The SaaS Report’s Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2018

It gives us great pleasure to announce The SaaS Report’s (now The Software Report) Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2018. These CEOs were selected largely based on the detailed reviews we received from their respective employees and industry colleagues. We received nearly 5,000 nominations on behalf of hundreds of CEOs. CEOs were assessed across a number of key areas including integrity, intelligence, energy, company culture, and company growth, among other areas.

We also evaluated closely the comments employees and colleagues submitted about a CEO's particular strengths as well as improvement areas. In many cases, it was evident that a CEO had developed such unique leadership skills that they were held in high esteem by seemingly everyone they worked with and were markedly more effective than their fellow CEOs in the industry. Notably, CEO caliber did not necessarily correlate with organization size or amount of capital raised.

We congratulate each of the awardees of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2018.

1. Reggie Aggarwal
Company: Cvent
Category: Event Management
Location: Tysons Corner, VA

Reggie Aggarwal is Founder, CEO and Chairman of Cvent. He leads over 3,200 employees in solidifying the company as the preeminent cloud-based event management software company. Cvent has over 28,000 customers using its software in over 100 countries. The entrepreneur first cut his teeth in business 17 years ago when he left his career as an attorney to start Cvent. This year alone, the Company is aiming to hire 1,000 people while opening more offices across the globe.

An inspiration to many, Reggie has won a number of accolades through the years including Most Admired CEO and CEO of the Year of Washington by the Washington Business Journal. Cvent went public on the NYSE in 2013 and was subsequently bought out three years later in 2016 by Vista Equity Partners. In 2017, Reggie joined the Board of Directors of Marketo, another Vista portfolio company.

Read more: Top SaaS CEO Reggie Aggarwal, A Leader By Nature

2. Adam Miller
Company: Cornerstone OnDemand
Category: Talent Management
Location: Santa Monica, CA

Adam Miller founded Cornerstone OnDemand, a cloud-based learning and human capital management software company, in his apartment in 1999. He has the led the company through significant growth and global expansion. Since 2007, Cornerstone has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 50% and generates nearly $500 million in revenue. With close to 30 million users in 191 countries, Cornerstone counts over 3,250 companies as clients and employs individuals in over 24 countries around the world. Following a successful IPO in 2011, Cornerstone’s market capitalization has increased roughly 5x to over $3 billion.

The Company has been named to Fortune’s “Best Workplaces to Give Back” list and “25 Best Workplaces in the Bay Area.” In addition to his role at the helm of Cornerstone, Adam speaks frequently on entrepreneurship, philanthropy, technology, and management. He is on the board of MINDBODY and is an active social entrepreneur. Earlier in his career Adam was an investment banker and consultant. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA (MBA, JD).

3. Nick Mehta
Company: Gainsight
Category: Customer Success
Location: Mountain View, CA

Nick Mehta joined Gainsight as CEO in 2013. Previously, he served in leadership roles, including as the CEO of LiveOffice during its growth and successful sale to Symantec for over $100 million. Nick has also served as an executive in residence at Accel Partners and as a general partner at Acceleprise San Francisco. Under Nick’s leadership, Gainsight has raised over $150 million from blue-chip investors including Bessemer, Insight, Lightspeed, Battery Ventures, and Summit Partners.

As a testament to the strength of the Company’s customer success software, Gainsight has partnered with over half of the publicly traded cloud-based companies, including Box, Cornerstone OnDemand, DocuSign, Hubspot, and Salesforce.com. Due in part to Nick’s focus on continuous innovation, a healthy employee culture, and high-levels of customer service, Gainsight revenues have increased by more than 1000% over the past three years. Nick graduated from Harvard with a BA in Biochemistry and MS in Computer Science.

Read more: Under Nick Mehta’s Charge, Gainsight Bets Software Will Improve The Customer Relationship

4. Amy Zupon
Company: Vertafore
Category: Insurance Technology
Location: Denver, CO

Amy Zupon joined Vertafore as CEO shortly following Bain and Vista Equity’s 2016 purchase of the insurance software company for $2.7 billion. Amy brings a wealth of experience in software leadership roles, including prior CTO, COO, and CEO positions at P2 Energy Solutions. With over 500,000 insurance professionals and 90 of the top 100 insurance agencies utilizing Vertafore’s software, Amy has continued to position the company to tackle the insurance industry’s most pressing challenges such as the ongoing effects of digital disruption.

Since joining the Company, Amy has been instrumental in several major decisions, including moving the company’s headquarters to Denver, Colorado in 2017. The Company has hired more than 600 employees since the move and Amy has established a new corporate strategy based on “centers of excellence” to ensure world-class service and support to customers. Amy also maintains a passion for service and has set up Vertafore programs that provide paid volunteer time and matching donations to non-profit causes.

