About me

I’m Rob Sobers. I’m a designer/developer turned CMO from the NYC area. I care deeply about my craft.

I started building things with computers in 1994 on my Tandy 1000TL.  I learned to write programs in QBASIC so I could kill monsters and level-up faster in a text-based RPG called MajorMUD.

In 1999 I built an Amazon.com clone with a couple of buddies. It failed, but it was fun running a real online business at 19. After college, I applied to law school, got in, got cold feet, emptied my bank account and backpacked through Europe.

Upon return I got my first “real” programming job at a small software shop called STORIS. In 2009 I started reading Joel on Software, which transformed my thoughts on software development in every way possible.

Later that year I was hired by Joel to work at Fog Creek Software. I did all sorts of things at Fog Creek: wrote code, built a giant status board, made customers happy, and helped design FogBugz 8.

Fog Creek is where I met Patrick McKenzie. Patrick turned me on to marketing and entrepreneurship.

For the past 11 years, I’ve been building a data security company called Varonis. We’ve grown from $40MM to $450MM in revenue in that time. We IPO’d in 2014 ($VRNS). I became CMO in early 2022.

Other stuff I've built

I created a SaaS app called Munchkin Report: easy online child activity tracking for parents, caregivers, and daycare centers.

In 2011 I created Learn Ruby The Hard Way (now in paperback on Amazon!), a book to help newbies learn the Ruby programming language. It’s an adaptation of Zed Shaw’s original work: Learn Python The Hard Way.

Not work

Outside of work I love to draw, travel, and spend time with my wife and 3 kids. I know an ungodly amount of trivia about A Song of Ice and Fire and I’m obsessed with the genius of George R.R. Martin. I love StarCraft: Brood War and play Protoss.

If you have any questions or just want to chat, feel free to email me (rob [at] rsobers dot com) or follow me (@rsobers).

You can find my CV here.