Meet the Team That Gets Sh*t Done.
We’ve Been in Your Shoes
With over five decades of founding, scaling, and operating successful startups, our investment team has traveled the road you’re on.
TOM LAZAY
Prior to co-founding Companyon Ventures, Tom was a technology entrepreneur for most of his career who built and sold two technology startups in Boston—VoiceSignal (sold to Nasdaq: NUAN) and Shaser BioScience (sold to NYSE: SBP)—for a combined $360M+. After Shaser BioScience was acquired, he became more involved in the Boston startup ecosystem: He backed two seed funds and became a venture partner at Converge Venture Partners and a limited partner at Project 11 Ventures. He has a degree in Computer Science from Trinity College. Tom volunteers as a judge and mentor at Mass Challenge and serves on the advisory board of the Andover Coalition for Education in Andover, MA, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.
David McFarlane
David has led multiple technology companies through scaled execution, overseeing funding and growth from early-stage to successful multi-billion dollar IPOs, M&A exits, and private equity partial exits. David has built multiple go-to-market models from open source to enterprise sales typically from $5-100 Million in revenue, across 40 countries. He's experienced in raising capital from seed to private equity but has a special place in his heart for capital-efficient models.
David enjoys working with early-stage businesses and serves on the boards of and lectures at both MIT Enterprise Forum and UMass Boston Venture Development Center.
FIRAS RAOUF
Firas has been involved in early-stage software for the past twenty years, primarily focused on B2B and SaaS. He co-founded eEye Digital Security, where Firas was COO in charge of sales, marketing, and operations. eEye scaled quickly in first five years to nearly $18M in revenue.
In 2006, after leaving Insight Venture Partners, Firas was a founding partner at OpenView Venture Partners based in Boston. Openview is an expansion stage fund focused on B2B SaaS with a unique model of delivering exceptional value-add work to its portfolio through a dedicated consulting team.
When not working, you’re likely to find Firas on the Charles River at sunrise with a motley crew of Masters competitive rowers. And when the river is frozen, you will likely find him on the slopes at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. Firas lives in Newton, MA with Jameila, his beautiful wife (a Pediatrician, so the smarter one), daughter Nayla (the better rower) and son Nouri (the more technical one).
RONNY CHATTERJEE
Ronny leads Capital Markets at Companyon Ventures. He works closely with Companyon’s portfolio to create a long-term capital strategy and quarterbacks the portfolio’s follow-on equity financings, venture debt solutions, and liquidity events. Ronny also oversees deal sourcing for Companyon through its deal feeder network and the firm’s fundraising and investor relations function.
Prior to Companyon, Ronny was on the Capital Markets team at OpenView Venture Partners. Before OpenView, Ronny was a founding member of Cambridge Associates’ (CA) direct investment & co-investment practice focusing on venture capital and private equity transactions. During his time, he executed almost 50 transactions and invested $1.2B on behalf of CA’s clients. Ronny also served as a member of CA’s private investment valuation committee. He began his career on the investment team at Main Street Resources (MSR), a growth equity firm providing capital to family-owned businesses, where he was responsible for sourcing and executing investment opportunities.
In his free time, you can find Ronny competing on the tennis courts, collecting and traveling in search of great wine, or discovering new restaurants in Boston.
PARTHIB SRIVATHSAN
Parthib helps Companyon’s portfolio companies develop, build and execute a data-driven growth strategy. He structures and augments the company’s intelligence around financial, customer, sales, and marketing data to deliver GTM, pricing, and market insights. His operational and forecast models empower CEOs to understand the top-line and bottom-line impact of strategic and tactical decisions and his performance dashboards provide the leadership team with guardrails to an outsized Series A.
Parthib supports fund operations by leading pre and post-deal diligence workflows on the market, competition, and financial projections where he synthesizes due diligence findings into investment recommendations. Parthib leads the Platform Team’s practice-building activities such as the development of Companyon methodologies, benchmarks, market analysis, tools & templates that portfolio companies can leverage.
He holds a Master of Business Administration from Babson College and lives in Irvine, CA, with his wife and son.
MEG HENRY
Meg has spent the last 10 years in the HR and Recruiting space supporting a wide range of teams and roles. She started in the HR department at a Financial Services company and spent time as an agency recruiter at Robert Half before moving into technology. Since then she’s hired globally for roles in every department at Brightcove, a public video technology company, ASICS Digital, a division of ASICS (the sneaker company), and Mainstay, an education technology startup. She’s passionate about helping companies find the best people to help them grow while providing great candidate experiences along the way. When she's not working, you can find Meg either trying out new restaurants in Boston with her husband James (he’s also in recruiting so dinner conversations are riveting) or visiting her family in New York.
ANDREW BERG
Andrew joins Companyon having just graduated from Princeton University with degrees in Neuroscience and Entrepreneurship, and having served as the captain of the Men’s Varsity Rowing team. He works on the Investment Team, helping with sourcing and diligence for B2B SaaS opportunities and projects for portfolio companies.
ALISHA FULLER
Within Companyon, Alisha supports the day-to day operations of the team including helping to organize diligence efforts and overseeing events. She has extensive experience in operations and event management with a focus on process design, logistics and timeline coordination. Previously, she was a Senior Events Associate with Without A Hitch, a top-rated day-of wedding coordination company, and a freelance home organizer.
Alisha graduated from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY and pursued additional studies at the London College of Fashion in London, England.
Get More Than Just a Cup of Coffee with Our Venture Partners
Our Venture Partners are investors in our fund who have founded and scaled their companies, built winning teams, experienced big outcomes, and learned painful lessons. They have proven strategies and a rich network of connections—and they’re ready to share it all with you.
Rod Adkins
Rod is Chairman of Avnet, Inc., a position he has held since 2018. Avnet is a Fortune 500 company and one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic components and embedded solutions. Formerly, Rod was Senior Vice President of IBM, having served in that position from 2007 until 2014. In his more than 33-year career with IBM, Rod held a number of operational and executive management roles spanning across strategy, technology, systems and supply chain. Rod was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2005, which is one of the highest national recognitions for the engineering profession. He serves on the board of directors for United Parcel Service (UPS), PayPal, Grainger, and Avnet. He previously served on the boards of PPL Corporation, Pitney Bowes and PeopleClick Inc. Rod holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree with an emphasis in physics from Rollins College.
Bala Balabaskaran
"Bala is a founder, investor and product leader. He is currently the Co-founder and CTO of Fullcast, and is responsible for the product and engineering teams. Fullcast is a Revenue Operations SaaS platform helping companies scale their go-to-market operations.
With over 25 years of experience in software, specifically through various iterations of the Software as a Service business model. Bala's lead operations, product and engineering teams in companies of various sizes, stages and industry. Prior to founding Fullcast, Bala was the VP of GTM Planning and Operations at Salesforce.com with overall responsibility for Revenue Operations. Bala's lead engineering and operations teams at Microsoft, HP, CIBC and startups. He's passionate about working with entrepreneurs and engineering leaders in building SaaS products at scale.
Bala's also an expert in Revenue Operations and regularly speaks on the topic, having been an operator at Salesforce and building a Revenue Operations SaaS platform at Fullcast"
Bill Barton
Bill has over 40 years of experience building both products and the organizations which create them. After a decade as a hands-on developer of realtime and signal processing systems, Bill transitioned to leading multidisciplinary teams working at the cutting edge of new technologies including videoconferencing, embedded speech recognition, terabit routers, mobile advertising, and cloud-based virtual assistants. As part of the Amazon team which created Alexa, Bill led the spoken language understanding effort before transitioning to focus on knowledge graphs and natural-language question answering. Since 2022, Bill has been leading product development for Rokt, which builds and operates a network of ecommerce partners and brands unlocking relevance for consumers in the transaction moment.
Jay Batson
Jay has over 20 years of executive management and CEO experience with technology companies from founding to public offering, most recently as co-founder & CEO of Acquia (SaaS digital experience platform supporting enterprises with complex open-source Drupal deployments). Since retiring from Acquia in 2012, Jay has been an executive advisor, CEO coach, angel investor, and advisory/board member for dozens of early-stage companies & executives. As an advisor he helps companies improve using strategic prioritization, business risk reduction, setting and executing to objectives using frameworks and techniques known to work. As a CEO coach he wears a different hat - helping CEOs improve using self-inquiry and internal commitments to personal growth.
Chris Brookins
Chris has lead engineering and define product direction for many successful B2B SaaS companies. He is currently VP Engineering at Appcues, which is revolutionizing the way software businesses improve their product’s adoption and engagement without writing any code. Chris is passionate about scaling B2B SaaS for SMB and Enterprise customers, building values-aligned, remote-first teams, and has scaled high-performance R&D orgs from 1 to 140 people. Before leading engineering and product at Appcues, he was CPO & VPE at Help Scout (SMB customer-service SaaS), SVP Engineering at Acquia (SaaS digital transformation platform using open-source), and SVP at Vertical Communications (VoIP PBX and Call Center software), and VP Engineering at Stylus Innovation (developer tools for telephony). He earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Lehigh University. He is married to his wife Lisa (a consumer marketing strategist and eCommerce entrepreneur), and is the father to two teenage boys.