Read more: Vertafore Chief Amy Zupon Applies Her Desire To Help

5. Colin Day
Company: iCIMS
Category: Talent Management
Location: Holmdel, NJ

After graduating from Cornell University and briefly working as an IT recruiter, Colin Day founded iCIMS in 2000 with the goal of providing applicant tracking software that solved the industry’s most pressing needs. Since its founding, Colin has continued to expand iCIMS’ product suite, positioning the Company as a leader in the broader talent acquisition software space. Under Colin’s leadership, iCIMS has consistently outperformed its competitors and redefined industry standards.

The Company has over 700 employees, profitably generates over $150 million in annual recurring revenue, and serves more than 3,500 customers across 70 countries. In addition to organic growth in excess of three times the overall market, Colin has overseen the successful completion of multiple strategic acquisitions, including Job Magic (2012) and Text Recruit (2018). Colin is continually recognized as a top performing CEO, garnering one of the highest ratings on Glassdoor.com in 2018 and 2015 and receiving Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award among other accolades.

Read more: For iCIMS’ Founder, Success is Built on Relentless Innovation

6. Jean-Luc Robert
Company: Kyriba
Category: Treasury Management
Location: New York, NY

Jean-Luc Robert has been Chairman and CEO of Kyriba since 2003. The Company’s solution helps large enterprises manage their cash across global bank accounts while mitigating risk from foreign exchange volatility and preventing fraud and cybercrime. Jean-Luc has built Kyriba into a dominant SaaS player in treasury management with over 1,800 firms and 65,000 people using its software.

The Company is continuing to grow at a fast clip reported at 50% annually based on first half 2018 revenues. Previously, Jean-Luc was the founding Chairman and CEO of European Engineering Software, a leading provider of financial software that was acquired by SunGard Data. He was also the founding chairman and CEO of Eurosept Associés, a successful consulting firm acquired by EDS. Kyriba’s clients represent a broad range of industries from mid-size organizations to Fortune 500 multinationals.

7. Matt Cain
Company: Couchbase
Category: Enterprise Data Management
Location: Mountain View, CA

Matt Cain joined Couchbase as CEO and Board Member in 2017. The Company is leading the enterprise data revolution with a software platform that enables large organizations to deliver richer and more personalized customer and employee experiences. Previously, Matt was President of Worldwide Field Operations for Veritas, where he led a 4,200 person team and was responsible for all aspects of sales, customer retention, channels, services and support.

With a background in electrical engineering from Northwestern University and a Stanford MBA, Matt has excelled quickly in his career demonstrated by sequential promotions in elite organizations such as Symantec and Cisco. Couchbase is backed by Accel Partners, Adams Street Partners and Mayfield, among other notable investors. The Company’s customers include industry leaders AT&T, Carrefour, Cisco, Comcast, Disney, eBay, Marriott, Neiman Marcus, Tesco, United, Verizon, Wells Fargo, as well as hundreds of other household names.

8. Eric Johnson
Company: Nintex
Category: Workflow Automation
Location: Bellevue, WA

With over 20 years of financial and operational leadership at mid- and large-sized software businesses, Eric joined Nintex as CFO in 2014. Following the Company’s recapitalization by Thoma Bravo, Eric was promoted to CEO. Nintex has been busy under Eric’s leadership. With annual revenue in excess of $100 million and more than 7,500 customers across 90 countries, the Company continues to build on its success.

In July, Eric oversaw Nintex’s acquisition of Promapp to further enhance existing capabilities in process management, setting up the company for further growth in the fast-growing intelligent process automation space. Nintex oversees intelligent process automation, document generation, process mapping, advanced workflows, mobile apps and forms, and a variety of other services for partner organizations. Prior to Nintex, Eric held leadership roles with Jive Software and Serena Software.

Read more: Transparency, Respect Dictate Johnson’s Decision Making At The Helm Of Nintex

9. Neil Moses
Company: Mi9 Retail
Category: Retail Technology
Location: Miami, FL

Neil has been CEO of Mi9 Retail since 2014. He has extensive experience in executive-level operational and corporate development positions. Mi9 Retail offers solutions for most retail verticals that include merchandising, store operations, customer engagement, e-commerce, and business analytics. Previously, Neil served as Vice President of Operations for Perceptive Software, a subsidiary of Lexmark International, which he joined as part of Lexmark’s acquisition of Brainware in 2012.

Neil had previously served as Chief Operating Officer of Brainware, President and co-founder of Rogomo, Inc. (where he launched WeTutor.com), and held a number of senior-level positions at AOL. In 2017, Mi9 Retail received a strategic investment from General Atlantic. The Company has seven offices around the world and over 300 global customers including Barney’s New York, Christian Dior, Jardiland, Levi Strauss, Little Tikes, London Jewelers, Spencer Gifts, Talbots, and Tea Collection.

