Where Sierra found the people behind a $15B company
Category
Talent Maps
Posted on
Nov 13, 2026
Sierra builds AI agents that handle customer service for large companies. It works with more than 40% of the Fortune 50, and in May 2026 it raised $950M at a $15B valuation, led by GV and Tiger Global.
The company is led by two founders with long careers at the biggest names in tech, and the leaders they've brought in since come from the same kind of places. Here's where seven of them worked before Sierra.
Clay Bavor, Co-Founder. Bavor spent 18 years at Google. He oversaw product and design for Google Workspace, then launched and ran Google's augmented and virtual reality work, including Project Starline and Google Lens. His last role there was leading Google Labs.
Suveer Kothari, Head of Europe. Kothari was at Google for 17 years, building new businesses and products. He worked on launches including YouTube, video ads, Chromecast and Android TV. At Sierra, he leads the company's work in Europe.
Salesforce
Bret Taylor, Co-Founder. Taylor was Co-CEO of Salesforce before starting Sierra. Earlier, he founded Quip, was CTO of Facebook and co-created Google Maps. He is also chair of OpenAI's board.
Eric Eyken-Sluyters, President of Field Operations. Eyken-Sluyters was a Salesforce sales executive who helped oversee Agentforce, its flagship AI product. He joined Sierra in April 2026 to lead global sales, sales engineering and partnerships.
Rachel Whetstone, communications. Whetstone was Netflix's chief communications officer from 2018. Before that she ran communications for WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger at Facebook, and oversaw policy and communications at Uber and Google. She joined Sierra in March 2025 to lead communications.
OpenAI
Karthik Narasimhan, Head of Research. Narasimhan co-authored the first GPT paper at OpenAI. He's an associate professor of computer science at Princeton, and co-authored the research behind ReAct, Tree of Thoughts and SWE-agent.
What the map shows
Sierra sells AI agents to brands like ADT, Chime, Cigna and Nordstrom, and its leaders spent years inside companies that served customers at huge scale. Bavor and Kothari built consumer products at Google. Whetstone handled communications for Netflix, Facebook and Uber. Eyken-Sluyters sold AI to large enterprises at Salesforce, the same buyers Sierra goes after today.
The team also covers every side of the business. There's research from OpenAI, finance from Pinterest, sales from Salesforce and communications from Netflix. Several of them joined in 2025 and 2026, after Sierra had already launched.
Hires like these shape a company for years, and they're hard to find. Contrario's network of expert recruiters helps high-growth startups find the people who can build each part of the business, from founding engineers to senior leaders.
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