Tom Caputo
Tom Caputo brings 25 years of experience in product management and technology leadership to his work with Companyon. His most recent role was as Chief Product Officer at CarGurus from 2017 to 2023, a period that included rapid growth and a successful IPO. Tom has served in a variety of Product and Technology leadership roles at large companies such as Microsoft and Capital One as well as high-growth start-ups such as [x+1] and Fiksu.
Tom specializes in product innovation and product/engineering scaling, specifically in helping founder-led product teams evolve into high-performing, multi-product organizations. His areas of expertise include product and pricing strategy, UX Design, marketing analytics, SEO/SEM optimization, and international product expansion. He has worked globally in industries ranging from consumer internet to SaaS B2B marketplace and marketing technology. Tom has a proven track record of cultivating strong partnerships with sales and go-to-market teams, ensuring seamless collaboration for company-wide success.
Tom holds B.A.s in Computer Science and Biophysical Chemistry from Dartmouth College and a M.A. in Electrical Engineering as well as a M.B.A. from Stanford University."
Agata Celmorowski
Agata has spent nearly two decades doing, teaching, and/or leading marketing at high-growth companies. She started Velocity by Design to share what she's learned along the way, with the goal of helping founders and go-to-market leaders at SaaS startups figure out how to accelerate their growth in a deliberate, impactful, and meaningful way.
Agata's experience includes pre-revenue as well as valuations well north of $1B, but she's spent most of her time with SaaS startups navigating the path from $1M to $100M. She's been part of two IPOs (TTGT and CARB); two nine-figure investments in profitable companies (Campaign Monitor and Klaviyo); and several 10x growth curves.
Agata has done both B2B and B2C marketing at agencies, media outlets, or software companies. She's been responsible for global and regional go-to-market and have built and managed co-located and distributed teams. And though most of her career has been based in the U.S., she did spend a few years living overseas in Australia. Her career started in product management, morphed into product marketing, and continued to evolve from there until she began leading marketing for SaaS startups in 2013.
Agata's sweet spot is helping SaaS businesses who are selling to founders, marketers, designers, or engineers at entrepreneurial businesses.
Erik Charles
Erik W. Charles is an accomplished professional with three decades of experience in successful marketing and sales operations. His expertise ranges from multinational enterprise firms to small startups, allowing him to craft recommendations tailored to varying market environments, available employee talent pool, and corporate goals. Erik serves as a subject matter expert on the interlocking fields of revenue intelligence, revenue performance, and revenue optimization. He helps companies drive expansion and growth by better aligning messaging, tactics, focus, and motivational incentives with achievable strategic and tactical goals.
He has been integral at multiple start-ups with successful exits, as well as at multinational firms including Canon, Sun Microsystems, Xactly, and Apple. Erik has an extensive consulting and research background focusing on key measures for Sales and Marketing roles, identification of focal points for improvement in customer acquisition and retention, as well as the design and communication of improved incentive plans with strong line-of-sight metrics. He is an early-stage investor and serves as an advisor for venture funds and their portfolio companies.
Most recently, he served as the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Evangelist for Xactly. Prior to that, he was the VP, Business Operations for Xactly’s Japan expansion, where he built and trained a complete local go-to-market organization, established a localized marketing operation, and onboarded implementation and customer success team members. He worked closely with key partners such as Japan Cloud, Salesforce, Oracle, and Microsoft to drive Xactly's growth in this market. He was regularly featured in the local press on subjects such as market expansion, incentive pay, and sales management.
Erik Charles is a frequent speaker at events such as Dreamforce, Argyle CFO forums, World at Work, AAISP, Sales 3.0, Op Stars, and the Sales Management Association. He holds regular webinars about sales force management, motivation, and optimization. He is a recurring panelist at the Thought Leadership on the Sales Profession Conference, providing market feedback on how leading academic research can be applied to current challenges companies face.
He has been an invited guest lecturer at universities around the globe, including the University of California, Santa Cruz, Brandman University, ICFAI Business School, India, University of Houston, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of California, Irvine.
Erik has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and an MBA from the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. At Merage he serves as a mentor for students, a guest lecturer, and is a charter member of the Dean's Leadership Circle. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking and camping with his wife and two adult sons, stumbling upon small music venues, and collecting and consuming different wines and whisk(e)ys.
Steve Costello
Steve Costello is a GTM leader with deep experience working with technical founders to scale commercial teams. Steve recently joined series-A stage EverestLabs.AI where he is focused on transitioning the company from founder-led sales to predictable and scalable go-to-market. EverestLabs.AI is leveraging AI, data and robotics to tackle the inefficiencies in recycling and enable the circular economy.
Steve has experience with technology companies from late seed to public offering. Recently, at nTopology, Steve led the commercialization of a generative design SaaS product from series A to series D. Across his career he has developed deep expertise on channel and partnership strategy with a global focus. Though primarily an operator, Steve is also a board advisor and coach focusing on GTM strategy with seed stage founders.
Tim Curran
Tim is CEO of RapidWorks and the former CEO of Building Engine. Prior to Building Engines, Tim served as CEO of Corvium, Eleven Technologies, and Vela System, which pioneered field automation on iPads for construction projects, which is now Autodesk BIM360. Previously, Tim was Chief Revenue Office of I-many, which IPO'd in 2000, after starting his career at Accenture, developing and implementing software applications across a range of industries and business processes. Tim also serves as a board director, advisor, and investor in over a dozen software start-ups at the seed and A-round stage, with a particular focus on vertical market SaaS companies.
Tim currently serves on the VC/PE-backed boards of Smartvid.io and Repsly. Tim graduated with a BS in Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim and his wife recently became empty-nesters and moved to the Seaport district of downtown Boston where they enjoy exploring all the restaurants, art galleries, and museums that the city has to offer. They are also avid fans and season ticket holders of the Patriots and Bruins!
MATT DANIELS
Matt brings 22 years of commercial real estate experience to JLL’s Suburban Boston Leasing team with experience representing tenants and landlords in the Greater Boston Market. As Brokerage Lead and Executive Managing Director, Matt and his team continue to be market leaders in structuring the region’s most complex and creative transactions on behalf of their clients.
Matt is a licensed Massachusetts real estate broker, President of the Commercial Brokers Association, Greater Boston Trustees of the Reservation. He is also a Board Member, Development Committee of Team Impact, Hamilton Little League Board, and President of the Steering Committee of Appleton Farms.
Matt has a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.
MISTY FROST
Misty’s passion is for building company value through building consumer value. As CEO of Carrus, Misty drove the vision and strategy behind building learning experiences that allow individuals to enter and then grow their careers in healthcare.
Misty has extensive global experience at a senior executive level. Before coming to Carrus, she held a position at Instructure as SVP of global marketing. During her time at Instructure, she led the global growth strategy and delivered marketing programs to fuel that growth, driving value from a private start-up to a publicly-traded business valued at over $1 billion. Over her 25-year career, she has also served as the VP of Delivery Services for Datamark and has worked in a variety of client advocacy roles for global brands including Intel, Nortel Networks, Hyatt Hotels, and Disney.
Misty received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah. In addition to holding a position as Carrus’ CEO, she currently serves on the board of directors for Marketware, a cloud-based, healthcare tracking platform, an advisory role for the Empircal Educator Project, a group dedicated to improving learning outcomes and Logikcull, a cloud based eDiscovery platform. She is also an active member in Women’s Tech Council and Utah Wonder Women, a group dedicated to developing women’s executive leadership.
Ken Garff
Ken is a creative and technology leader, speaker and entrepreneur. He enjoys Innovating workflows and new digital tools, software and platforms anywhere there is an intersection of art and science. Ken has extensive experience in creating media content and digital tools and campaigns for global brands. He has managed complex software design and build projects. He has also founded several successful businesses starting with only an idea.
Jackie Golden
Jackie is currently the Chief Customer Officer at Apty. She established her company, LandNExpand, in 2014, as a Customer Lifecycle Management consulting firm. She has advised dozens of startup and high growth software companies and stepped into the CCO role to help them execute on their strategic plans for growth. She helps software companies merge vision, strategy, and flawless execution to optimize results. She provides the vision, strategy, leadership and excellence in execution to deliver strong and sustained revenue, expansion and customer retention results for high growth, mid-size and large global organizations for companies like Hyperion, PowerCerv, Cognos, Ascential, IBM, Workfront, Socrata, and CoreView. She’s known as a customer experience expert and trusted advisor to senior leadership, boards and investors; respected for insightful approach to building a profitable customer lifecycle approach. She is a published author of Green to Golden and speaker on Customer Experience best practices. Jackie is also a Master Dog Trainer who volunteers in training service dogs for Sheri’s Pack Wounded Warrior Project. Jackie lives in San Diego with her husband of 35 years, her two grown children and grandchild. She holds an MBA from San Diego State University and BS in International Business from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Blair Heavey
Blair Heavey is the founder of Heavey Advisors, a strategic advisory firm. He enjoys working with CEOs, leadership teams, and Boards to improve team alignment, go-to-market strategies and product-market fit.