10. Fran Craig

Company: Unanet
Category: Project Management
Location: Dulles, VA

In 1988, Fran Craig founded Computer Strategies out of her basement in Northern Virginia. Initially positioned as a professional IT services firm, she morphed Computer Strategies into a software product company providing cloud ERP for professional services and project based firms. Under Fran’s leadership, the Company, eventually rebranded as “Unanet”, has grown at an average of 20% per year over the last 10 years.

Today, Unanet has over 1,000 customers across the world and employs over 150 individuals in the Washington DC area. A rarity in today’s market, Unanet is debt free, profitable, and entirely owned by Fran and her employees. She frequently speaks on entrepreneurship, women in business, and project management. After graduating from St. Mary’s College at Notre Dame and working as a computer programmer at AT&T, Fran spent time at Carnegie Mellon expanding opportunities for women in technology.

Read more: Unanet CEO and Founder Fran Craig

11. Tracy Young
Company: PlanGrid
Category: Construction Software
Location: San Francisco, CA

As CEO and co-founder of PlanGrid, Tracy Young is a 33-year old first-generation Asian-American disrupting two historically male-dominated industries: construction and technology.  As a civil engineer, Tracy helped build Bay Area regional hospitals and struggled with problems arising from the lack of technology available to the construction industry. To tackle these problems, Tracy co-founded PlanGrid and recognized early on construction workers loved the intuitive mobile-based product she and her three co-founders had built.

Tracy’s mother taught her about profitability at an early age: “It’s simple: make more than you spend,” an approach that led PlanGrid to generate revenue first, then approach venture capital sources for funding -- the antithesis of what most start-ups do. Under Tracy’s leadership and vision, PlanGrid has grown to more than 350 employees, its technology is now used on more than 1 million construction projects in 90 countries. PlanGrid’s investors include Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund and Y Combinator, among others.

12. Dan Rodrigues
Company: Kareo
Category: Billing Management
Location: Irvine, CA

Dan Rodrigues founded Kareo in 2004 to simplify medical office operations with web-based billing software. Today Kareo supports over 45,000 physicians and other healthcare providers and in 2017 processed more than $18 billion in insurance claims. There are over 60 million patient records currently managed on the Kareo platform. Born in California in 1975, Dan was raised by entrepreneurial parents, a factor which contributes to his success.

Under Dan’s leadership, Kareo has created the most user-friendly, easy-to-buy, and easy-to-setup software on the market. Prior to Kareo, Dan created technology for the healthcare industry as a co-founder of Skematix, a software consulting firm. In the 90’s he was the co-founder and CEO of Scour, a search engine for finding music and video files online that was used by more than 10 million consumers.

13. Chris Golec
Company: Demandbase
Category: Marketing Technology
Location: San Francisco, CA

Chris Golec is founder and CEO of Demandbase. He has built three successful technology businesses in the last 18 years. With Demandbase, Chris's mission is to transform B2B advertising, marketing and sales through innovations in digital technology. Hundreds of blue-chip enterprises such as Accenture, Adobe, DocuSign, GE, and Salesforce have adopted Demandbase's platform technology. The Company was recently named a leader in ABM Platforms by Forrester.

Prior to starting Demandbase, Chris founded Supplybase to help global manufacturers collaborate with their supply chain and prior to that he held multiple sales, marketing and engineering positions with GE, DuPont, and GM. Demandbase connects to the technologies of more than 25 partners, including Adobe, Google Doubleclick and Google Analytics, ExactTarget, Oracle (Eloqua), Marketo, and Salesforce. The Company’s backers include Sageview, SilverLake, Scale Venture Partners, and Sigma Partners among others.

14. Doug Merritt
Company: Splunk
Category: Machine Data
Location: San Francisco, CA

Doug Merritt is CEO of Splunk. The Company provides operational intelligence software that monitors, reports, and analyzes real-time machine data. With a market capitalization of nearly $15 billion, Splunk generates ~$1.4 billion in revenue. The Company employs over 3,200 employees. Before being anointed Splunk's CEO, Doug Merritt was the Company's SVP for Field Operations.

The Company continues to grow out its product suite with the addition of machine learning to its enterprise and cloud products, along with new event analytics capabilities in Splunk’s IT service intelligence product. Doug expects his firm to continue to grow to a $20 billion valuation. He has held a series of high profile positions including SVP of Product at Cisco Systems, CEO of Baynote, EVP of SAP and VP of PeopleSoft. Doug graduated from the University of Pacific.

