Meet Dan Kador, our new VP of Engineering

Dan Kador recently joined Clockwise as our new VP of Engineering. 

No stranger to fast-moving, fast-growing companies, Dan is excited to put his experience taking companies from great ideas to household names to work for Clockwise. 

I spoke to Dan about life before Clockwise, what drew him to us, and what he does when he’s not leading Engineering at Clockwise.

The journey to Clockwise

Right out of the Computer Science program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Salesforce nabbed Dan. Back then, “They weren’t yet a name-brand,” Dan told me. There, he worked on their developer platform and customer-facing APIs.

“I had a great time there,” Dan said. “I worked with excellent engineers. It was fun to see the company grow from relatively unknown to anytime I sat next to somebody on a plane they would ask me for tips.”

Dan eventually left Salesforce to start a business as Cofounder and CTO. “Keen IO sat at the intersection of APIs and analytics,” Dan said. The VC-backed company netted thousands of customers, was used by more than 80,000 developers, and brought in millions in revenue. Six years in, the team sold to private equity and the company is still up-and-running today. 

The next 18 months for Dan were a whirlwind at Lyft managing teams handling real-time streaming data in the runup to the world’s first ride-sharing IPO. 

Then Dan experienced hypergrowth again at Handshake. He spent two years there serving as Director of Engineering working on their student-facing product. “The business grew a lot,” Dan said. “The team went from 250 to 450 while I was there and Engineering more-than-doubled.”

Why Clockwise

Dan hadn’t been looking when Clockwise reached out, ” But I definitely had to take the call.” Dan said. “I’ve been a Clockwise user since 2019. I loved the product. I’ve built a bunch of calendar-related tools myself.” Most notably, Dan built his own work-to-personal cal sync. Today, he uses ours. 

“During the interview process, I kept being impressed with Matt, Gary, the larger team, and the investor bench,” Dan said. “I appreciated the human-first approach to building software.” (Learn more about our Engineering culture.)

“Most interview processes are so artificial,” Dan said. “They don’t do a very good job of setting people up to succeed. I could also tell the whole team was excited to set me up to succeed.”

Dan could also see Clockwise’s thoughtful, mature business processes and our commitment to our company values. “It seems like a very well-managed business, more than a company of 50 has a right to be,” Dan said. “They’re paying attention to people here. Everybody was so kind, generous, and thoughtful.”

“There’s no shortage of businesses in the Valley doing great, at least as far as VC, cool products, or seeming to care about their people goes,” Dan said. “Clockwise combines a bunch of these into one exciting package. The problem space is hugely interesting. My friends, when they hear what I’m doing, say ‘Omg, I need that,’ and toss a thousand calendar ideas at me. Clockwise is growing fast. The founding team and leadership team genuinely seem like really great people. The culture match, business opportunity, and fun problem space made the decision easy,” Dan said. 

Dan at home

Dan lives in San Francisco with his wife, Kathy, and daughter, Edith. In the Before Times, they loved to travel - Kayak says he’s flown 500,000 miles over the last several years. They’re also huge nerds, as evidenced by how giddily happy they were to visit Hobbiton:

When not traveling, Dan loves playing games (all kinds), relaxing at home, and wine country.

Interested in working with Dan on our Engineering team? We’re currently looking for our next Front End Engineer, Back End Engineer, Senior Back End Engineer, Senior Front End Engineer, and Technical Program Manager, Information Security. If that’s not you, check out our other open positions.