The CEO of Vimeo is a ‘big Pennsylvania guy’ who’s thrilled to be in the Philly region

The new CEO of Vimeo is a big Pennsylvania guy.

Despite working for global tech companies like AWS and Google, Philip Moyer’s heart — and personal history — belongs to the Commonwealth. He grew up in Reading, earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh and currently lives in Berwyn.

Moyer’s first tech job was writing software for submarines in Camden, then he did a brief stint at a special education startup before joining Microsoft as one the company’s first employees in the Philadelphia region in 1991. Starting as a systems engineer, he worked his way up into sales and management over 13 years. He bounced around from small companies, VC and Big Tech, before landing at Vimeo this spring.

Throughout all of these roles, Moyer maintained his presence in the Philly region and continues to do so. Even though he hasn’t been a developer for many years, he likes to stay connected to the Philly tech community by attending meetups and hackathons — and the community welcomes him back every time, he said. He also makes an effort to meet with local startups as a way of paying his knowledge forward.

In this edition of Technical.ly’s How I Got Here series, Moyer discusses how he moved through his career and why he keeps coming back to Pennsylvania.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

What is unique about working in the Philadelphia region?

Lots of tech is made all over the world, but when you want to sell some technology, you have to come to Philadelphia because we have some of the hardest and toughest customers in the world.

As a young systems engineer, going out and getting exposure and trying to sell a brand new technology to those customers was one of the most educational moments in my career.

The beauty of the customers here in the Philadelphia area is that they’ll give you the information. They’ll give you the meat, they’ll let you take the meeting, they will spend the time with you to tell you what’s right and wrong about your product. And that’s a gift.

Philadelphia is fantastic about that, it’s where people will take your meeting, they’ll tell you what’s good and bad about you. If you listen close enough, you get better.

I love the people. I love the culture. I love the diversity of it, and I also love that we invent things, but we do the hard work every single day and we respect each other.

We’re honest with each other. So, I just like the culture and the innovativeness.

What interests you about technology?

For me, technology and computing has been about giving every human being access to all the information in the world, which is incredibly empowering. It completely levels the playing field for everyone.

To do that, we have to build networks that span the world. We have to build satellite networks that can get to remote areas. We have to make it in the language that the individual can read or write in. If somebody’s a visual learner, we have to be able to use artificial intelligence to create a picture as opposed to words or video.

For me, technology is actually foundationally about moving everyone in the world forward in their ability to achieve what they want to achieve.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your career?

I had to do a turnaround of [data company] Edgar Online during the financial crisis, that was probably the hardest role I’ve ever had to do in my career.

When I first started, it was in 2007, right at the very, very start of the financial crisis, and Edgar was in the financial data market. I watched as much as 50% of our customers literally go out of business.

The company had never been profitable. It was a publicly traded company. We were trying to launch new products, while we were trying to also help the financial industry recover was probably one of the hardest things for me from a leadership perspective.

What did you learn from that experience?

Be decisive as a leader. Be really clear about a vision, about where the company can go and what we’re trying to build.

I would also say to not be hard on yourself as a leader, because you can make mistakes. As you’re growing in your career and growing in your leadership, be focused on how you’re going to make things better.

What advice do you have for someone who is just starting their career?

As a CEO, and even as a board member, you are valuable if you understand what everybody in the organization is doing. That’s how you make good decisions. That’s how you are empathetic when you make decisions. That’s how you’re informed when you make decisions.

People respect you because you understand firsthand what they’re going through.

How I ended up taking steps in my career, is by doing an outside project that benefited somebody other than myself. I would really encourage you to do that. It makes you rounded as a leader.

If you aspire to be a CEO of a company or a startup founder, make sure that you understand all the roles that you have to do as that startup founder.

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.