15. Ryan Urban
Company: BounceX
Category: Marketing Technology
Location: New York, NY

Following his role as Head of Customer Acquisition at Bonobos, Ryan Urban founded BounceX in 2012. Since then, Ryan has led the behavioral marketing and analytics software company through massive growth and change. Often praised for his bold leadership style, Ryan and the BounceX team achieved impressive growth over a three-year period, winning Inc.com’s “Fastest Growing Software Company in America” award in 2016. With global clients like Uniqlo, Jetblue and Hugo Boss, Ryan attributes the company’s success to putting value in front of revenue, hustling, and not shying away from polarizing decisions.

Under Ryan’s leadership, BounceX has been consistently praised as a leader in employee retention and workplace culture. Earlier this year, the Company raised $37 million in Series B funding led by Battery Ventures with participation from existing investors. Over the next two years, the Company is planning to expand to 600 employees globally with a concentration in its NYC and UK offices. Today, over 350 companies work with BounceX. Ryan is frequently touted as a thought leader in the marketing technology space regularly called on by Forbes, TechDay, Entreprenuer.com, and Ad Age.

Read more: BounceX Founder, Ryan Urban, Rockets Into The Top 15 SaaS CEOs

16. Brad Brooks
Company: OneLogin
Category: Cybersecurity
Location: San Francisco, CA

Brad Brooks was recruited to OneLogin in 2017 and since then has made great strides in positioning the identity and access management company for its next ambitious phase of growth. The Docusign and Microsoft veteran has more than 25 years of experience leading global technology organizations. At Docusign, as Chief of Marketing, Product and Engineering, he helped grow the company to more than 200 million users across more than 150 countries. And at Microsoft, he spent nine years leading its Windows commercial and consumer businesses.

OneLogin offers of a portfolio of identity as a service solutions that unifies access for both on-premise and SaaS applications, helping enterprises drive new levels of business integrity, operational speed and team efficiency. Notably, Brad’s experience gives the company a big edge in innovating and defining product strategy as well as in accelerating sales across target markets.

Read more: OneLogin Leads By Collaboration Not Consensus

17. Greg Flynn
Company: Brainshark
Category: Sales Enablement
Location: Waltham, MA

Greg Flynn co-founded sales enablement provider Brainshark in 1999. For nearly two decades the Company has helped businesses improve the way they communicate with, educate and inspire their customer-facing teams. Greg has played a central role in Brainshark’s evolution playing a number of leadership roles from sales to engineering to customer success before being named President in 2013 and ultimately CEO in early 2016.

Today, thousands of customers – including companies from more than half the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to achieve better results from their sales enablement initiatives. Prior to Brainshark, Greg was the Director of Professional Services with Progress Software Corporation, a division which he grew from $5.5 to $30 million in 4 years. He spent the earlier part of his career as a software engineer for Software AG.

18. Manish Sood
Company: Reltio
Category: Enterprise Data Management
Location: Redwood Shores, CA

Manish founded Reltio in 2011, which he has grown impressively since. Reltio is a self-learning data platform that organizes enterprise data helping organizations apply the power of data and analytics to their business operations. Prior to Reltio, Manish led product strategy and management at Informatica and Siperian. He has architected some of the largest and most widely used data management solutions deployed by Fortune 100 companies today.

Backed by NEA, Sapphire Ventures, and Crosslink Capital, Reltio is expanding quickly into the multi-billion dollar data management market. The Company is delivering to the market a solution to the age old problem of bringing IT and business teams together on one platform to collaborate based on data driven intelligence.

19. Alex Terry
Company: Conversica
Category: Lead Engagement
Location: Foster City, CA

Alex Terry is the CEO of Conversica, a leader in conversational AI for business and AI-driven customer engagement solutions for marketing and sales organizations. Terry has over 20 years of management experience in high-growth SaaS, artificial intelligence and machine learning companies. Prior to Conversica, Terry was CEO at Become, Inc., a shopping analytics platform and previously held executive roles with Zoomerang.com and AOL/Time Warner. Terry holds multiple patents for his work in internet services, integrated communications, and interactive billing systems.

Conversica’s patented conversational AI platform is used by over 1,200 companies. The software conducts human-like conversations and takes actions to help businesses accomplish specific objectives. Conversations are personalized and support multiple communication channels, such as email and SMS/text, across multiple languages and countries. The Company’s AI Assistants, which have reached out to over 60 million people, are built on a platform integrating natural language processing, natural language generation, and machine learning.

Read more: Transparency, Honesty: The Cornerstone Of Conversica’s CEO Management Style

20. Marc Benioff
Company: Salesforce
Category: CRM
Location: San Francisco, CA

As founder and CEO of Salesforce, Marc is one of the leading figures of the SaaS industry. His prescient vision of where software was heading decades ago, has created for him a tremendous life. Yet with an estimated net worth in excess of $4 billion, Marc continues to pursue growth – through a star studded conference known as Dreamforce, a company culture that’s more akin to family celebration and by acquiring new technologies that fit into the Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce is a global cloud computing company that develops CRM solutions and provides business software on a subscription basis.

