Meet the Grafana Labs Team: Douglas Hanna

As Grafana Labs continues to grow, we’d like you to get to know the team members who are working on the cool stuff you’re using. Check out the latest of our Friday team profiles.

Meet Douglas!

Name: Douglas Hanna

Grafana Labs COO Douglas Hanna

Current location/time zone:

I live in San Francisco, which is U.S. Pacific time.

What do you do at Grafana Labs?

As Chief Operating Officer, I’m responsible for helping Grafana Labs grow and scale. Organizationally, I lead all of our go-to-market (GTM) and internal operations. GTM consists of sales, marketing, solutions engineering, and customer experience. Internal operations includes our operational cadence, business operations, and sales operations.

Tell us about your career so far and how you landed at Grafana Labs.

I have bounced between small companies and larger ones. I started my career in the web hosting industry and ran a (relatively small) hosting company that was acquired by a big conglomerate. I stayed there for a couple of years before leaving to start a SaaS company focused on customer service software. That didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but I did end up getting to know some folks at Zendesk as part of that and ended up joining Zendesk, where I spent the last four years or so before joining Grafana Labs. At Zendesk, I spent about half of my time there leading the company’s developer platform and about half leading operations for the COO.

What do you do in your free time?

I am a big foodie and have eaten at all of the Michelin star restaurants in the Bay Area. The list changes regularly, so it ensures I try new places. I also love spending time outside (hiking and biking primarily) and traveling.

Do you have any hidden talents?

Most people don’t know I am a decent pianist. I took classical piano lessons for about ten years when I was in middle and high school.

What’s your favorite new gadget or tech toy?

I love my new iPhone 11 Pro. Improved battery life, better performance, and a really great camera. I am also trying an iPad again for the first time in about five or six years. I’m trying to figure out how it best fits into my tech usage.