Blair has worked with 25+ companies across multiple industries as either a leader or advisor. While at these companies, his responsibilities included building aligned and focused teams, creating and growing sales and marketing teams, increasing revenue streams, and creating successful business models. His results: multiple IPO’s, mergers and acquisitions, and growth investment rounds at increasing valuations. His real-world experience as CEO, VP Sales, Go-to-Market Lead, Strategic Advisor and Board member, provides clients with the business acumen and enthusiasm for growth. He replicates proven strategies and avoids potential pitfalls. Blair's knowledge and enthusiasm is perfect for both growth stage companies and company's looking to innovate.
David Herrick
David Herrick’s background includes deep commercial US and international experience in both the payments and travel sectors, building and executing a go-to-market strategy for a FinTech company, acquiring and integrating tech startups into large corporates, executing on a disruptive and innovative digital business within a global bank, and successfully integrating and accelerating growth for a US acquisition of a UK-based financial services company.
Working primarily in the Financial Services and Technology sectors over the course of his career, David spent many years with American Express in Europe, leading two of Amex's five businesses across the region - including the Merchant Payments business (working with both small & large merchants across 10 European markets) and the Corporate Travel business (providing travel services and products to business customers across 17 countries). His portfolio also included the American Express International Digital Payments group operating in the US, Canada, France, the UK and Australia. During his tenure at American Express, David also drove marketing and co-branded credit card initiatives with European airlines, hotels and large retailers. Following American Express, David launched a startup digital business and online retailer - the Barclaycard Digital Marketplace (Barclays Bank) in London - using customer data to “drive the right products and services to the right customers,” after successfully integrating a US startup and software platform which served as the technology engine.
Upon moving back to the US, David joined Bosto-based Flywire, a mid-stage FinTech in cross border payments (successful IPO in 2022) and launched their second vertical business in healthcare. He was then recruited to lead the US acquisition of the UK-based international payments FinTech, Moneycorp, where he set the business on a path of sustained growth and profitability. Most recently, David has led the US early-stage startup program and the later stage Boston-based HealthTech and FinTech programs for MassChallenge, one of the largest startup accelerators in the country.
David is passionate about environmental and climate-related initiatives, working locally to help drive change as an advisor with High Alfa Innovation’s Fusion’s Network, sitting on the Cape Cod Board of EforAll (Entrepreneurship for All) and continuing to advise and mentor startups across a number of industries.
He holds a BA from Vassar College in Art History and MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has also studied at the graduate and undergraduate levels in Paris.
Brandon Hickie
Brandon has a passion for helping B2B software companies accelerate growth through understanding customer value and aligning product strategy and their commercial models to their customers’ interests. Brandon has advised more than 40 pre-IPO B2B software businesses on topics ranging from GTM planning and segmentation to pricing & packaging to market entry.
Brandon currently serves as the Senior Director of Monetization Strategy at LinkedIn where he leads commercial model growth strategy and innovation for the hiring, learning, engagement and API portfolio of solutions globally. Prior to his current role, Brandon advised the OpenView Venture Partners’ portfolio companies on GTM strategy and setting their businesses up for scale.
Michelle Hipwood
Michelle Hipwood is the CFO at Reprise, an early-stage Demo Platform Software company. Prior to Reprise, Michelle was the CFO at Mable, a e-procurement platform just after being CFO of clypd, an ad-tech platform that was sold to AT&T. She is an active investor and advisor in the early-stage tech community with companies like Kytopen and Labviva as well as part of the founding team of TBD Angels. She was also the Director of Finance and Operations at ImmusanT, an immunological biotech company, which she joined after being the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of The Capital Network. Michelle’s early career was focused on Strategy Consulting and Investment Banking at firms such as Roseview Capital, Deloitte, and Fleet Bank (now Bank of America). In addition, Michelle has dedicated much of her spare time as various nonprofit Board’s such as Land’s Sake Farm and currently Hope & Comfort. She has an MBA from Babson College’s Olin School of Business and a B.S. from Boston College.
Gail Hoffman
Gail Hoffman is an angel investor and start-up advisor in the New England entrepreneurial ecosystem, sharing her expertise in company formation, diligence, finance, and strategic planning. Her investments span numerous industries and include early-stage investments in companies such as Lark Health, OR/M (Open Road Media), and DayZero Diagnostics. She has spent her 20+ year career advising both for-profit and non-profit businesses, and is committed to developing diverse organizations and funders.
Gail is a frequent start-up judge, mentor, and speaker for MassChallenge, Dartmouth College (MBA and undergraduate), Wharton, The Capital Network, The Angel Capital Association, and Harvard Business School, among others.
Actively involved in four area angel groups, Gail is the past Operating Committee Chair for Golden Seeds New England, one of the nation’s most active angel investment firms, providing early-stage and growth capital to female-led businesses across all industry sectors. She is also a member of Launchpad Venture Group, New England’s largest angel investment group, as well as the Wharton Angel Alumni Network. Gail is a founding board member of Dartmouth College’s Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship and a founding member of Dartmouth Angels.
Gail began her career in the Corporate Finance Department of Dean Witter Reynolds. After receiving her M.B.A. in Finance with High Distinction from The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Gail joined Boston Ventures Management Inc., a late-stage growth and private equity firm specializing in the communications, media, and entertainment industries. She was instrumental in a number of successful portfolio company acquisitions and divestitures, including Motown Records, The National Enquirer, and CPP/Belwin Entertainment.
Gail currently serves on the board of Groupize, an enterprise-focused group travel and expense management platform, and is a former board member of Constant Therapy, an AI-based cognitive, language and speech therapy software (acquired 2017). She also serves on several advisory boards including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dartmouth College, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
Luke Hohmann
Luke is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks, a boutique consulting firm helping companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold Conteneo, an enterprise software company that helped global companies manage investment portfolios using Participatory Budgeting. Luke is one of six people in the world recognized as a Principal Contributor to the Scaled Agile Framework, one of the world’s most widely adopted Agile Software Development frameworks. A prolific author and creator, Luke’s contributions to the global agile community include six books and Profit Streams™, Innovation Games®, a pattern language for market-driven roadmapping. Luke is also co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, where he partnered with The Kettering Foundation to create Common Ground for Action, the world’s first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. Luke is a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion and has an M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Luke loves his wife and four kids, his wife’s cooking, and long runs in the California sunshine and Santa Cruz mountains.
BOB HUGHES
Bob has spent his career scaling technology companies from seed rounds through IPO. He’s scaled and managed operations for multiple companies with $1B+ revenues. Bob is a transformation leader with experience in establishing and scaling operations in over 70 countries. Bob was an early member of the leadership team at Akamai where he served for 16 yrs. as President & EVP of Global Sales, Services, and Marketing.
He then joined Everbridge as President overseeing all GTM operations. Bob currently helps startups with GTM, positioning, and revenue growth strategies as well as operational excellence. He has served on the board of directors or as an advisor to several enterprise-focused technology companies including Quickbase, Catalant, and Uplevel (acquired by McAfee).
In his free time, Bob can be found watching any one of Boston's sports teams or his son's hockey and lacrosse games. He enjoys time on the water, off-shore fishing, and attempting to play golf.
Alan Johnson (AJ)
Alan “AJ” Johnson is currently a founding member of Upright Partners, LLC, an advisory services organization that guides clients on how to achieve exceptional business results by maximizing their go-to-market opportunity, strategy and execution. At Upright, AJ focuses in the areas of strategic and operational planning, helping SaaS businesses orchestrate their go-to-market approach to maximize growth and sales productivity. In addition to his responsibilities at Upright, AJ also serves as a Board Advisor at Fullcast.io, a company formed in 2017 to solve the challenges of aligning sales planning to operational execution in high-growth companies.
AJ has over 30 years of experience in the technology sector, and was previously head of Global Sales, Services, and Marketing Operations at both Everbridge, Inc. and Akamai Technologies. In addition, he has held various sales, sales management, GTM programs and channel roles at leading technology firms including EMC, Sun Microsystems, and Siemens. He has a demonstrated ability to develop, implement, and execute strategic sales and operational plans, and was recognized in 2016 as one of the top sales leaders worldwide by Hot Topics/Collective[i]. AJ holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
Josh Kanner
Josh Kanner was most recently founder & CEO of Newmetrix, a B2B SaaS platform for reducing project risk in the $14T global AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industry by improving safety, productivity and quality through easy to use artificial intelligence. Before Newmetrix he was co-founder of Vela Systems, a pioneer in the use of web and tablet workflows for construction and capital projects. There he led the company’s product, marketing and business development functions. Vela Systems grew from bootstrapped beginnings to include over 50% of the ENR Top Contractors as customers and deployments all over the globe. The company was acquired by Autodesk in 2012 and was been rebranded as BIM 360 Field. Prior to founding Vela Systems, Josh was responsible for product management and strategy at Emptoris (now part of IBM), a web-based strategic sourcing software company with customers including Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, Bank of America, and American Express. Kanner graduated from Brown University and earned an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He still gets excited to put on a hard hat and walk a job.