Marc founded Salesforce in 1999 after a successful 13-year run as an executive with Oracle. He brought Salesforce public in 2004. Today, the Company has over 30,000 employees and generates over $10 billion in revenue annually. Benioff is a noted philanthropist and established a corporate means dubbed 1-1-1 for giving back to the communities it serves globally. He and his wife are dedicated to improving public education and advancing children’s healthcare through UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

21. Vineet Jain
Company: Egnyte
Category: Enterprise Collaboration
Location: Mountain View, CA

Vineet Jain was born and raised in India and has always possessed a passion for technology and engineering. After receiving his BS in Engineering from Delhi College, he moved to the United States to capitalize on his desire to start a business. In 2001, Vineet founded Valdero, which was backed by notable investors Kleiner Perkins, Mohr Davidow, and Trinity ventures. Valdero was sold in 2006 and Vineet shifted his focus to the content sharing and information governance space.

In 2007, Egnyte was born. In the years since, Egnyte has grown to over 350 employees worldwide and has secured more than $60 million in funding from investors like Kleiner Perkins, GV, and Polaris. Regularly appearing on Bloomberg and CNBC, Vineet is a thought leader in the startup world, often providing his views on how to successfully grow businesses. Vineet has led Egnyte through periods of consistent rapid growth and is now focused on improving the capital efficiency of the Company while contemplating a potential 2019 IPO.

22. Ron Antevy
Company: E-Builder
Category: Construction Management
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Ron Antevy founded E-Builder alongside his brother Jon in 1995. With a family background in construction, Ron saw the opportunity to introduce software solutions to reduce runaway costs and inefficiencies rampant in many large-scale projects. Building on its South Florida heritage, E-Builder has amassed an impressive list of clients, including Jackson Health System, the City of Boynton Beach, and HCA Healthcare. Over the last 23 years, Ron has successfully led the company through 20% average yearly growth, amassing 400 clients and employing over 200 professionals.

The Company’s software currently manages projects worth in excess of $300 billion across North America. Ron States, “We are most proud of the improvements we’ve made to hospital, school and government construction to benefit patients, students, and taxpayers – it’s meaningful and rewarding work.” In August 2018, the Company was acquired by Trimble for $500 million in cash. Ron will retain his position as CEO and the Company will maintain the E-Builder brand.

Read more: eBuilder CEO Ron Antevy: Build Friendships and Trust To Increase Productivity

23. Dan Latendre

Company: Igloo Software
Category: Enterprise Collaboration
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

Dan Latendre has more than 20 years of experience in developing and marketing leading internet-based solutions, including roles at MKS, Delrina, and OpenText. In 2004, Dan became the CIO of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which would become the basis of Igloo. Over time, Dan has built Igloo into the leading next-generation intranet platform, addressing challenges related to communication, collaboration, knowledge management, employee engagement, and culture.

Drawing on his wealth of experience, Dan has successfully led Igloo from a start-up to a globally recognized company, now experiencing explosive growth. In 2017, Igloo reached a significant milestone, with 1 billion monthly interactions on its digital workplace platform. Igloo concluded fiscal year 2017 with a 75% increase in new business and 51% percent overall growth. Additionally, the Company signed globally recognized customers in the last year, such as Caesar's Entertainment, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others.

Read more: At Igloo Software Fully Connected Employees Is Essential

24. Tiago Paiva
Company: Talkdesk
Category: Customer Success
Location: San Francisco, CA

Tiago Paiva, originally from Portugal, always knew he wanted to start a company. Burdened by the lack of a startup community in Portugal, Tiago taught himself how to code and earned a master’s degree in engineering before setting his sights on the US. In 2011, he presented the initial version of Talkdesk at a Twilio hackathon. The initial idea was focused on disrupting the call center and customer support industry, a space defined historically by expensive rollouts and long implementations.

Tiago ended up winning the Twilio competition and securing a spot in 500 Startups’ incubator program. In the seven years since, Tiago has led Talkdesk through a period of explosive growth. The Company has grown from 10 to over 300 employees, secured more than 1,400 customers across 50 countries, and facilitated in excess of 100 million calls on the platform. The Company’s backers include Salesforce Ventures and DFJ. Tiago and the Company have been recognized by GetApp, G2 Crowd, and have been named to the Forbes Cloud 100 list.

