One of the things I love about travelling for work is the unexpected moments that turn into genuinely great conversations.

Recently, I found myself speaking with Ed Lenta, who leads the APJ business for Databricks, a $4B cloud platform powering data analytics and AI. What started as a friendly conversation about holidays in Wānaka quickly shifted into a fascinating discussion about scaling, leadership, and how large tech companies grow with real intent.

Ed’s career, spanning leadership roles at AWS in Seattle and VMware across Asia, has given him a rare vantage point on how tech companies grow and scale across vastly different markets.

We discussed operating models and scaling strategies. Not the theoretical kind, but the practical realities of expanding into new regions, how you build teams, what metrics you manage, how you practically go about it and how you run businesses that can keep evolving.

Minimum Viable Teams, Not Maximum Headcount

One of the ideas that really stood out was the notion of the “minimum viable team.”

Rather than starting market expansion by hiring a full go-to-market organisation incl. sales, marketing, support, Ed’s approach is to begin with a very small, multi-skilled unit. The goal isn’t to dominate fast, but to learn fast. It’s about validating the micro model before scaling it out.

That reframes what it means to “go to market.” Instead of leading with size or growth aspiration in a region, you lead with learning. Testing operating model on a very small scale, capturing what works, and then growing deliberately.

Operating Models that Evolve

Ed also talked about how he divides the Asia-Pacific region and structures his operating rhythm. He leads through five regional leaders, each responsible for their market but deeply connected through shared cadence and data.

Every Monday, he runs country stand-ups — focused conversations that keep visibility high and learning loops tight. It’s a great mechanism for alignment.

We discussed metrics, and Ed made an interesting point. He doesn’t like the term KPIs.

To him, they’re just metrics: signals that help leaders understand what’s happening across the business. Revenue and consumption are easy to measure, but they only tell part of the story. They are the outcome. The real insight on team’s performance comes from a range of metrics, and the systems that surface them reliably. With good investment in data, you can track 15 metrics consistently and reliably, to give you a good steer on how the business unit is performing.

He described how much investment Databricks has made in analytics and reporting, enabling a level of visibility that allows his teams to spot patterns early and evolve their operating models continuously. That constant adaptation is what keeps them scaling with real intent and focus on what matters.

When Demand Is Unlimited, Leadership Shifts

In the data and AI space, Ed pointed out, demand is almost unlimited. Everyone wants more data capability, more AI integration, more analytics-driven value.

But that kind of market brings its own leadership challenge. When demand is strong, the challenge isn’t growth rate, it’s managing the supply side, dependencies and profitability. Leaders have to focus on ensuring the systems, people, and delivery models can keep up consistently, profitably, and reliably.

It’s a challenge many leaders might envy, but it’s still a challenge. The work shifts from selling harder to building systems that sustain momentum.

Scaling Through Purpose, Not Just Revenue

Something that resonated with me most from that dinner was Ed’s perspective that leaders shouldn’t focus solely on revenue.

A company that only chases revenue risks building fragility into its foundation. Sustainable growth comes from measuring and nurturing the things that drive enduring value. Customer engagement, product adoption, consistent delivery etc. Those are the metrics that really matter, and should be visible to the country/region leader.

At one point, Ed mentioned a poem about an eagle , a symbol of something vast, powerful, and complex. It captured how large organisations can become equally intricate. Capable of incredible reach, but also weighed down by their own complexity.

We talked about how to maintain that balance, how to stay agile within scale.

In Summary

That’s what I took away from that conversation with Ed, that scaling isn’t a design you set once and walk away from. It’s a living system, shaped by people, insight, and the ability to keep learning.

In a world that celebrates fast growth, there’s something powerful about scaling smart. One minimum viable team, one learning loop, one customer conversation at a time.