Brian Kardon
Brian Kardon is a transformational leader, advisor and marketer. He has managed customer acquisition to adoption and advocacy with experience at businesses ranging from startups to global billion-dollar organizations. He is a results-oriented executive with 25+ years of experience creating and implementing successful growth strategies, penetrating new markets, and developing products people love.
Brian began his career in consulting with Deloitte, where Brian became one of the youngest partners in the firm’s history and helped lead their global marketing strategy practice. He left consulting to become an operator as CMO at Reed Business Information (NYSE: RELX), the largest B2B publisher in the world. Brian later joined Forrester Research (NASDAQ: FORR) as Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer where he helped turn the brand into a leader in the technology research sector.
Brian moved to software in 2008, joining Eloqua in 2008 as CMO where he was part of the team that led Eloqua’s explosive growth and leadership in the marketing automation sector, resulting in a successful IPO and subsequent purchase by Oracle.
Most recently, Brian was Chief Marketing Officer of InVision, the digital product design platform and Fuze, a cloud-based communications platform. During his four years at Fuze, the company grew from $30M to >$125M in revenue, Fuze was named the market “Leader” by Forrester Research, and the Fuze marketing team won the prestigious SiriusDecisions ROI Award for Demand Creation.
Today, Brian is among the most successful marketing executives in the world of technology. He has been named to several new lists: “50 Most Influential CMOs on Social Media” (Forbes), “100 Most Influential Chief Marketing Officers in the World” (Richtopia) and the “30 Tech Marketing Leaders Changing the Industry” (Synthesio).
Brian received his BS and MBA degrees from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Mark Kasdorf
Mark is a serial entrepreneur who has started a number of companies in Boston since graduating from graduate school in 2009. Among them, Mark raised a seed round for a consumer tech mobile app startup, started a co-working center, and most notably bootstrapped a mobile development firm from 0 to 150 people and $20M in revenue before selling it to Accenture.
Mark has significant experience growing and scaling companies, scaling headcount rapidly, and building aligned and engaged leadership teams.
Dave Krupinski
Dave has over 25 years of experience leading product development and technology organizations, from the startup phase through IPO and beyond. Dave is currently the CTO of Coravin, where he is responsible for technology strategy and IT. Prior to Coravin, Dave was Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Safety & Cybersecurity Officer at Care.com. In his 14 years at the company, Care.com became the world's largest online marketplace for care, offering services to more than 35 million families and caregivers in over 20 countries. David is a graduate of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. He also holds a B.A. and M.S. from Boston College and received an M.B.A. from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.
CHRIS LORD
Chris is CTO and Co-Founder of Lambent, which is transforming security and operations through a crowd intelligence data analytics platform that shows where people are, shows where they are going, and anticipates how they will move and behave in the future.
He was previously Head of R&D and Chief Architect at Carbon Black (acquired by VMware), which pioneered new approaches to cybersecurity; and is the founder of Latch Mobile, a cybersecurity company that protects children from risks online.
Chris has been active in the field of cybersecurity since 2000 when he worked on survivable systems and critical infrastructure assurance as a research assistant at US-CERT. He is passionate about decentralized systems and has had the good fortune to work with many great teams building innovative technology around large scale distributed systems. He earned a Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Fitchburg State University.
Tom Meusel
Tom Meusel has 25+ years of experience building and executing Partner and Channel strategies, programs and operations with Boston-based startup companies. Tom started his career at IBM where he built a solid sales and business foundation and leveraged those skills to help companies such as Shiva, Allaire, Demandware, Gomez, Everbridge and most recently, Convey, to successful exits, including 3 IPOs and 5 acquisitions.
Tom has held VP Global Channel roles at Enterprise SaaS companies with revenues ranging from $0 to $400M and built indirect revenues from $0 to $55M+, often being the first person on the ground to stand up the business. Today Tom runs an Advisory and Consulting practice focused on helping early to growth stage companies define and execute their Channel and Partner strategies. Tom has his MBA from Northeastern University and Undergraduate degree in Computer Science from SUNY Potsdam.
DENISE MILLARD
Denise is Senior Vice President, Global Alliances at Dell Technologies. She is responsible for delivering the promise of Dell Technologies to customers, together with some of Dell’s most strategic partners and industry experts. Millard’s passion for connecting with customers and enabling sales and partner organizations has been a constant throughout her 20+ year career. She previously held senior executive roles leading Sales Operations, Channel Sales, Learning and Enablement, Field Marketing and Sales Strategy and Professional Services. Effective collaboration is a hallmark of Millard’s leadership. She played a vital role in the integration of Dell and EMC as a member of the Value Creation Integration Office focused on Go-To-Market integration and field readiness for the newly-combined organization.
Intensely committed to developing the next generation of talent, Millard is a strong believer in mentorship and development. She is a long-standing sponsor and contributor to Dell’s Women In Action (WIA) Resource Group and serves as the Executive Sponsor for the New England WIA chapter. Millard lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children. An avid fitness buff enthusiast, she and can often be found at her local CrossFit. She holds an MBA from Clark University and a BS in Business from Bryant University.
SCOTT MILLARD
Scott is Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Presales for Dell Technologies. He is responsible for the global Partner strategy, go-to-market, transformation, and execution for Dell Technologies market-leading Data Center portfolio. A 20+ year veteran of the technology industry and a recognized Sales leader, Scott’s sales strategy and execution acumen spans all routes to market for companies both large and small. His drive and passion for winning are evident by his experience. Prior to his current role, Scott served as VP of Global Channels and Alliances for Virtustream, Dell’s hyper-growth enterprise cloud business, where he launched the company’s first-ever partner program which grew 10x in the first year. Prior to Virtustream, Scott was VP, Americas Channel Sales for EMC. Scott has helped various customer and partner-facing sales leadership roles during a successful 20-year career at Dell Technologies and EMC.
Scott holds an MBA with a concentration in Information Systems, and a BS in Business Administration from Bryant University.
Zenobia Moochhala
Zenobia is an entrepreneurial leader with experience co-founding and scaling a global, mission-driven consumer services business. As Co-Founder of Care.com, Zenobia was part of the leadership team that built Care.com from vision to IPO - becoming the world's largest online marketplace that matches families and caregivers. She was responsible for growing the Company’s global footprint, as well as the full scope of consumer marketing, customer engagement and product marketing across both the company’s consumer and B2B businesses. She also served as GM with P&L ownership for the International and Homepay businesses lines. She currently holds the position of COO at Embark Vet, the leading canine genetics company, with a highly reviewed Dog DNA Test for breed identification and genetic health testing.
Zenobia holds a M.A. from Brandeis University and a B.A. from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai.
ERIC MORGAN
Eric’s career in technology spans across many sectors, markets, roles and business models and includes leading several investor-backed businesses while raising several rounds of capital for growth and M&A. With significant experience operating SaaS businesses, Eric has multiple successful exits to strategic acquirers including as CEO of AdvancedMD, an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) business to ADP, Maintenance Connection to Fortive/Accruent and Workfront which was recently sold to Adobe for $1.5b and where Eric was CEO for nearly five years. At Workfront Eric grew the business by 5x during his tenure and established the strategy and operational excellence that positioned it for the successful exit. Eric was also an executive officer of Lawson Software helping lead it to an IPO.
Eric is currently on the board of PeopleKeep, a SaaS business offering affordable healthcare options to small businesses through HRAs. Eric also served on the board of APPrise Mobile (sold to Trackforce) and
advises and invests in other exciting SaaS businesses.
SAM MYLREA
Sam’s career spans both investing and operating within the technology sector. Sam spent 6 years in private equity working at Summit Partners and Oak Hill, primarily focused on providing growth capital and special opportunities across a range of different industries. Sam transitioned to the operating side when he co-founded dealMobs, an interactive social commerce platform that helped connect local merchants and consumers, which was subsequently acquired by nCrowd, a Noro-Moseley backed e-commerce company.
Sam was previously the CEO of PureCars, an automotive marketing automation and business intelligence platform, where he helped scale the business from $8M of revenue in 2013 to $180M in 2019. At PureCars, Sam helped lead the company to a successful exit in 2015 and the subsequent spinout of PureCars in 2019. While at PureCars, Sam was involved in several M&A events, company integrations, capital raising, channel partnerships, operational transformation, product pricing and roadmap, and sales process and strategy.
Sam currently advises and invests in early stage software companies.
Craig Palli
Craig has scaled numerous ventures from inception to IPO or acquisition resulting in billions of dollars in exit value. As an advisor and board member, he has supported ventures spanning Ad Tech, Ed Tech, Clean Tech, AI and VR. As a startup leader, his work at the forefront of the affiliate and mobile marketing industries is considered pioneering. More recently Craig brought machine learning to Ed Tech and in so doing created new models for assessment and education.
