Nate Gonzalez Appointed VP of Platform Product and Ali Jafari Appointed VP of Corporate Development
New Hires Bring Invaluable High-Growth Public Company Experience from Nextdoor and Facebook
SAN FRANCISCO — (BUSINESS WIRE) — September 1, 2021 — Planet, a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, today announced the addition of two key leaders as the company continues to scale the business and prepare to enter the public market. In July 2021, Planet entered into a definitive merger agreement with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV (NYSE: DMYQ), a special purpose acquisition company, to become a publicly traded company.
Nate Gonzalez joins Planet as Vice President of Platform Product, where he will be responsible for directly supporting the Platform Product team in managing all of Planet’s customer- and partner-facing engagement. He brings unparalleled experience in consumer services and product management, with a demonstrated track record in product execution for end-to-end consumer experiences. As Director of Product at Facebook, Gonzalez led the Consumer Experience and Platform Product teams for the Novi Project. He also served as the Director of the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Payments product team at PayPal. Prior to PayPal, Nate was an investor and management consultant working at the intersection of fintech and emerging markets.
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to dive into a host of customer problems across verticals in order to figure out how best to leverage Planet’s unique dataset in service of customers’ needs,” said Gonzalez. “There is so much impact that we can have here across industries, and I feel fortunate and grateful to help tackle some of the most pressing global problems of our day with this team.”
Ali Jafari joins Planet as Vice President of Corporate Development, where he will be responsible for leading strategic M&A. Jafari brings 20 years of experience across finance, sales, and business development that will be indispensable as the company continues to grow and scale. Prior to his time at Nextdoor, Jafari held a number of leadership roles at Twitter including Vice President of Global Partnerships, Vice President of Europe, and Head of Sales Operations as he helped launch and scale monetization for the company.
“Planet’s vision of using space to help life on earth is now more critical than ever. The world is changing rapidly and Planet’s constellation of satellites, combined with our unique data set, will allow customers of all sizes to measure what’s most important to them. I’m really looking forward to supporting our roadmap and helping the company scale in this critical next stage, “said Jafari.
“I’m thrilled to welcome both Nate and Ali to Planet at such a critical juncture in our journey as an organization,” said Kevin Weill, Planet’s President of Business and Product. “I’ve been fortunate enough to work and learn from them both during my career and can testify that they share the rare mix of strategy, execution, and servant leadership that we value at Planet. I’m excited to see the impact that they have on our company as we enter the public markets.”
About Planet
Planet is the leading provider of global, daily satellite imagery and geospatial solutions. Planet is driven by a mission to image the world every day, and make change visible, accessible and actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest Earth observation fleet of imaging satellites, capturing and compiling data from over 3 million images per day. Planet provides mission-critical data, advanced insights, and software solutions to over 600 customers, comprised of the world’s leading agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance companies and government agencies, enabling users to simply and effectively derive unique value from satellite imagery. Planet recently entered into a definitive merger agreement with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV (NYSE: DMYQ), a special purpose acquisition company, to become a publicly-traded company. To learn more visit www.planet.com and follow us on Twitter at @planet.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210901005360/en/
Contact:
Press
Trevor Hammond
comms@planet.com
John Christiansen/Cassandra Bujarski
Sard Verbinnen & Co
Planet-SVC@sardverb.com