25. Dave O’Brien
Company: Zywave (former)
Category: Insurance Technology
Location: Milwaukee, WI

Dave rose from founding sales SVP to CEO guiding Zywave from its beginnings as a start-up to becoming a premier leader in the industry generating $100 million in revenue. Zywave is the leading provider of solutions for the insurance industry and transitioned to a SaaS platform in 1999 becoming one of the pioneers with the business model. More than 3,500 brokerages worldwide, including more than 90 of the top 100 U.S. insurance firms, use Zywave’s solutions to enhance client services and improve operating efficiencies.

In 2013 Dave was promoted to CEO and drove double digit organic revenue growth while also overseeing four acquisitions. During this time Dave increased EBITDA margins by over 36%. He has gone through two exits that returned hundreds of millions of dollars to investors. Dave currently works as a consultant and investor with Elevara Growth to boost sales performance for SaaS companies.

Editor's Note: In April 2018, Jason Liu transitioned into the CEO role for Zywave.

26. Todd Olson
Company: Pendo
Category: Software Collaboration
Location: Raleigh, NC

Todd Olson is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a product cloud that tracks 1.5 billion user actions per day and improves the product experience for its 80 million users each month. A proficient coder by age 14, Todd spent his teen years working as a database designer and software architect for MBNA Bank in Delaware. By the time he graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, he had invented a data integration product, co-founded Cerebellum Software, and raised capital.

Prior to Pendo, Todd co-founded 6th Sense Software which he later sold to Rally Software where he went on to lead their product team. After Rally’s IPO in 2013, he teamed up with fellow product leaders and technologists from Red Hat, Cisco and Google to form Pendo. Today the Company provides user insight, user guidance and user communication for digital product teams around the world. The Company is backed by Battery Ventures, Spark Capital and Meritech Capital.

27. Tobias Lutke
Company: Shopify
Category: E-Commerce
Location: Ottawa, Ontario

Tobias Lütke is the CEO of Shopify, which he co-founded in 2004. The Company is a cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses. The company generated over $670 million in revenue in 2017 and has a market capitalization of ~$15 billion as of the time of this writing (Shopify went public in 2015). While Shopify has achieved stellar returns for its investors over the years, the Company still has a great deal of room to run, catering to business customers that want to sell their own products online.

As a former programmer, Tobias served as a member of the core team of Ruby on Rails Framework and he created various open-source libraries such as the Typo weblog engine, Liquid, and Active Merchant. Tobias received his first computer at age six and wrote code for his own computer games by age 12. He dropped out of high school as a 16-year-old and recalls his decision based on the fact that “computers were so much more interesting.”

28. Amir Movafaghi
Company: Mixpanel
Category: User Analytics
Location: San Francisco, CA

Amir Movafaghi was promoted to CEO of Mixpanel in early 2018 after serving as the Company’s Head of Operations and Finance for one year. Previously, Amir was dubbed “Mr. Fixit” at Twitter during its IPO and spent time as the CFO of Spiceworks. With close to $100 million in annual revenues and strong performance relative to projections, Amir has taken the helm of the Company at a good time.

Building on success by working with 30% of the Fortune 100 and current enterprise customers like BMW, Capital One, DocuSign, IBM, and Samsung, Amir plans to continue expanding Mixpanel’s work with large enterprises that are increasingly demanding strong data-driven insights. The Company has raised approximately $80 million from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Max Levchin (PayPal), and David Sacks (PayPal, Yammer). With substantial capital backing, Amir is well positioned to continuing executing on the Mixpanel mission while managing increased competition from big companies like Google and Adobe.

29. Isaac Oates
Company: Justworks
Category: Human Resources Management
Location: New York, NY

After experiencing firsthand the difficulty of setting up employee benefits at his prior company, Adtuitive (acquired by Etsy), Isaac Oates was convinced there was a better way. In 2012, he founded Justworks. The Company streamlines the process of benefits administration by providing payroll, benefits, and HR tools to small- and medium-sized businesses. In the years since, Isaac has led the Justworks team through nearly $100 million of funding from marquee investors like Index, Redpoint, Firstmark, Thrive, and Bain.

His leadership style, which is characterized by a no-nonsense and goal-based approach, was largely influenced by his military career and time spent in meetings with Jeff Bezos. With customers across all 50 states, the Company continues to experience significant growth. Isaac was named E&Y’s “2018 Entrepreneur of the Year” in New York. Justworks has dedicated teams serving major U.S. hubs including Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.

30. Dominic Gallello
Company: ERecruit
Category: Talent Management
Location: Boston, MA

Dominic Gallello has a 14-year track record building and managing large software companies. In early 2018, Dominic took over as President and CEO of ERecruit, a leading global provider of recruiting and staffing software solutions. Under Dominic’s leadership, the Company completed its combination with Bond International and TempBuddy, maintaining the ERecruit name. With a global footprint across 45 countries, ERecruit serves over 2,100 customers and 150,000 users.