Craig’s advisory work focuses on go-to-market, organizational scale, integrated marketing, partnerships, revenue growth, customer success and fundraising. When not supporting ventures, Craig enjoys playing hockey, skiing and has coached a dozen soccer teams.
Craig has a BS in Industrial Management & Economics from Carnegie-Mellon University and holds an MBA from Babson College.
Brent Nixon
Brent Nixon has over 25 years of experience leading product, sales, and partnership teams working with early and mid-size start-ups through large public technology companies. Brent was most recently the Chief Ecosystem Office at Reputation, leading their global partner ecosystem expansion strategy. Before Reputation, he spent 6 years at Workfront as SVP of Global Alliances, leading the growth strategy for Workfront’s Global and Regional SI partners. Workfront was acquired by Adobe in December 2020 ($1.5B). Prior to Workfront, Brent was VP of Sales and Marketing at Vinyard Networks which was acquired by Procera Networks. He has extensive experience building partner growth strategies for Global and Regional SI partners and leverages his strong product management background to deliver proven results in technology partnership strategies. Brent has a BSc in Finance from the University of Utah and an MBA from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
BRANDON PINDULIC
Brandon was the founder & CEO of OpGen Media, a B2B Marketing Ops & Demand Generation Agency (acq. by Reel Axis). Before starting OpGen Media, Brandon worked as a Demand Generation Manager at ProofHQ (acq. by Workfront) and at Wasabi Ventures. With over 8 years of B2B Demand Gen experience working across growth-stage SaaS companies and Fortune 1000 Technology companies, Brandon has deep expertise across foundational demand generation and marketing operations processes for early- to growth-stage companies, while servicing Mid-Market and Enterprise SaaS companies through scalable lead generation campaigns. Brandon and his team have worked with companies such as Citrix, DocuSign, Oracle and more, along with countless startups and established professional services companies.
Casey Renner
Casey develops and manages executive communities that amplify brands and drive business value through curated content and events. She's skilled at humanizing business interactions, fostering genuine connections, and creating personalized experiences that enhance stakeholder engagement.
In 2017, she launched her #WeeklyWalk video series, where she walks with some of the smartest people in the tech world, learning more about who they are and what they care about, and bring their stories to you. The series has 7k followers and she's put out 200+ interviews to date.
AMY ROBINSON
Amy is a strategic adviser, thought partner and executive coach. She has a long history of diagnosing and addressing organizational challenges and coaching leaders to thrive in high growth environments. With 15+ years as a Chief People Officer in private and public tech companies, she is adept at recognizing patterns and nimbly working through the complexities that come with rapid growth and scale.
Amy founded Pivotal Moments in 2019 to provide executive coaching and HR advisory services to leaders in growth companies. Amy brings high energy and a focused approach to every client relationship. She has a proven ability to help her clients increase self-awareness, shift mindset and gain the necessary clarity and new skills to navigate through the pivotal moments that shape careers and transform lives.
Throughout her career, Amy has coached hundreds of leaders to level up their game by challenging them to expand their thinking, shift perspective, and embrace new possibilities. Amy is very motivated to help clients reduce stress and achieve momentum, resulting in significant performance gains for leaders and their teams.
Joel Rosen
Joel has led or been part of the executive team for four tech companies that completed IPOs and achieved market caps in excess of $1 billion. His core competencies are in strategy, product and market positioning, and leading the design and execution of demand generation programs. Most recently, he helped reposition Everbridge (EVBG) from a single-product point solution to a new enterprise SaaS category, Critical Event Management, and built and scaled the demand gen engine to exceed sales quotas by 4x. Everbridge sells to companies (with particular focus on the Fortune 1000/Global 2000), governments and healthcare organizations.
Joel previously ran Marketing, Product Management and Global Partnerships for Endurance International (EIGI), which provides internet business solutions to over 4 million SMBs. Earlier in his career, he was the CEO of Navisite, an internet managed services provider, as it grew from $10 million to $120 million in revenue, and ran Marketing and several lines of business for Aspen Technology (AZPN) as it grew from $6 million to $250 million in revenues. He has also worked in venture capital at CRV and in strategy consulting at Bain. Joel holds a BA from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Lou Shipley
Lou brings more than three decades of experience in enterprise software as an executive, entrepreneur, and sales leader. Previously, Shipley was President and CEO of Black Duck Software, where he repositioned the leader in open source license and compliance software into an open source security company which led it to a successful acquisition by Synopsys. Prior to Black Duck, Shipley served as President and CEO of Turbonomic (acquired by IBM), and Reflectent Software (acquired by Citrix Systems). Shipley serves on the boards of Wasabi, Fairmarkit, CustomerGauge, Rnmkrs and Leapwork. He serves on the advisory boards of Exodigo, Teamworks, RapidSOS, SpoilerAlert, Tomorrow..io and Logz.io Shipley holds a degree in Economics from Trinity College-Hartford (where he also a Trustee), and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is currently a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School where he teaches four separate classes in Entrepreneurial Sales and go to market strategy.
Dharmesh Singh
Dharmesh has over 25 years of executive management and CEO experience with Technology companies. Most recently he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Fullcast, a Revenue Operations Platform that helps enterprise sales and customer success teams streamline Go-to-Market Planning. He led the company from ideation to multiple rounds of funding and a successful exit.
Prior to founding Fullcast he worked for Salesforce and Microsoft in executive roles. At Microsoft he was part of the founding leadership that built Office 365 and took it from an idea to mainstreaming into the Microsoft Office business. He has held roles in these companies with a Global focus. As someone who is passionate about startups, he is also involved with mentoring of founders in the Seattle ecosystem and was part of 9Milelabs, a B2B incubator in Seattle that helped ideate and helped Go-to- Market new startups. He is also involved with TiE Seattle as a charter member helping startups. He brings to them all his experience across sales, marketing, product and operations that he has learnt from his time working across big tech and startups.
Dave Stack
As a financial executive with over 25 years of experience in his field, David Stack serves as the chief financial officer of The RepTrak company, a private equity backed company. Prior to joining The RepTrak company, David Stack was CFO of HubSpot where he was responsible for directing and developing all financial activities that transformed a $1M Revenue run rate venture capital backed startup to a $100M Revenue run rate corporation.
Before joining Hubspot, Stack was the vice president of finance at a computer data storage company called EMC Corporation. As an executive team member of EMC, Stack’s primary responsibilities centered on controlling the financial and information system activities in the EMC security division. This particular business unit of the company accounted for $500M in revenue. Before joining EMC, Stack was the VP of RSA Security where he also held other financial executive positions. David was the finance lead for RSA Security during the sale of the company to EMC for $2.3 billion in 2006.
Thanks to Stack’s 25 years of experience in accounting and finance, he has overseen a variety of departmental activities and projects that include long and short-term financial planning, general accounting, investor relations, revenue recognition, accounting policy creation and procurement. After joining the inbound marketing and sales software company Hubspot in 2008, Stack’s gained additional insight in scaling profitable companies that look to make a move for a possible IPO.
John Stetic
John is a product leader, company builder, founder and investor. With over 25 years in software, John has led product, engineering, and design teams with experience in multiple verticals, across a variety of product life cycle stages and company sizes. John grew the Oracle Marketing Cloud 5x post acquisition of Eloqua (MarTech) through organic and inorganic growth. He co-founded PlateSpin, an early pioneer in server virtualization technology, leading the product organization, scaling the company and achieving a successful 10x exit. Most recently John served as Chief Product Officer at Prodigy Education (EdTech), North America’s leading game-based learning platform for grades 1-8. Currently, John serves as an independent board member of Ziflow (MarTech), and prior to that was on the board of Allocadia (MarTech) (acquired by BrandMaker). John brings expertise in product strategy, buy and sell-side M&A, strategic partnerships, monetization, and product management process and organization development. John holds an Engineering Degree from Queen’s University, and executive education from Harvard Business School. When not focusing on customer problems to solve or helping companies grow, John can be found with his family on a ski hill in the winter or on a boat in the summer.
Daniel Stevenson
Daniel has over 25 years of experience in early-stage and larger software companies creating and implementing go-to-market strategies and revenue-generating partnerships.
He was most recently the head of growth at Foodspace, a pre-Series A company, and prior to that he was the CRO at Promoboxx, where he headed up the sales, marketing, and client success organizations. Previously he was the Vice President of Business Development at Backupify, and before that Daniel held partnership, channel, and marketing leadership roles at Iron Mountain, LiveVault, THINQ, eRoom, and Rational Software.
Daniel works with early-stage companies to help them create and execute their go-to-market and partnership strategies.
Will Stute
Will Stute is a partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and leads the firm’s Sports practice. Orrick is a global law firm and one of the 35 largest law firms in the United States, with over 1,100 lawyers.
Will is a first chair trial lawyer and business advisor who is nationally recognized for wins in the biggest cases in courtrooms across the United States. Fortune 10 tech companies, one of the world’s largest life sciences companies, a pioneering gig economy company, a transportation industry giant and one of the nation’s largest sports organizations all entrust him with their most important fights. His courtroom successes have earned him the title of 2023 Winning Litigator of the Year by the National Law Journal and American Lawyer Litigator of the Year finalist for 2023. American Lawyer cited his “incredible victories” for the NCAA, describing him as a trial lawyer “Playing to Win.”
