Get to know Propeller’s world-class team in our new, ongoing employee spotlight series. Today, we talk to Matt Gendron, who’s a sales executive based in our Denver, Colorado, office.
What do you do at Propeller?
I work with our potential customers in the US Northeast to help build implementation plans for new drone programs. I help customers go from never flying a drone to using drones to get accurate full-site data at a moment’s notice.
Ultimately, I help companies realize the value of drones, saving them both time and money through more effective surveying.
What’s your career background?
It’s in software sales. For the last two years, I worked at a startup called Affinio, which is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was doing top-of-the-funnel sales there as well. My actual degree is in finance. I went to Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. I’ve only ever had one job in finance, for a mutual fund company. It wasn’t for me, so I made the switch to sales.
Before working at Propeller, what’s the strangest or most interesting job you’ve held?
I didn’t hold this job for very long, but my dad’s friend when I was in high school sold houses. He’d purchase a number of them through bank foreclosures. Me and five other friends were hired to go in and clean up the houses.
People would leave all sorts of stuff. Sometimes it was like an episode of Hoarders. There was always tons of gross stuff in the basements. We just had a giant dumpster in the front for everything. Some of it was super sad—people left family photos and stuff, which we’d have to toss.
Where are you from? Where have you lived?
I was born in Toronto and grew up outside of Boston, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Then I went to school in Nova Scotia. So, it went Canada, US, Canada, and US again. Now, I’m based in Denver, at Propeller’s US office
What’s your favorite Propeller memory?
We recently went on a company retreat to Thailand, and one of the activities was an all-day hackathon. My group was revamping our new-employee welcome pack. That was super fun. I was working with people out of our Australian branch that I’d never worked with before.
There was really good brainstorming and a couple of really funny moments. After a couple of hours one person suddenly chimed in with, “Wait guys, forget the box . . . what if we do a bag?” It was great because we’d been talking about doing welcome gear in a box or bag for an hour.
If you could be any piece of worksite equipment, what would you be and why?
I’d be a drone, because then I could fly over the site. You’re pretty much a bird for the day. You get a bird’s-eye view of everything—it’d be amazing.
If you could attend any professional sports game, what would it be and why?
Well . . . a lot of people in Denver will probably get mad at this, but any Patriots game—Patriots in the playoffs. I’m a huge Pats fan, through and through. The first year I moved to Boston in 2001, the Patriots won the Super Bowl, so I haven’t looked back since.
Do you have an office nickname? What is it?
Yes, I have two. Both Canadian related. The first is So Sorry Maple Syrup, which comes from a Canadian name game. The second is that I’m just one of “the Canucks.” Everyone calls me and another Canadian at Propeller, Shaun MacIntosh, “the Canucks.”
If you could do any job on a worksite for just one day, which would you choose?
I’d want to be the site supervisor on a construction site. To be able to get the lay of the land through their eyes and to see the problems that they tackle would be super helpful from my perspective. I’m always asking those questions, but haven’t been in their shoes yet.