The Company surpassed one million onboardings in June of 2018 and won two Gold 2018 Stevie Awards. In his prior role at MSC Software, Dominic shifted the company’s culture and managed the business to more than of $200 million in revenue prior to its sale to Hexagon AB for over $800 million in 2017. He has also served as CEO of Graphisoft, Chairman of ThalesNano, and Chairman of Purple. In his free time, Dominic enjoys contributing his time and talents to numerous philanthropic causes and has funded the construction of five orphanages in Romania.

Read more: Erecruit CEO Dominic Gallello on the 3 C’s of Leadership

31. John Donahoe
Company: ServiceNow
Category: IT Service Management
Location: Santa Clara, CA

John became CEO of ServiceNow in early 2017. The Company offers a cloud-based platform and solutions that define, structure, manage, and automate services for enterprise operations. ServiceNow went public in 2012 and currently generates approximately $2.0 billion in annual revenue. Previously John was President and CEO of eBay and prior to that President and CEO of Bain & Company.

During his time with eBay he made more than forty acquisitions including Shopping.com and StubHub. At Bain, he started as an associate consultant and remained with the firm for over 20 years where he was promoted sequentially eventually rising to CEO in 1999. John serves as Chairman of the Board for Paypal. He is a graduate of Stanford (MBA) and Dartmouth.

32. Frank Ruffolo
Company: EPAY Systems
Category: Human Resources and Payroll
Location: Chicago, IL

In less than a decade, Frank Ruffolo, CEO of EPAY Systems, has grown a small, SaaS-based, niche time and attendance company into a full-suite, human capital management provider aligned with some the world’s largest, most successful enterprises. EPAY Systems is a complete human resources and payroll solution designed for employers with a distributed, hourly workforce. Prior to joining EPAY, Ruffolo served as Executive VP of Sales and Marketing for CIMCO Communications, where he drove revenue growth exceeding 3x the industry average.

Before CIMCO, Frank played a crucial role in transforming InterCall from a $10 million web conferencing company to a $250 million communications powerhouse. EPAY sustains a steady 97% customer retention rate. The Company’s first customer remains a loyal customer today. The Northwestern MBA grad is passionate about connecting with EPAY customers. In 2013, he founded a customer advisory board comprised of a dozen key clients.

33. Mike Dickerson
Company: ClickDimensions
Category: Marketing Technology
Location: Atlanta, GA

Mike Dickerson is the Chief Executive Officer of ClickDimensions, a leading marketing technology platform that improves customer engagement, loyalty and up-sell potential. Mike joined ClickDimensions from PGi, a global provider of web conferencing software and collaboration technology, where he served as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. He also started PGi’s Global Collaboration Services division, growing it from $86 million to $240 million in revenue while serving as a trusted advisor to some of the most recognized brands around the globe.

A Stanford grad, Mike has been a CEO multiple times over with Vocalocity, a telecom software firm, PrimitiveRoot, an IP commercialization company, and College Concepts, a licensed apparel firm which he ran for his first 13 years out of college. Backed by Accel-KKR, the ClickDimensions marketing automation platform includes email marketing, campaign automation, web intelligence, forms, landing pages, surveys, lead scoring, social marketing and more.

34. Ralph Dangelmaier
Company: BlueSnap
Category: Payments
Location: Boston, MA

Ralph Dangelmaier has been CEO of BlueSnap since 2012. Since then, he has led the company to become a leading online global payments technology company focused on accelerating commerce for middle-market B2B and B2C businesses. Previously, Ralph was President of Global Markets and Services for ACI, which grew to over $900 million in revenue. He started his career as a VP Operations Manager with Bank of Boston.

Ralph developed a keen sense for unmet needs in the financial space by observing closely the way retailers, processors and financial institutions operated and interacted when it came to payments. He has a proven track record of growing companies both organically and through acquisitions. And by working tirelessly to forge partnerships with top financial institutions, payment partners and business platforms he has been able to provide small and medium businesses with an All-In-One payment solution, previously available to only large enterprises.

Read more: BlueSnap CEO Ralph Dangelmaier Upholds High Standards

35. John Blyzinskyj
Company: Elemica
Category: Supply Chain Management
Location: Wayne, PA

John joined Elemica as CEO and Board Member in 2012. The Company is the leading digital supply network for the process industries. John’s leadership was instrumental in changing the company’s culture, revamping each functional area from product management, to technology, to sales and marketing, and to other areas while redirecting resources to become a truly customer centric company.

Elemica manages approximately one million business transactions per day on behalf of global clients, allowing them to rapidly buy and sell and track one-half trillion dollars in global commerce each year. 85 of the world’s largest 100 chemical, oil, plastics and tire companies are clients. Prior to Elemica, John’s leadership roles included President of Avotus, Vice President with IBM, and European Director with Motorola.