In the span of less than 10 months across 2022 and 2023, he won three separate high-profile jury trials for the NCAA – including the first to take on claims the NCAA is responsible for concussions and CTE in college football. This victory was recognized as the Courtroom View Network’s Most Impressive Defense Verdict of 2022, American Lawyer Litigator of the Week and the Daily Journal’s Defense Verdict of the Year.
Will’s versatility, strategic acumen and ability to think on his feet separate him as a trial lawyer. He is highly skilled at developing strategy, telling his client’s story and connecting with juries – and he has done it for clients across the tech, finance and life sciences sectors on claims ranging from mass torts, personal injury and False Claims Act cases to antitrust, securities fraud and RMBS litigation. Will tries cases when others fold, settles cases on the most favorable terms, and earns praise from clients for his confident and steady leadership throughout the battle.
Will’s passion for obtaining the best possible results for clients is eclipsed only by his commitment to family and his four sons.
WILL URBAN
Will Urban is a global trade, logistics and supply chain expert who is uniquely qualified to help companies scale and grow. Will began his career with Expeditors (a Fortune 500 Global Logistics Company) in 1994 as a Management Trainee after a chance meeting with founder and former CEO Peter Rose while working as an intern for the Port of Seattle. His 25-year career working in many leadership roles within the company culminated with him overseeing all sales and operations activities for approximately 1,000 full time employees.
Will was most recently the Chief Revenue Officer for Flexport, responsible for the companies geographies, go-to-market strategy, net revenue, client solutions and operational execution.
With his operational expertise in global trade, logistics and supply chain, and after seeing literally thousands of companies navigate global trade over the years, Will now puts his passion and industry knowledge to work helping firms grow. During his tenure at Expeditors, many had approached him to help guide, consult and advise on their supply chains - most notably hedge funds, venture capital firms and tech companies. Will has spent the last 25 years watching both the freight forwarding community and its customers struggle to understand each other’s markets and priorities which gives him a unique position to bridge that gap and help companies meet their current and long-term goals.
David Vap
David Vap is currently working at Yellowstone Growth Partners (YGP), which is a small collective of seasoned SaaS executives that focus on operational issues for a small number of high potential companies by bringing to the table expertise across Strategy Alignment, Operational Planning, Go To Market, Software Development, Finances/Governance, and fundraising.
Prior to YGP, David was Group Vice President Oracle Applications Development at Oracle. A 20-year veteran of the technology industry, Mr. Vap joined Oracle through the acquisition of RightNow in 2011. At RightNow he was Chief Product Officer, where he led product strategy, product management, and product marketing.
Prior to RightNow, Mr. Vap served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Software AG, where he defined, marketed, and led sales for Software AG Crossvision, a leading business process SOA suite. He also spent time at content management vendor Artesia Technologies as the Vice President of Products, where he was responsible for product management, development, and quality assurance. Before joining Artesia, he founded and ultimately sold a professional services company that focused on packaging solution offerings built using a CASE tool. He began his career at PwC Consulting, in Washington D.C.
Mr. Vap currently serves on the boards of AtlasRFID.com, OpenMethods.com, CrossTX.com, and HuHot.com and has worked as a hands-on advisor for numerous SaaS companies including onxmaps.com, alosant.com tenovos.com, lumened.com, and treez.io. Mr. Vap earned his Bachelor of Science in 1990 at Carnegie Mellon University.
Ralph Verrilli
Over his career Ralph has been an entrepreneur, software developer and enterprise software operating executive. He is currently an advisor and board member of a number of early-stage technology companies. In addition to this, he is a Managing Director with the Madison Park Group, where he works with enterprise software companies worldwide on their strategy and execution for Mergers and Acquisitions. Although he works with companies in a number of different markets, his focus area is engineering and manufacturing software companies, as well as robotics and IoT companies. In addition to his work in M&A, Ralph helps companies improve their operations so they can achieve their maximum value at the time of exit.
He holds a BS and MS in mechanical engineering, with artificial intelligence for mechanical design being his focus of research. He is a Registered Securities Representative, with Series 79 and 63 FINRA certifications.
Jeremy Aber
Jeremy has spent the past 29 years as a business attorney, with the past 10 years focusing on only helping growing SaaS and software companies speed up their go-to-market agreements. Jeremy runs a law firm that exclusively helps SaaS and software companies develop their templates and negotiate deals with their customers. Jeremy was General Counsel at OpenView Venture Partners in Boston and ScriptLogic (acquired by Quest Software) in Florida, and headed up software licensing at BMC Software in Houston. Jeremy also has passed the Certified Public Accountants' exam.
Henry Ancona
Henry Ancona has over 30 years of management experience with large and small global technology-based companies. He currently serves as an executive advisor, board chair/member, and angel investor to technology companies.
Henry brings strategic, operational, and leadership development experience to his advisory and board service. He was President at Pegasystems and CEO at Evidian, a cybersecurity software company that he founded. Earlier, Henry held senior management positions both in Europe and in the US at Digital Equipment (DEC).
As Executive Advisor, Henry teams with CEOs and Boards on a broad range of strategic, operational, people, financing, and board issues to achieve growth and profitability. His clients include companies in healthcare, AI, and software businesses.
Henry has served on the Board of Directors of many private and public technology companies. He currently serves as Board Chairman at Medisafe, a digital health company, and Board member at BlueConic, a customer data platform company, at Frase, an AI-based software company, and at Verne Global, an Icelandic data center company. He is also an angel investor in software and software-enabled businesses such as HubSpot and Carbonite.
Henry holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and BS and MS degrees from MIT in Computer Science. Henry is fluent in French and Italian and has lived in Europe and the Middle East.
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Meet Your Go-to-Market Dream Team
We help you identify the top opportunities to level-up your GTM game. We offer a turnkey roster of SaaS practitioners to act as a force multiplier on you and your team. Our bench of GTM experts work alongside you to deliver output and outcomes, accountable only to you.
David McFarlane
David has led multiple technology companies through scaled execution, overseeing funding and growth from early-stage to successful multi-billion dollar IPOs, M&A exits, and private equity partial exits. David has built multiple go-to-market models from open source to enterprise sales typically from $5-100 Million in revenue, across 40 countries. He's experienced in raising capital from seed to private equity but has a special place in his heart for capital-efficient models.
David enjoys working with early-stage businesses and serves on the boards of and lectures at both MIT Enterprise Forum and UMass Boston Venture Development Center.
PARTHIB SRIVATHSAN
Parthib helps Companyon’s portfolio companies develop, build and execute a data-driven growth strategy. He structures and augments the company’s intelligence around financial, customer, sales, and marketing data to deliver GTM, pricing, and market insights. His operational and forecast models empower CEOs to understand the top-line and bottom-line impact of strategic and tactical decisions and his performance dashboards provide the leadership team with guardrails to an outsized Series A.
Parthib supports fund operations by leading pre and post-deal diligence workflows on the market, competition, and financial projections where he synthesizes due diligence findings into investment recommendations. Parthib leads the Platform Team’s practice-building activities such as the development of Companyon methodologies, benchmarks, market analysis, tools & templates that portfolio companies can leverage.
He holds a Master of Business Administration from Babson College and lives in Irvine, CA, with his wife and son.
MEG HENRY
Meg has spent the last 10 years in the HR and Recruiting space supporting a wide range of teams and roles. She started in the HR department at a Financial Services company and spent time as an agency recruiter at Robert Half before moving into technology. Since then she’s hired globally for roles in every department at Brightcove, a public video technology company, ASICS Digital, a division of ASICS (the sneaker company), and Mainstay, an education technology startup. She’s passionate about helping companies find the best people to help them grow while providing great candidate experiences along the way. When she's not working, you can find Meg either trying out new restaurants in Boston with her husband James (he’s also in recruiting so dinner conversations are riveting) or visiting her family in New York.
David “Stock” Baird
David "Stock" Baird is Founder and CEO of Baird Tech Inc., a premier IT executive search and app development firm based in Detroit that provides its global client base with a dedicated, hands-on partner and a systematic approach to bring in qualified, high-value candidates. David and his team have developed a proprietary applicant tracking system called BairdHunt, allowing for a streamlined recruitment process with individuals not just looking for another job, but the right career move. Additionally, he co-founded Roxy - a new marketplace for swapping toys, electronics, and clothes in Mexico. Prior to this, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Selocial - an award-winning musician's social media platform - and gained fame as a hip hop artist in the UK with music on film and television.
Jay Batson
Jay has over 20 years of executive management and CEO experience with technology companies from founding to public offering, most recently as co-founder & CEO of Acquia (SaaS digital experience platform supporting enterprises with complex open-source Drupal deployments). Since retiring from Acquia in 2012, Jay has been an executive advisor, CEO coach, angel investor, and advisory/board member for dozens of early-stage companies & executives. As an advisor he helps companies improve using strategic prioritization, business risk reduction, setting and executing to objectives using frameworks and techniques known to work. As a CEO coach he wears a different hat - helping CEOs improve using self-inquiry and internal commitments to personal growth.
