Marshall Knauf, who has helped lead tech companies, has uncovered a leadership that is defined by repeatedly stepping beyond the limitations of the role. As one of the early leaders at a growing technology startup, Knauf joined when the platform was still small and has since spent nearly 11 years helping it evolve into a global operation. That journey, he believes, underscores his mission to walk into the hardest problem and make it workable.
His professional path did not begin in hospitality technology, nor even in a product role. After graduating in 2011 with a finance degree during the depths of the Great Recession, he found himself competing with laid-off bankers for entry-level roles. Instead of waiting for the market to recover, he moved toward technology and startups, never fully returning to finance.
Early on, he worked in independent project management through a business process outsourcing firm in San Diego, managing custom software projects for a door manufacturer and an events marketing company in Orange County. Those career points, he emphasizes, required end-to-end ownership, from scoring requirements to shipping and maintaining software with minimal support.
According to Knauf, that full-stack exposure shaped how he approached his next chapter. In 2015, he joined a young company that had just acquired a small distribution product that connected hotel property management systems to online booking platforms.
Knauf highlights that he came in as the company's second product manager, tasked with integrating the system. The challenge, he emphasizes, proved larger than expected. The product worked, but there was no way to bill customers for it. There were no pricing models, targets, or financial infrastructure, just a functioning system and the expectation that it would somehow make the business better.
Rather than escalating the gap, Knauf filled it. "I designed and built an internal billing system from scratch, bypassing expensive third-party platforms that made no economic sense for the company at the time," he explains.
In the absence of internal finance staff, he also taught himself the fundamentals of accounting and revenue recognition schedules that fed into external bookkeeping. "I had to do all of our revenue accounting," he recalls, an experience that deepened his understanding of how product decisions directly affect financial reality.
By 2019, Knauf highlights that he was tasked to lead the company's business intelligence function, informed by his work chairing a hospitality technology industry group that defined API standards for reporting exports around financial transactions, reservations, and point-of-sale transactions. "I built that new team, and I still lead it today," he explains.
That versatility became especially visible during periods of disruption. During COVID-19 and the hiring surge of 2021, Knauf temporarily led technical recruiting, helping the company with the efficient hiring processes. More recently, Knauf notes that he stepped into customer operations, overseeing professional services, implementation, and customer success.
Knauf's approach to leadership is rooted in his upbringing in Glendale, California, where he grew up around small businesses. His father ran a local business, his mother worked as a personal trainer, and he spent years competing seriously in martial arts, learning through physical discipline. The combination instilled a respect for practice, performance, and showing up consistently, values that continue to inform how he works.
He often describes himself as a "smokejumper," borrowing the term for firefighters who parachute into active blazes. The term, to him, reflects the act of taking on the biggest challenge regardless of formal qualifications. He emphasizes that true versatility requires knowing where one adds value, stepping into diverse roles to build strong infrastructures, and stepping aside once the work is stabilized.
Ultimately, Knauf views his career as the archetype of a modern startup operator, one shaped less by titles than by trust. He leads with an adaptable disposition, relentlessly focused on what the business needs most. He says, "To me, leadership is always about saying yes when it matters most, and then doing the work to make it sustainable. That is exactly what has driven me this far, and what keeps me going."
