Nick Abate has always been drawn to high growth experiences. Whether it’s the bustle of a city, the hard work and discipline it took to play soccer at the collegiate level, or the explosion of e-commerce over the past decade he’s always sought bar raising challenges.
Nick grew up outside of Bristol in the small town of Burlington, CT. His graduating class was less than 200 students and, as he surveyed his options, he figured to get closer to a city with enough activity to start a high growth career he could either go north to Boston or south to New York. Juggling the sliding scale of academics, sports, and cultural experiences he headed north to Bentley just outside of Boston to play DII soccer for the university. He majored in Business Management with a minor in Finance, intelligently predicting that he would need to have a good command of numbers if he was going to enter the dynamic world of growth stage companies.
At Bentley, his interest in startups was continuously nurtured. He took business courses focused on entrepreneurship taught by practitioners & operators. He heard their real stories about companies tackling thorny problems with innovative solutions. It felt relatable and he was drawn further into a startup career. Nick even built a business plan one semester as part of an entrepreneurship course for a “construction tech” startup that had external cameras & sensors monitoring properties under construction when the owners or general contractors weren’t there. I’ll let him tell you the name if you want further details on that class project! But maybe he was onto something..
Soon after graduating, he was made aware of a unique opportunity to get his Masters in Management and Global Entrepreneurship nearby at Babson. During the program, studying alongside French & Chinese students, he spent time in Lyon, France consulting for a local energy company before traveling to Hangzhou, China to consult at a hospital before finally finishing up locally on the Babson campus. He sought his Masters to get academic experience with real world context early in his career and naturally, like everything Nick does, the program was accelerated and he finished in almost a year. He learned about entrepreneurship, building businesses globally, and began to look for an opportunity where he could further sharpen his skills. It was time to join the real world full time!
Nick soon found Brown Aviation Lease. The company had less than 10 employees and he was able to work directly under the company’s Founder. At an early stage company with limited resources, Nick learned quickly & up close about sales, marketing, and how to sell value to customers. He got exposure to financial modeling too since it was a “real assets” business leasing aircraft to colleges & universities helping prepare pilots for careers in aviation. After Brown Aviation Lease, he transitioned with the same Founder & group of investors over to the Commercial Drone Insurance space in a Product role.
Nick has always felt strongly about staying close to customers and their challenges.. He joined Burning Glass as a Solutions Architect where he could pair his sales & marketing experience with his newly acquired product chops in a hybrid career as a Solutions Architect. Burning Glass is a private equity backed company in the HCM (human capital management) space and this was Nick’s first growth software experience. He was drawn to the high growth potential and problem solving challenges of this area of startups. He grew from an individual contributor to lead a team of pre-sales Solutions Architects across a couple different verticals servicing Fortune 500 companies. He enjoyed working closely with product & sales teams to determine unique customer solutions that solved client problems and helped close deals..without derailing the product roadmap.
Like any high growth leader in the making, the explosion of e-commerce caught Nick’s eye. An experienced team with venture backed startup experience and previous exits of their own drew Nick in to Salsify. He joined as one of the first 150 employees working with brand manufacturers to help them “win on the digital shelf”. Salsify partners with 1000s of Brands and Retailers empowering them to gather their product content centrally, create engaging consumer experiences, and scalably publish that content out to 1,000’s of commerce destinations. Among many other platform features. Nick serves as a Director of Sales Engineering at Salsify managing a team of 7 Sales Engineers & Enterpise Architects focused on supporting Strategic Global Accounts.
And after moving north to Boston to attend Bentley, he’s made the Boston area his long term home. Growing up near the ocean, Nick has always wanted to stay close to the water and is just a quick drive from the Cape Cod beaches. Living north of the city, it helps to be a couple hours from the mountains too! Nick loves getting outdoors with his family of four. The other thing he loves about Boston is the local tech scene. He feels like he’s built a great local network that’s helped him make friends, grow his career, and continue to access high caliber opportunities.
He shared these 3 insights that have informed his work and growth over the course of his career:
Be Curious: “Be a curious individual. Be extremely curious. Always ask the second and third layer ‘why’ questions to really understand the root of whatever problem or situation you’re in and how you can solve it”. Especially as a sales engineer with customers, but also when you are working with internal teams or even in your personal life try to drive to understand the why. It’s impactful because it allows you to make better decisions around how you react or operate in all facets of business and life.
Link Tactics to Strategy: Nick explained that earlier in his career he struggled to understand the broader context of what he was working on day to day. He didn’t always clearly understand what he needed to be doing to make a big impact and in any startup, resources are limited so understanding what activities are going to be most impactful is critical So, over time, he was able to boil his work down to a simple question when he was in the weeds solving a problem – “how am I impacting or not impacting the business?” Being able to zoom out and see the “50,000 foot view” of what’s going on holistically is critically important to understanding the impact of you and your team’s work and how you can help move the needle.
Transparent Leadership: Nick’s witnessed the best leaders he’s worked with over his career lead with transparency. In order to move quickly and as efficiently as possible, which is critical in high growth organizations, the best leaders communicate clearly and as openly as possible. Today, he actively works to coach his team and instill in up & coming leaders those same qualities. Working for people who are transparent about the decisions they make and take the time to explain their decision making process keeps people pulling in the same direction and therefore motivated, which he feels is critical to building successful teams.
Nick’s still optimizing for high growth opportunities. He loves the experience at Salsify and, much later, aspires to be part of the next generation of startups that spin off from a generational Boston company. He definitely sees himself staying in tech, close to and closely aligned with the needs of customers. As for e-commerce, he loves the continued growth of the space and the challenges involved in building for this new frontier industry. And he still makes time for his family with two boys under 4! That’s probably enough under management for now!
For more info on Nick’s career and for getting in touch with him directly you can reach out to him on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing Nick. See you around town, at the beach, or on the slopes of New England!