Founding Engineer, Kaz Hishida, tells the story of why he joined Serval.
In April of 2024, I was the second engineer at another startup in the same space when I heard that Jake and Alex were starting Serval. My reaction? “Oh ****”. I had worked with them indirectly at Verkada and knew that if they were building something together, it was something to pay attention to.
A couple of weeks later, Alex reached out. I was curious but initially said no; I felt a responsibility to my team and wanted to see things through. It was the first company where I truly felt my work had a direct impact on the outcome. But Alex and I agreed to stay in touch.
Six months later, when they pitched me again, I noticed their pitch hadn’t changed. They had such a clear vision from the start, and their understanding of the market, despite having never built in the ITSM space before, was spot-on. They saw the gap clearly and knew exactly how they wanted to attack it.
It was clear who the winner in this space was going to be. I had to join Serval.
Why Serval Works: The People
It’s been a little over a year since I joined, and I have had the privilege of being a part of a rocket ship that has rapidly evolved from the team of three that comfortably fit into a 200 sqft WeWork to a Sequoia-backed unicorn with so much demand that our rapidly growing team of AE’s have still not had to pick up the phone once.
What’s driven that growth is the people. I have no doubt that we have many future founders in the making. I feel fortunate to work with such smart, high-agency, deeply customer-obsessed coworkers who take real ownership of their work.
What Ownership Looks Like
That ownership defines what it means to be an engineer at Serval - we run lean. I like to say that every engineer is a “full-stack employee”. We talk to customers, work with design, plan launches, and support adoption. There is no handoff culture, and there is no one there to pick up your slack - for better or worse. You own what you build, end to end.
As an example of ownership: when I joined Serval, one of our first design partners was using an incumbent product for privileged access management (a product that enables just-in-time access to systems), and to be frank, that tool sucked. I say this as someone who used to use the tool myself. It was slow, unintuitive, and constantly broke my flow. I saw an opportunity to build a better alternative that integrated into our ticketing system, and I got to work. A month later, we showed them a demo, and shortly after that, they purchased a full implementation of Serval, a total rip and replace of the legacy product with our integrated solution playing a pivotal role in that decision. Winning that deal was great, but getting to replace a product I personally disliked with something that’s actually good? No greater feeling.
Engineers 🤝 Customers
What makes moments like that even better is how close we are to customers. Engineers join customer calls, live in shared Slack channels, read feedback, handle requests, and iterate constantly. You don’t just ship code and move on; you also see how it changes how people work.
There’s still a lot more product to build and many more people to hire. We are still a lean and efficient team, building a business with massive ambition. You learn more here than anywhere else because you do more and can see the immediate impact of what you’ve built. Working at Serval is certainly not easy, and it’s not for everyone, but the growth and opportunity here are unparalleled.
I invite anyone who also gets excited about this type of work to join us!
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