Jeff Fochtman, VP of Sales and Marketing for Pogoplug, is certainly a busy man. Spreading the word about one of our favorite gadgets is hard work, but someone has to do it! We ask Jeff about what it's like to work with such an awesome team and what the future holds for Pogoplug.

Tell us how you first got involved with Pogoplug, and what excited you about the opportunity?

I actually first found out about Pogoplug by becoming an end user. I was at a previous company, worldwide director of marketing at Seagate Technologies, which is an awesome, really big company, and I was testing a lot of different NAS products. I came across Pogoplug and started using it, and literally from the time I took it out of the box and got it installed, to the time I started getting into using it, that ten minutes that that took, total, I decided I wanted to join the company. I made it a goal to introduce myself and see if there was an opportunity.

So you were proactive, you went after it and said "hey this product is awesome, I love it, I want to be a part of this."

Exactly, yeah, it was something I wanted to be involved in not just because I thought it would be a success from a business venture, but I also thought it was so well done and so smartly crafted that it was a no-brainer, the next generation of a need people didn't know they would have yet.

What would you say a typical day is like for you at Cloud Engines?

You know, [laughs] it's fun, it's exciting, sometimes stressful, because we have so much going on. We have so many opportunities, we have to make the tough decisions about which opportunities to pursue and which opportunities not to pursue in terms of the sales, marketing, and retail business. I feel like I wear two hats: I wear a sales hat and I wear a marketing hat. While they are related they have lots of different and separate projects going on. A lot of times the sales comes down to watching new regions, finding new distribution partners, targeting retailers, dealing with business structures and stuff like that... so, it's diverse, fun, exciting, and stressful. [laughs]

So your official role is?

I'm actually VP of Sales and Marketing. I'm responsible for the placement and marketing of our product at retail, and the different ways of getting that done, coordinating events like tradeshows, any retail advertising we do, and on the sales side I'm on charge of our retail business worldwide and managing our small but very effective sales team. We're currently selling to around 13 distributors worldwide in 29 different countries and those numbers are growing quickly.

I know you travel a lot and that there's a lot of interest in Pogoplug worldwide. What has your experience been with Pogoplug in markets outside of the U.S.?

It's been different market to market. We start in each region with a wave of PR which has been very effective, especially through reviews. Normally we start there. Generally that creates enough awareness with the early adopters who are watching reviews and seeing the latest things. Each region is different as to whether we see a big bump in interest after that--it's either a long, slow road or a quick growth. Some markets have good characteristics, with a computer-centric populace, high percentage of broadband connectivity, amount of computers per household, etc.

One thing I know about the Pogoplug team is that your team is really active in the community, really involved, really hands on, and I know that everyone from the founders to the sales team and the tech team are fantastic. What's it like working with such a talented, high energy team?

It's empowering. I think the personality of a company starts from the top down. Dan Putterman, our CEO and president, has a unique style and a very cool vision for both the product and the overall work dynamic of the group. A lot of people who work here had worked with Dan in the past, so he brought along a great team. He went out of his way also to bring in new people who really fit and can move things forward, and he empowers us to do that.

When I started looking for the sales and marketing team that I hired on I was looking for the same things, to empower everybody with the ability to make decisions, speak in their own voice, which makes them more passionate. They're not dealing with some huge, corporate monolith with a lot of barriers over what to say and how to say it. Dan gives me that authority and I give my team that authority and we get a lot done.

When you can speak within your own voice, you're going to get people's real emotion and that's what I want to deliver in our marketing. I want it to be real, from the heart, I want us to believe in what we say, and that parallels what our dev team is doing. We don't have the confinement or strict guidelines of formality.

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