# New CEO at Tableau: Ryan Aytay's background and challenges for the Company's future.

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2023-05-08
- **Format:** Video · 12 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Industry trends, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Tableau
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/new-ceo-at-tableau-ryan-aytay-s-background-and-challenges-for-the-company-s-future
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gNhl9Zj3EQ

I break down Tableau's announcement of Ryan Aytay as its new president and CEO, tracing his career path through Salesforce and Tableau. I then walk through the leadership churn of the past few years and the major challenges Ryan faces, ending with a personal gripe about Salesforce's CRM experience.

## Key takeaways

- Ryan Aytay moves from Tableau's chief revenue officer into the CEO role, with a Salesforce career spanning consulting, corporate development, Quip and revenue leadership.
- Tableau has cycled through three CEOs in three years (Adam Selipsky, Mark Nelson, now Ryan Aytay), with Francois and Pedro covering the gap.
- Ryan's key challenges are demonstrating return on a premium acquisition, surviving a crowded analytics market against Microsoft and Google, maintaining customer satisfaction, and driving innovation.
- Salesforce-exclusive features like Data Cloud risk drawing scrutiny from long-standing Tableau customers at renewal time.
- Tim argues small quality-of-life fixes, like fixing CRM duplicate-detection so customers aren't repeatedly cold-called, matter as much as headline features for defending the product.

## Chapters

- 0:00 A new CEO announced quietly
- 1:07 Ryan Aytay's career background
- 2:35 Three CEOs in three years
- 4:42 Challenges facing Tableau
- 8:36 The CRM experience gripe

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/new-ceo-at-tableau-ryan-aytay-s-background-and-challenges-for-the-company-s-future

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena