Diana Kimball Berlin
Partner at Matrix
Diana Kimball Berlin
Partner at Matrix
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Partner
2021
Matrix is an early-stage venture capital firm, investing from idea through Series A. As a close-knit team of former founders and company builders, we've partnered with companies from Apple and FedEx to Oculus and Canva. We're contrarians who invest with conviction, working with founders who have deep technical expertise and a specific vision of the future.
Board Director
2023
Board Director
2022
Lead Investor
2021
VP Product
2019 - 2020
Led a group of product managers, user researchers, and data scientists to build tools that make work better.
Product Lead
2017 - 2019
Led the launch of Quip Slides, completing Quip’s collaboration suite: https://quip.com/blog/introducing-quip-slides • Led a cross-functional product team of over a dozen engineers and designers, including several of the most senior technical staff members of Quip. • Spoke on behalf of Quip in all press briefings alongside Quip CEO Kevin Gibbs. • Introduced Quip Slides to industry analysts, answering strategic questions about our positioning and aspirations. • Presented on Slides in the Quip Keynote at Dreamforce 2018, which received the highest audience rating of any division keynote that year. • Defined messaging in collaboration with Marketing. • Created and delivered initial demos to large sales prospects, developing our talk track in collaboration with Solutions Engineering. • Personally responded to feedback from hundreds of early testers. Tapped by CEO to represent Quip at the highest levels and scale our sales organization. • Proposed and took on sales responsibilities as the interim Head of Solutions Engineering, with a goal of bridging our sales and engineering functions as we scaled. Collaborated with permanent Head of Solutions Engineering to successfully grow solutions engineering team from 1 to 6 in 6 months. • Defined Quip’s approach to delivering product roadmap presentations to customers and prospects. Served as product point of escalation in conversations with our largest customers and prospects, negotiating and delivering key product enhancements to meet their needs. • Launched Quip’s Virtual Private Cloud offering, writing and publishing Quip’s first two whitepapers. https://quip.com/virtual-private-cloud • Designed and delivered Quip pitches to our biggest prospects alongside CEO.
Product Manager
2016 - 2017
Joined Quip’s 20-person engineering team in January 2016 as the second product manager, with responsibility for product analytics, user research, core product improvements, and strategic partnerships. • Designed and launched Quip’s Slack integration: https://news.fastcompany.com/good-news-for-teams-slack-and-quip-are-intermingling-4006545 Worked directly with CEO and CTO to set strategy. Held end-to-end responsibility for user research, business development, quantitative analysis, copywriting, and deployment with customers. Delivered material impact to the business: teams who encountered Quip through Slack’s App Directory were 15% more likely to become paying customers than customers who encountered Quip elsewhere. Gave feedback to the Slack team that informed their API roadmap. • Led Quip’s product integration with Salesforce before and after we were acquired in September 2016. Worked directly with Salesforce’s strategic partnerships team to shape our first initial integrations. Grew Quip’s product management team from 2 to 6, personally mentoring and onboarding each new member of the team. • Defined Quip’s approach to product management, composing a guide to our values which we later published publicly to attract qualified candidates: https://quipblog.com/its-our-job-to-make-sure-that-good-things-ship-5016ee61b91f • Spoke at the inaugural Women in Product conference in September 2016, by invitation: https://www.womenpm.org/speakers-2016/ • Recruited a senior product leader from Salesforce to join the Quip team in January 2017, marking Quip’s first internal transfer from Salesforce. Drove gender-balanced recruiting by leveraging my personal network. • Sponsored by Quip to complete executive coach training through the Coaches Training Institute, bringing leadership coaching skills and trainings to Quip. Participated in a year-long leadership development program delivered through the Coaches Training Institute. Designed Quip’s learning and development framework.
Senior Product Manager
2013 - 2015
Delivered strategic initiatives and developed others at SoundCloud, the world’s leading audio platform. • Fostered a culture of data-informed decision-making within the Product team through coaching, education, and leading by example. • Presented strategic plans and progress updates to the executive team and Board of Directors. • Headed SoundCloud’s global Women in Leadership diversity resource group starting in Aug. 2014. • Collaborated across nine time zones on a regular basis, driving change through clear communication. Strategy (Dec. 2014–Apr. 2015) • Facilitated the development of an aligned company strategy with intensive executive involvement and broad-based buy-in. Program Management (Jan. 2014–Nov. 2014) • Led the launch of SoundCloud’s monetization and revenue-sharing platform as program manager. Community Engagement (Jul. 2013–Dec. 2013) • Managed a team focused on scaling up engagement with SoundCloud's creator community—a precursor to On SoundCloud Premier, a revenue-sharing program open to independent artists.
Intern
2012 - 2012
Performed qualitative and quantitative research in-house at Kickstarter • Wrote four case studies on Kickstarter projects and published them to the company blog. • Constructed SQL queries, Ruby scripts, and Excel analyses to answer business questions.
Special Projects
2011 - 2011
Developed concept and brand for a new online boutique office supply store. • Performed qualitative market research to decide on a retail category for the new store. • Identified over 900 potential products, initiated sourcing conversations with over 20 vendors. • Launched a networked recruiting drive and performed interviews in search of a store manager for the new shop, eliciting over 100 applications.
Program Manager, PowerPoint
2009 - 2011
Defined new features and managed evolution of existing features in PowerPoint. • Shipped PowerPoint 2010 as part of the Office productivity suite in April 2010. • Wireframed and managed the development of Presenter View, a flagship feature of PowerPoint 2013. • Collaborated with teams across the company, including Microsoft Hardware, Windows, and Internet Explorer. • Led PowerPoint’s Accessibility efforts for vision- and hearing-impaired users.
Producer
2007 - 2009
• Co-founded ROFLCon, a student-run celebration of viral Internet culture, which in its first year (April 2008) hosted over 700 attendees and 50 press organizations. • Promoted and organized all aspects of ROFLCon 2008, collaborating with the Wexley School for Girls (a Seattle new-media marketing firm). • Orchestrated a multi-stream conference schedule for ROFLCon 2008, managing the itineraries of over 70 speakers and guests