Oh, the Places You’ll Go on a Vivun Winter Vacation!

Sam Wortman Avatar photo

The holiday season is here, and Vivun’s Heroes are looking forward to unwinding, relaxing, and reflecting on another successful year! 

2021 has been a year of achievements, both professionally and personally, for our team. Professionally, we grew to over 100 team members, secured Series B funding from Menlo totaling 56 million, established an EMEA team and landed our first non-US customers, launched full AI capabilities for Hero and our second product, Eval, brought aboard amazing companies such as HashiCorp, LogRhythm, Elastic, Workato, and Lacework, and more. Personally, team members became fathers, mothers, and grandparents, got their purple belt in JiuJitsu, hiked to glacial lakes, surfed empty waves, ran a farm, completed gnarly mountain runs, brewed their own beer, and signed in from beautiful remote locations like Hawaii. We killed it, team! 

Built into Vivun’s DNA are two-week-long mandatory quiet periods, one in August and one in December/January, created to give the team an opportunity to recharge, spend time with family and friends, and explore the world and their interests. Starting Thursday, Vivun will be “going ghost” for 10 days for a healthy break from the day-to-day hustle of a startup. 

To find out what my fellow Heroes will be up to during the quiet period, I interviewed them before we plan on going dark. 

John Salvatore, Software Engineering Manager

John lives on a horticulture farm and animal sanctuary on the tropical and beautiful West Coast of Florida. He loves all things zen, veggies, and cute animals. He’ll be spending his vacation spending time with his four adorable and intelligent pet goats, and his family will be coming to stay at the farm, spending their days on the beach by the Gulf of Mexico in Gasparilla Island and Boca Grande. Like any good goat dad, he’ll be recharging for the next year by practicing goat yoga, slack-lining, and rock-climbing. 

New Year Resolution: Take an aviator paramotor course and learn to fly.

Matt Darrow, Co-Founder, CEO

Matt, an experienced pilot and outdoor enthusiast, will be vacationing with his entire extended family, including Co-Founder and CCO, Dominique Darrow, near the beautiful Lake Tahoe in Truckee, California. On the agenda are snowboarding, snowshoeing, splitboarding, flying, and sledding with his baby daughter. To prepare himself for another ground-breaking year in PreSales, he’ll relax away from Slack and email by exploring the great outdoors with his family. 

New Year Resolution: Getting back into shape to prepare for the company’s adventures in the French Alps.

Mali Hirsch, Product Designer

Mali, an avid hiker and JiuJitsu practitioner, joined Vivun just three months ago and will be traveling from her home state of Colorado to Scottsdale, Arizona to visit her husband’s family. She’ll have lots of dinosaur-related fun in her trunk as she’s looking forward to seeing her 2-year-old nephew. She loves hiking family-friendly trails and is hoping to take a side trip to the beautiful red rock city of Sedona. A serious athlete on and off the mat, she plans on taking a long, low altitude run where she can flex her speed and training.

New Year Resolution: Keep on keeping on!

Claire Bruce, Co-Founder, COO, GC

Originally from California and one of Reno’s newest residents, Claire is hoping for several days of snow. In true holiday fashion, Claire and her husband, John Bruce, who happens to be a Co-Founder of Vivun, will be splitting their time between both families, which means she has double the fun! She enjoys board games and recently has delved deep into the world of a dice game called “Farkle” with her in-laws. On her wish list are a pair of snowshoes that will let her—warmly—explore her local area and gear up for Vivun’s upcoming (amazing, unreal, the list goes on…) offsite in Chamonix, France. 

New Year Resolution: Make time to explore new and unexpected ways to reach people in this virtual world. She’d also like to work on her language skills, particularly French, prior to Chamonix.

Sara vonDohren, Demand Generation Senior Manager 

Another Vivun Hero who will be spending time in Truckee, California is Sara. An incredible chef and dog mom to her beloved Bentley, Sara will be shredding the mountain with her family, getting the most out of their ski passes. She looks forward to catching up a book with warm cider by the fire. 

New Year’s Resolution: Getting better at woodworking and learning more about nutrition. 

Victoria Rio Myers, SDR

A resident of the city that never sleeps, Victoria, will be catching some shuteye when she visits her in-laws who just moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. It will be all about family time and celebrating Christmas and making new traditions with her husband’s side of the family. And she won’t be forgetting her two cute pups! She’s excited to make her family’s recipes for them for the first time, so home will always be close. 

New Year’s Resolution: Less coffee, more pilates. 

Relax. Recharge. Make your New Year’s Resolutions count. 

Heroes, enjoy the holidays, your time off, your family and friends, the peace and quiet of family dinners. 

In 2022, we hit the ground running!

Sam Wortman Avatar photo December 22, 2021