned to becoming a full-time mother, which is a business in and of itself when taking care of Mark and his three brothers. Mark fondly remembers that his parents instilled in him and his brothers the values of hard work and treating others with respect from a very young age. As a family, the Hardy boys are tightly knit and all work in the tech and finance industries. Although they share a brotherly bond, they’re also fiercely competitive with one another.
Mark looks back with amusement at the time when he and his younger brother, JR, got into a heated argument in front of their entire high school over what he believed was a bad call during an intra-grade school sports competition. However, as the brothers were taught growing up, they were able to (relatively) keep their emotions in check and resolve the issue without causing (too much of) a scene. In fact, their high school principal was impressed enough by their maturity after that heated exchange that he called their mother the next day to commend her for raising such level-headed sons who could forgive and forget following the intensity of the moment. While the Hardy brothers are fiercely competitive and strive to win, they cherish the value of family and always have each other’s backs.
As a high school athlete in football and basketball, Mark also had slightly “nerdier” interests in random word and number game apps like Word Scramble and 2048. Mark had a passion for competition and problem-solving outside of the classroom and sports fields as well, which led him to early interest in finance and investing, having opened his first brokerage account at 18 and day trading stocks on Robinhood as an early adopter well before the days of WallStreetBets. Through high school and college, Mark developed a diverse set of academic interests in psychology, computer science, and finance which helped him gain a better understanding of human behavior and generate intrigue in the psychology of business and how to run a company.
Despite both his parents going to the University of Oklahoma and Mark being an avid Sooners fan his whole life, during the summer before his senior year of high school, Mark participated in a program at Notre Dame and fell in love with the Fighting Irish. His first real job he interned at Stifel in New York doing equity research covering the beverages sector. Although he got to analyze large public companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi, Mark realized that his true interests lay in technology, software and earlier-stage, more entrepreneurial private companies. At a Notre Dame career fair early in the fall of his senior year, he met Sean Cantwell, one of Volition Capital’s Managing Partners and a Notre Dame alum, and from there was convinced that growth equity software investing was the perfect place to start his career.
This was Mark’s big move to Boston.
According to Mark, he had the opportunity to live in New York and while he enjoyed his time there, he wanted a different experience. He explained, “Boston has an amazing history, restaurant scene, and is the perfect pace for me.” Mark appreciates the ease of traveling around New England and loves attending local concerts and comedy shows, with a particular fondness for the Improv Asylum in the North End. He met his girlfriend in Boston, and they both take their dining experiences very seriously, rating every spot out of 10 based on taste, price, and overall atmosphere. Among their recent favorites is ilona in the South End, with Uni, Carmelina’s, Little Donkey, and Kava Neo Taverna also ranking high on their list. Mark resides in Back Bay and enjoys taking a leisurely walk down Commonwealth Avenue into the Boston Common on a beautiful day or grabbing a drink with friends at his favorite local bar, Dillon’s. The city has become a fantastic second home for him.
Volition Capital was the ideal place to combine his quantitative skills with developing qualitative sales skills that are vital to deal sourcing work. He quickly learned critical early career skills, such as time management and how to prioritize daily tasks, which are imperative in a fast-paced work environment. Volition has two teams, and Mark worked on the B2B software team with his primary responsibility as an associate being to identify and diligence investment opportunities for the firm. These startups typically had proven product market fit, with $5 – $25M in annual recurring revenue and had not yet raised major institutional capital.
Mark had to quickly learn how to evaluate these opportunities. What business models were they interested in? Which businesses were growing 50-100%+ YoY? Which were capital efficient? How did they achieve their first $10M in revenue – had they burned $5M or $50M to get there? What experience did the management team have and what was the market opportunity for a company in this vertical? His constant challenge was to find the right fit of companies and get them in front of his Partners and Principals before the companies raised institutional funding from competitive firms.
He gained valuable experience working on a multitude of deals across verticals and ultimately was able to work on a deal that closed which allowed him to witness the entire due diligence process. A few months later in the fall of 2021, Volition invested in Black Kite, a third-party risk intelligence startup, which the entire firm was excited about due to its rapid growth, clear product advantages, and large market opportunity. This experience gave Mark an up-close view of the potential opportunities that existed within a growing portfolio company. Additionally, Mark began to feel that working for a startup “in-house” could be a better fit for the next stage of his career.
After feeling this way for a short time, he approached his Volition mentors, Sean Cantwell and Tomy Han, to express his desire for a change in career. They were quick to offer their assistance and introduced him to Black Kite’s CEO, Paul Paget. After a successful interview process, Mark became Black Kite’s first Sales Operations Manager, with responsibilities spanning from managing all of the company’s sales operations to building out their SDR team mostly from scratch. Despite having no prior operating experience, Mark successfully recruited, hired and trained 15 SDRs, developed their territories, and established more robust operational practices across the sales organization.
Mark’s role extended beyond just managing the sales development teams though; he also played a key role in building out the early stages of Black Kite’s revenue operations. He organized and analyzed the company’s Salesforce data to drive better pipeline predictability, track sales efficiency metrics and begin to build a more efficient go-to-market engine. While Mark admittedly still has lots to learn about revenue operations as a job function, he has great internal mentors and peers in Eireann Connolly, Chris Bush, Kat Desy, Phil Johnson, Katie Trojano, Johnathan Bald and Julianne LaBrecque to name a few who help him navigate the day to day operational items that come up in his role. Mark is enjoying the ability to learn, try, fail and succeed in continually working to improve the interoperability of people, process and technology at Black Kite.
Mark has developed a passion for building companies and believes in the importance of cultivating a strong company culture. He enjoys the challenge of thinking through decisions that impact multiple teams and strives to create a positive and supportive work environment for everyone around him. Having shifted to working under the Chief Operation Officer, Mark works alongside sales, marketing and customer success leaders to develop a well-oiled go-to-market machine in order to help the company achieve efficient and predictable growth. Mark is determined to leverage his skills and experience to drive success for the company and its employees and he is excited about the opportunity at Black Kite for many years to come.
Mark shared four key takeaways from his experience in growth equity investing, building cybersecurity go-to-market teams and implementing efficient operational processes:
Be proactive, not reactive: Identify and deal with operational issues now before they become a bigger problem for teams down the road.
Take chances on people: Commit to hard-working candidates who may not have the exact background or fit for the job description, but who you know will put in the required hours of effort to learn and succeed in the role.
Culture is critical: Building a strong culture within a company is essential, especially at an early stage startup. People need to feel heard, respected, and cared about which in turn drives loyalty and commitment to the shared goals of the company and the team.
Long term, capital-efficient growth requires relentless operational execution and dedication to a culture that fosters collaboration, hard work, transparency and understanding: Striking a delicate balance between motivating individuals to work hard and cultivating a workplace culture that values authenticity and compassion is crucial. It is important to consistently be able to navigate this balance with care and intention.
Mark is excited to continue building Black Kite with his incredibly talented coworkers over the next several years until they achieve a successful exit. He loves the growth stage and automating processes to help every department become more efficient, and hopes to someday run a company of his own as an executive.
To learn more about Mark, you can either find him on LinkedIn, frequenting top Boston food establishments, attending the next Mt. Joy concert or perhaps planning another Hardy boys get together. Thanks for sharing, Mark. We can’t wait to see the impact you make at Black Kite and their go-to-market organization in the years ahead!