Vinod Malhotra
Chief Technology Officer at Firstup
San Francisco Bay Area, United States
About Vinod Malhotra
Vinod Malhotra is Chief Technology Officer at Firstup. Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States.
I am a strategic CTO with proven experience in scaling B2B SaaS companies from $50M to $500M+ ARR. I’ve led platform modernizations, embedded GenAI into products that generated $5M in new revenue in year one, and cut cloud spend by 20% while improving reliability. With 12+ years in FinTech and recent HRTech leadership, I bring domain depth plus a track record of building global teams of over 350 that deliver speed without sacrificing quality or customer trust. What sets me apart is my blend of product and engineering leadership. My four years as a Group Product Manager at Microsoft instilled in me a customer-first, business-aligned mindset. This dual perspective enables me to partner seamlessly with CEOs, boards, and investors, ensuring that technology investments are directly tied to strategic goals. At my core, I’m a builder of scalable platforms, high-impact teams and customer-centric products. My leadership philosophy centers on solving complex problems others consider intractable, with a focus on systemic, lasting improvements. I’ve built and transformed global teams of 100–400, integrated multiple acquisitions, and fostered a culture of psychological safety, accountability, innovation and customer empathy. I thrive in mid-size B2B SaaS companies—public, PE-backed, or late-stage startups—where the mandate is scale and innovation. And I bring a proven ability to turn that into growth, customer delight, and long-term enterprise value.
Skills
Additional experience
Advisory Board Member
Kloze.Ai
Started September 2025
Education
- M.Tech, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
- MS, University of South Carolina