Greg Casale
Greg founded Reveneer nearly 10 years ago to solve a problem that he experienced in his role as a sales executive at growing tech companies: designing, building and managing predictable inside sales operations is hard. Many companies burn capital and time to market with a trial and error approach that rarely achieves sustainable results. The problem is complex - from hiring the right talent, developing playbooks, training the team, designing cadences, integrating the tech stack, launching and ramping. Early on, Greg decided that rather than become yet another sales consultant, he would create a fully managed service that took on for its clients all of the complexity of building and running inside sales operations.
Reveneer is a privately-held firm with over 200 employees, and has been named an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for the past four consecutive years, Inc. Magazine Best Workplace and Boston Globe Top Places to Work.
JASON DeAMATO
With 20 years experience as a revenue leader Jason gravitated early towards the behavior side of selling. His experience spans multiple industries which prove that sales behaviors when executed well do not relate to industries. His vision for ConversionCoach was born when he owned a call center in Beverly Massachusetts in 2007. That company was quickly successful then crashed slowly and painfully. Since then he has transformed the selling culture at many organizations with a focus on increase in conversion, decrease in ramp and higher retention and morale of sales teams. He is energized by spending quality time with his daughters, playing in his band, all things music, psychology, great conversations, curious people, comedy, water, daily meditation and travel. He wishes he was funny enough to be a comedian. Sadly he is not even close.
Robin Dvorak
Robin Dvorak is the founder of Blue Egg, the marketing department for small businesses. She channels three decades of experience into her passion for helping business owners build marketing strategies, programs and processes that are designed to scale. Robin and the team at Blue Egg define marketing as drawing a short, bright line between action and revenue that is derived from understanding what customers need and value. With deep experience across business models, industries and customer focus, Blue Egg acts as an outsourced extension of the businesses it serves. Robin can currently be found crossing the country by RV full-time with her beagle, Murphy.
Andy Gauthier
Andrew is a dynamic, C-suite executive with significant hands-on financial and operating experience. His expertise has amassed from years of launching and scaling-up businesses globally. Andrew is an investor and advisor of small businesses, impassioned by early-stage ventures, sustainable business models, and healthy unit economics. Andrew helped secure $25M+ of equity and debt capital, leading M&A initiatives from identification of targets through due diligence to post-close integration.
Prior to starting Mighty Startup, Andrew was the Head of Finance at Botkeeper. A member of both the founding and executive teams, he was instrumental in the creation and rapid growth of the organization. Botkeeper raised a $4.5M Seed Round, grew to over 100 global employees and closed an $18M A Round.
Previously, Andrew launched and operated a boutique tax and consulting firm. His early career exposed him to a variety of industries and organizations. He held roles in privately held businesses and accounting firms ranging from boutique to a Big 4.
Andrew is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He holds a BS in Accountancy and MS in Taxation from Bentley University where he minored in Law and focused in computer science and entrepreneurship. Andrew served as Treasurer of The Chesterbrook Community Foundation.
Joey Gilkey
Jackie Golden
Jackie is currently the Chief Customer Officer at Apty. She established her company, LandNExpand, in 2014, as a Customer Lifecycle Management consulting firm. She has advised dozens of startup and high growth software companies and stepped into the CCO role to help them execute on their strategic plans for growth. She helps software companies merge vision, strategy, and flawless execution to optimize results. She provides the vision, strategy, leadership and excellence in execution to deliver strong and sustained revenue, expansion and customer retention results for high growth, mid-size and large global organizations for companies like Hyperion, PowerCerv, Cognos, Ascential, IBM, Workfront, Socrata, and CoreView. She’s known as a customer experience expert and trusted advisor to senior leadership, boards and investors; respected for insightful approach to building a profitable customer lifecycle approach. She is a published author of Green to Golden and speaker on Customer Experience best practices. Jackie is also a Master Dog Trainer who volunteers in training service dogs for Sheri’s Pack Wounded Warrior Project. Jackie lives in San Diego with her husband of 35 years, her two grown children and grandchild. She holds an MBA from San Diego State University and BS in International Business from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Luke Hohmann
Luke is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks, a boutique consulting firm helping companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold Conteneo, an enterprise software company that helped global companies manage investment portfolios using Participatory Budgeting. Luke is one of six people in the world recognized as a Principal Contributor to the Scaled Agile Framework, one of the world’s most widely adopted Agile Software Development frameworks. A prolific author and creator, Luke’s contributions to the global agile community include six books and Profit Streams™, Innovation Games®, a pattern language for market-driven roadmapping. Luke is also co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, where he partnered with The Kettering Foundation to create Common Ground for Action, the world’s first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. Luke is a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion and has an M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Luke loves his wife and four kids, his wife’s cooking, and long runs in the California sunshine and Santa Cruz mountains.
JOE IPPOLITO
Joe advises Companyon Ventures and supports its portfolio companies with sales, sales leadership and organizational excellence. He helps startups implement top-performing sales methodologies and teams to help them improve sales efficiency, pipeline predictability and grow top-line revenue. He’s the President of Topline Performance Solutions, a certified Sandler Training. Sandler has been frequently ranked one the top sales training organizations in North America. Joe has 25+ years of sales, sales management and training experience, and currently works with a wide range of technology companies, from venture-funded technology startups like SyncOnSet and Signiant to large enterprises like IBM. Sandler’s methodology has recently been incorporated into the curriculum at Harvard Business School.
Alan Johnson (AJ)
Alan “AJ” Johnson is currently a founding member of Upright Partners, LLC, an advisory services organization that guides clients on how to achieve exceptional business results by maximizing their go-to-market opportunity, strategy and execution. At Upright, AJ focuses in the areas of strategic and operational planning, helping SaaS businesses orchestrate their go-to-market approach to maximize growth and sales productivity. In addition to his responsibilities at Upright, AJ also serves as a Board Advisor at Fullcast.io, a company formed in 2017 to solve the challenges of aligning sales planning to operational execution in high-growth companies.
AJ has over 30 years of experience in the technology sector, and was previously head of Global Sales, Services, and Marketing Operations at both Everbridge, Inc. and Akamai Technologies. In addition, he has held various sales, sales management, GTM programs and channel roles at leading technology firms including EMC, Sun Microsystems, and Siemens. He has a demonstrated ability to develop, implement, and execute strategic sales and operational plans, and was recognized in 2016 as one of the top sales leaders worldwide by Hot Topics/Collective[i]. AJ holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
Rachel Johnson
Rachel brings over 20 years of experience in marketing leadership for startup and scale up companies, most of which are in the SaaS technology space. She's a versatile modern marketing executive who’s mastered the balancing of the art and science of marketing. Her superpower is bringing calm and order to the chaos many startups and scale ups experience on the marketing & GTM side of their business. She comes to the table with proven frameworks from her experience in building marketing departments or teams from the ground up or optimizing a current infrastructure to drive performance. She's experienced at driving startups and scale-ups to use marketing as a lever for growth, scale, funding, or acquisition, which she's gained through eight M&A events.
Rachel now serves as a fractional CMO and the CEO/Founder of MoJo Marketing Consulting, LLC. Prior to starting MoJo Marketing, Rachel served in key leadership roles at companies like iGoDigital, ExactTarget, Salesforce, Angie's List, Monetate, PFL, One Click Contractor, and most recently as the CMO for a private equity company, Threefold. Rachel is a strong communicator and conceptual thinker with demonstrated ability to design and execute marketing strategies and communications that scale across B2B and B2C channels. Rachel's experience has run the gamut, including demand gen (growth/revenue marketing), product marketing, customer marketing, content marketing, field marketing, and brand. She orchestrates these different marketing functions together to help companies drive meaningful growth and accelerate business results. She's also a compassionate leader with the agility to both get in the weeds and strategize at 30K feet which makes her a perfect fit for companies in the $0-$100M growth stage.
Outside of work, Rachel enjoys photography, hanging with her husband Brent and her three kiddos. She says that being a mom has taught her many skills, including patience, kindness, and multitasking, and she brings many of these skills to work with her when she leads teams. She also has two girls and she wants to show them that women can be strong and bold, but also kind. You'll also see Rachel giving back and mentoring more junior team members of a team or within the community. Giving back is a critical leadership quality for her.
Brian Kardon
Brian Kardon is a transformational leader, advisor and marketer. He has managed customer acquisition to adoption and advocacy with experience at businesses ranging from startups to global billion-dollar organizations. He is a results-oriented executive with 25+ years of experience creating and implementing successful growth strategies, penetrating new markets, and developing products people love.
Brian began his career in consulting with Deloitte, where Brian became one of the youngest partners in the firm’s history and helped lead their global marketing strategy practice. He left consulting to become an operator as CMO at Reed Business Information (NYSE: RELX), the largest B2B publisher in the world. Brian later joined Forrester Research (NASDAQ: FORR) as Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer where he helped turn the brand into a leader in the technology research sector.
