Justin Dignelli joins Modal as VP of Sales

Why I Joined Modal

I first met Erik about three years ago over coffee, trading stories about the uphill battle of finding product-market fit. Six months later, I invested in Modal’s Series A. And today, I’m thrilled to share that I’m officially joining Modal as VP of Sales.

In 2024, I shifted Pace from a venture-backed software company into a GTM consulting practice, working with some of the most interesting late-stage infrastructure companies. By the summer, Erik and I reconnected. Modal was accelerating and he asked me to advise on the next stage of growth.

Almost immediately, I knew there was something unique - yet familiar - about Modal.

Ambiguity is where opportunity exists

I’ve always been drawn to the frontier - the messy, ambiguous edge where big companies are born. Spending time with Modal made me realize this is exactly where I wanted to be.

The AI and compute wave is a once-in-a-generation shift. Every company is building AI applications, and legacy infrastructure simply isn’t built for the job. Modal has rethought compute from the ground up, and the result is a platform that developers not only use - but love.

Having spent six years at MongoDB, I know how critical that is. Win the developer, and you win the market.

The people behind the product

Erik and Akshat are two of the sharpest, most creative, and most humble leaders I’ve met (fun fact: both are IOI gold medalists). More importantly, they’ve built a culture of SWANs - Smart, Works hard, Ambitious, Nice - that makes Modal an incredible place to build.

The team has embraced me fully - passionate, humble, and competitive in the best way. It’s exactly the startup culture I always hoped to build myself, and now I get to help scale it.

Unique, yet familiar

The more time I spent with the team, the more Modal reminded me of MongoDB in 2015 - except further along. Modal is already generating high eight figures in revenue across thousands of happy customers, with use cases that sometimes feel like science fiction - from real-time AI copilots to massive simulation workloads.

Every day, something incredible happens: new customers engage, new breakthroughs emerge, and Modal becomes more central to how the next generation of applications are built.

Building the Machine

At MongoDB, I helped scale GTM from $20M in revenue to over $1B as the company went public. I co-authored the playbook for how infrastructure companies go to market and built the systems that accelerated growth and market share.

At Modal, I plan to do the same thing - only faster. My goal is to build “the machine”: a self-reinforcing system that compounds on itself and helps Modal become the next generational infrastructure company.

This isn’t just a job for me - it feels like a calling. I wake up every day obsessed with our customers’ hardest problems and the opportunity to build something generational. And for our customers, that means you’ll have a champion on your side — an even stronger GTM organization dedicated to helping you succeed.

The next GTM mafia

Modal is accelerating and our team is growing. I’m not here just to hire “great people.” I want to hire real thinkers, problem solvers, and builders - people who ooze ambition, integrity, and creativity. People who want to wrestle with hard problems, win, and shape the next great GTM organization in infrastructure.

I’ve already been lucky to build an early foundation of a strong GTM team here, folks from Databricks, Confluent, Vercel and CockroachDB, and I’m excited to grow it into something truly special.

If that’s you, join us. We’re hiring across sales, technical pre-sales partnerships, and marketing - reach out to me directly or apply here.

At MongoDB, I got to be part of building one generational company. At Modal, I’m determined to help build the next.