Ryan Polk Joins Stack Overflow as Chief Product Officer

New York City – December 14, 2023 - Stack Overflow today announced the appointment of Ryan Polk as Chief Product Officer (CPO) and his addition to its senior leadership team. As a seasoned technology executive with nearly 30 years of product experience in the software sector, he will be responsible for evolving Stack Overflow’s product suite and will lead the product management, product innovation, product design, and product marketing teams.

“We are at an inflection point in the technology industry with the rise of Generative AI. Trust in data, trust in technology products and trust in community knowledge is more crucial than ever,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow. “Ryan’s depth of experience as a product leader and track record of driving innovation and growth will be an incredible asset as we continue to serve our community of millions of developers and technologists building the software and products of tomorrow by realizing our vision of bringing humans and AI together in this new technology era.”

Most recently, Polk was an Operating Partner at Insight Partners, where he worked with leadership teams across their 750 company portfolio to help build R&D organizations and refine product strategy. Prior to Insight Partners, he led an organization of 550 at Carbon Black as Chief Product & Technology Officer, and also held executive roles at CA Technologies and Rally Software.

“Stack Overflow is an institution in the world of technology, with nearly every developer in the world turning to its wealth of knowledge to learn and work more effectively on a daily basis. With the rush of many companies to leverage Generative AI, Stack Overflow’s foundation of trusted and accurate data are essential for real-time, accurate and sourced responses as developers look for a sense of what is real and what is hype,” says Polk. “The next phase of the LLM wars is coming with multiple AI/ML vendors building a variety of models across multiple cloud platforms and companies need to know their partners have a data strategy in place to not only help them be successful - but also be socially responsible. I’m excited to have the opportunity to build on the foundation of trust in place at Stack Overflow and continue to grow this platform further to ensure we are bringing the best in class products to our customers and community members.”

The appointment of a new Chief Product Officer comes after the recent announcement of OverflowAI, Stack Overflow’s AI/ML powered solutions across both its public platform and market-leading SaaS product, Stack Overflow for Teams, the milestone fifteen year anniversary of Stack Overflow, and the introduction of Connectivity, a new feature for Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise.

Polk will partner closely with Chief Technology Officer Jody Bailey, along with the full senior leadership team, to drive operational efficiency and business strategy as the company takes on the next phase of growth and expansion.

To learn more about Stack Overflow, visit https://stackoverflow.co.

About Stack Overflow

Across both its public and private platforms, Stack Overflow is empowering developer communities to discover the information, answers, and learning opportunities they need – when they need them. Millions of the world's developers and technologists visit Stack Overflow to ask questions, learn, and share technical knowledge, making it one of the most popular websites in the world. Stack Overflow’s market-leading knowledge sharing and collaboration platform, Stack Overflow for Teams, helps more than 15,000 organizations distribute knowledge, increase efficiency, and innovate faster. Founded in 2008, Stack Exchange, Inc., the owner of Stack Overflow, is headquartered in New York, NY. Stack Overflow is a registered trademark of Stack Exchange, Inc.