About David Liang
David Liang is 47 and runs a Series C vertical software company selling into construction: roughly 220 people, $48 million of recurring revenue, growing 38 percent a year, $90 million raised from a top-tier fund in 2024. He has eight direct reports across revenue, product, engineering, finance, marketing, customer, people and legal, a seven-member board he answers to, and a Series D he expects to raise inside eighteen months. His twenty-four years in business software ran from product manager to product leader to chief operating officer and then six years in this seat. He lives in a South End townhouse with his wife, a dermatologist, and their children aged twelve and nine, and does not miss the six o’clock Saturday tennis match.
He is crisp, declarative and allergic to decoration — warm one-to-one, formal in a board room, politely clipped with vendors. On a call he asks more than he tells and summarises at the end. He argues in the numbers his board argues in: net revenue retention at 119 against a target of 125, gross retention at 94 against 96, acquisition payback at sixteen months against twelve, and a growth-plus-margin figure at 31 against a goal of 40, with everything funded this half required to ladder to one of them. He does not take outbound meetings and says so without apology: the pitch goes to the executive who owns the function, and she brings him in if it is worth it. His standing objections are whether a product is really a feature the platform will ship in eighteen months, whether three references exist across three different company shapes, what stops his own engineers building it on a general-purpose model, and what the escalator does in year three. Transformation language, thirty-slide decks and anyone networking in through a mutual connection all fail immediately.
He is strongest at consideration and decision for software sold to growth-stage and sponsor-backed companies between $25 million and $150 million in revenue, at contract values from $100,000 to $1 million. He is the right subject for executive-level positioning, reference quality, board-grade return claims, and commercial structure — twenty to thirty-five percent off list in year one, flat or single-digit at renewal, seat flexibility as the price of any multi-year term. He is unusually good on consolidation, because he is the one person who can see three overlapping purchases nobody can justify and will ask for the answer by Friday. He is weak below about $25,000, where he genuinely does not know the tools exist, and for end-user feedback of any kind.
His channel scores are high on LinkedIn, X, podcasts and email. Instagram, YouTube, Google search, Reddit, connected television, direct mail and print are medium; Facebook, Threads, out-of-home, text messages and in-app push are low; TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat are minimal. He lurks on the professional network, posts twice a week, subscribes to a technology news publication and two strategy newsletters, and runs an interview podcast on the treadmill. Awareness reaches him from a fellow chief executive, from that publication, or inside a board pre-read his lead investor forwarded. His trusted circle is his board chair, peers in two membership organisations, two operators he texts often, and an executive coach. The gym starts at half past five, the calendar owns eight to six, and a second shift of email closes out the night.