Brian moved to software in 2008, joining Eloqua in 2008 as CMO where he was part of the team that led Eloqua’s explosive growth and leadership in the marketing automation sector, resulting in a successful IPO and subsequent purchase by Oracle.
Most recently, Brian was Chief Marketing Officer of InVision, the digital product design platform and Fuze, a cloud-based communications platform. During his four years at Fuze, the company grew from $30M to >$125M in revenue, Fuze was named the market “Leader” by Forrester Research, and the Fuze marketing team won the prestigious SiriusDecisions ROI Award for Demand Creation.
Today, Brian is among the most successful marketing executives in the world of technology. He has been named to several new lists: “50 Most Influential CMOs on Social Media” (Forbes), “100 Most Influential Chief Marketing Officers in the World” (Richtopia) and the “30 Tech Marketing Leaders Changing the Industry” (Synthesio).
Brian received his BS and MBA degrees from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Corey Kreuz
Corey began his career in staffing in 1999 when he joined Hollister Staffing. While at Hollister, Corey advanced from Recruiter to Training Manager, Branch Manager, and eventually Division Manager. In 2009, Corey took the opportunity to build a startup and help grow SaleStart, a national sales staffing firm. SaleStart was part of one of the most successful and fastest growing staffing firms in the country. The Boston Business Journal ranked the company as one of the best places to work multiple times. Corey became President of SaleStart in 2013 and has rebranded in 2020 to S2 Staffing. The idea behind S2 is to provide clients with the choice of more thorough, innovative services than are available in the national staffing market. When Corey is not working, you will find him at a hockey rink or a local field watching one of his three kids play lacrosse, field hockey or baseball.
CHARLES LOCKWOOD
Charles advises Companyon Ventures and supports its portfolio companies with creative and branding expertise including brand strategy, identity development, and user experience design. He is co-founder of Ideometry, a full-service, growth marketing agency. He has been at the forefront of design and branding for 10 years and has worked with countless clients including Dick's Sporting Goods, Symphony Ventures (a Sykes Company), and Charles River Laborator.
Craig Palli
Craig has scaled numerous ventures from inception to IPO or acquisition resulting in billions of dollars in exit value. As an advisor and board member, he has supported ventures spanning Ad Tech, Ed Tech, Clean Tech, AI and VR. As a startup leader, his work at the forefront of the affiliate and mobile marketing industries is considered pioneering. More recently Craig brought machine learning to Ed Tech and in so doing created new models for assessment and education.
Craig’s advisory work focuses on go-to-market, organizational scale, integrated marketing, partnerships, revenue growth, customer success and fundraising. When not supporting ventures, Craig enjoys playing hockey, skiing and has coached a dozen soccer teams.
Craig has a BS in Industrial Management & Economics from Carnegie-Mellon University and holds an MBA from Babson College.
MIKE OH
Michael Oh
SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT & CYBERSECURITY
Michael is an expert in IT systems and support, with deep knowledge in applied cyber security and cyber threat management. He advises Companyon’s portfolio companies to make sure their technology infrastructure is properly managed, secure, and scalable. An entrepreneur with 29 years of experience in running his own investor-backed company, he has worked as a consultant for the New York Times, Accel, Novartis, Kayak, the Boston Celtics, and the South Korean government.
Michael holds double engineering degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Aeronautical and Electrical Engineering and lives outside of London, UK with his wife and twin daughters.
Shonak “Nak” Patel
Nak has over twelve years of experience as a founder, go-to-market, and operations leader building startups. He's currently co-founder of Kahani, venture backed B2B startup in the ecommerce space. He spent three years as the first customer experience executive at Appcues, scaling the customer success and support functions to serve over 1,200 leading product companies around the world ranging from startups to IBM. Prior to Appcues, Nak was the VP of Growth & Operations at a venture-backed education technology startup that was acquired. He specializes in advising product-led B2B businesses around activation, adoption, and retention strategies.
BRANDON PINDULIC
Brandon was the founder & CEO of OpGen Media, a B2B Marketing Ops & Demand Generation Agency (acq. by Reel Axis). Before starting OpGen Media, Brandon worked as a Demand Generation Manager at ProofHQ (acq. by Workfront) and at Wasabi Ventures. With over 8 years of B2B Demand Gen experience working across growth-stage SaaS companies and Fortune 1000 Technology companies, Brandon has deep expertise across foundational demand generation and marketing operations processes for early- to growth-stage companies, while servicing Mid-Market and Enterprise SaaS companies through scalable lead generation campaigns. Brandon and his team have worked with companies such as Citrix, DocuSign, Oracle and more, along with countless startups and established professional services companies.
AMY ROBINSON
Amy is a strategic adviser, thought partner and executive coach. She has a long history of diagnosing and addressing organizational challenges and coaching leaders to thrive in high growth environments. With 15+ years as a Chief People Officer in private and public tech companies, she is adept at recognizing patterns and nimbly working through the complexities that come with rapid growth and scale.
Amy founded Pivotal Moments in 2019 to provide executive coaching and HR advisory services to leaders in growth companies. Amy brings high energy and a focused approach to every client relationship. She has a proven ability to help her clients increase self-awareness, shift mindset and gain the necessary clarity and new skills to navigate through the pivotal moments that shape careers and transform lives.
Throughout her career, Amy has coached hundreds of leaders to level up their game by challenging them to expand their thinking, shift perspective, and embrace new possibilities. Amy is very motivated to help clients reduce stress and achieve momentum, resulting in significant performance gains for leaders and their teams.
Daniel Stevenson
Daniel has over 25 years of experience in early-stage and larger software companies creating and implementing go-to-market strategies and revenue-generating partnerships.
He was most recently the head of growth at Foodspace, a pre-Series A company, and prior to that he was the CRO at Promoboxx, where he headed up the sales, marketing, and client success organizations. Previously he was the Vice President of Business Development at Backupify, and before that Daniel held partnership, channel, and marketing leadership roles at Iron Mountain, LiveVault, THINQ, eRoom, and Rational Software.
Daniel works with early-stage companies to help them create and execute their go-to-market and partnership strategies.
Kyle Vamvouris
Jenny Vance
Jenny brings over 20 years of experience in revenue leadership for technology companies. Her first entrepreneurial endeavor helped her develop unique experience helping over 350 companies build strong performing TOFU initiatives that drive BDR/SDR performance and pipeline creation. Now as Founder/CEO of SalesJen, her mission is to partner with high growth companies to craft sales enablement strategies that strike this balance of art and science at scale. With her help, new sales people hit aggressive ramp milestones, deliver consistently in win rate and readily adjust to new GTM signals and strategies. BDR teams see unprecedented quota performance while delivering boardroom-ready insights about key segments, cadence duration, messaging indicators and more. Sales teams have confidence in their solution knowledge, competitive landscape and ideal customer personas. Sales Leaders have a partner to build predictable forecasts, strategic GTM motions and scalable sales processes. Jenny is energized by anything competitive and currently exercises that drive in golf, ballroom dance, and pickleball. She adores her three dogs who have developed quite the TikTok following. Don’t ask her about it unless you really want to know!
JOSH WALOVITCH
Josh advises Companyon Ventures and supports its portfolio companies with go-to-market strategy development, content marketing, and optimizing lead and sales generation campaigns. He is Strategy Director and Co-founder of Ideometry, a full-service, growth marketing agency serving a range of clients from venture-funded startups to established worldwide brands. Josh has been at the forefront of marketing and digital strategy for 10 years and has worked with countless clients including Thomson Reuters, Intralinks, and 88 Acres.ng Goods, Symphony Ventures (a Sykes Company), and Charles River Laboratory.
Tim Walsh
Tim has over 25 years in corporate and product marketing with both Global 1000 enterprises and venture-backed technology companies in SaaS, enterprise software, infrastructure, payments, high tech distribution and life sciences.
In 2008 he started Walsh Group Marketing to fill the content, time and resource gaps that many startup technology companies face in their go-to-market efforts. His experience includes both direct sales and channel distribution models in payments, online self-service, virtualization, e-commerce, supply chain management, healthcare and biotech. He brings a strategic, results-oriented, hands-on approach to corporate marketing, communications and content development with strong writing, project management and interpersonal skills. He also works with a trusted network of partner resources.
Tim's core capabilities include messaging, positioning, public relations, analyst relations, content development (for web, blogs, PR, collateral, presentation, multi-media) as well as research and competitive analysis.
Scott Wheeler
Jeremy Aber
Jeremy has spent the past 29 years as a business attorney, with the past 10 years focusing on only helping growing SaaS and software companies speed up their go-to-market agreements. Jeremy runs a law firm that exclusively helps SaaS and software companies develop their templates and negotiate deals with their customers. Jeremy was General Counsel at OpenView Venture Partners in Boston and ScriptLogic (acquired by Quest Software) in Florida, and headed up software licensing at BMC Software in Houston. Jeremy also has passed the Certified Public Accountants' exam.
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