Read more: Elemica’s CEO Focuses On Innovation Through Collaboration

36. Linda Crawford
Company: Helpshift
Category: Customer Engagement
Location: San Francisco, CA

Linda Crawford is the Chief Executive Officer of Helpshift, an AI-powered messaging-based customer service platform. Crawford was formerly the Chief Customer Officer at Optimizely and held several executive positions at Salesforce, most recently Executive Vice President and General Manager of Sales Cloud. Helpshift is adapting conventional customer service channels like email and phone support to modern times facilitating more communication through mobile phones and messaging.

Customers include Xfinity Home, Microsoft, Virgin Media, Zynga, Viacom, and hundreds of other leading brands. Helpshift is installed on two billion devices worldwide and serves more than 130 million active consumers monthly. Prior to Salesforce, Linda held executive positions at Siebel Systems and served on the board of directors at Demandware. Notably, Linda is passionate about supporting and mentoring women in the technology industry and as CEO of Helpshift, strives to make diversity a top priority at the Company and aims to influence other executives to do their part.

Read more: With Crawford At The Helm, Helpshift In Growth Mode

37. Eran Ben-Shushan
Company: Bizzabo
Category: Event Organization
Location: New York, NY

Eran Ben-Shushan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Bizzabo, an all-in-one event success platform and one of the fastest growing event tech companies in the world. He has led Bizzabo in winning the People’s Choice Award at the Event Tech Awards for three years in a row. Launched in 2012, Bizzabo provides event organization solutions through the cloud, which conference organizers can use to create websites, market their events, sell tickets, and execute other event related tasks.

Under Eran’s leadership, Bizzabo has attracted thousands of clients across the globe, and is considered one of Israel's most successful startups. Before co-founding Bizzabo, Ben-Shushaun served as the CEO of the Rosh-Pina Convention, and he was a team leader and systems engineer at Elbit Systems. He served in the Israeli Air Force for 9 years achieving the rank of Major. He was educated at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, where he graduated Cum Laude with a BA in Business & Entrepreneurship.

38. Don MacAskill
Company: SmugMug
Category: Digital Photo Management
Location: Mountain View, CA

Don MacAskill founded SmugMug in the early 2000s with the vision of enabling photographers to more easily and effectively store, share, and sell digital photos online. Grounded in a passion for the internet and digital photography, Don initially hired his father Chris before eventually convincing five additional MacAskills to join the SmugMug family. Since its early years, SmugMug has grown to over 200 employees and is now the largest independent photo-sharing and storage community in the world.

In a departure from industry norms, Don has never raised capital from outside investors, instead focusing on sustainably growing the business through a customer centric approach and a disciplined focus on the needs of the photographer. Emblematic of his commitment to photographers, Don guided SmugMug through its acquisition of Flickr in April 2018. With over 100 million users and tens of billions of photos shared, Flickr will significantly increase SmugMug’s scope and enable Don to continue serving photographers of all kinds.

39. H. John Oechsle

Company: Swiftpage
Category: Marketing Technology
Location: Denver, CO

H. John Oechsle joined Swiftpage in 2012 and currently serves as Chief Executive Officer. Act! CRM, Swiftpage's flagship product, enables small businesses to grow through sales and marketing tools and a flexible CRM platform. Act! has been a pioneer in its field for the last 30 years and today has millions of users worldwide. John came to Swiftpage with an over 30 year track record of building highly profitable emerging companies and establishing global leaders.

Prior to joining Swiftpage, John served in senior executive roles with DigitalGlobe, IHS Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Kellogg Company. Earlier this year, the Company launched its Premium Plus product in North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. John is an advocate for technology and education in Colorado and around the world through the Colorado Technology Association and OpenWorld Learning.

Read more: Swiftpage CEO: Vision, Purpose Keys To Highly Productive Workforce

40. Tien Tzuo
Company: Zuora
Category: Subscription Management
Location: Foster City, CA

Tien Tzuo is CEO of Zuora, which he co-founded in 2007 and took public in 2018. The Company provides cloud-based software on a subscription basis that enables companies across industries to successfully launch, manage, and transform into a subscription business. Zuora currently serve more than 950 customers in over 30 different countries across most industries. The Company has a market capitalization of ~$3.0 billion and in 2017 generated over $165 million in annual revenues, a nearly 50% increase over prior year revenues.

Prior to founding Zuora in 2007, Tien spent nine years at Salesforce as the 11th employee, working on the company’s original marketing and billing systems. He held senior level positions including CMO and Chief Strategy Officer. Tien earned a BS from Cornell and MBA from Stanford. He is widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the SaaS industry. Tien is on the Board of Directors for Network for Good.

41. Karl Redenbach
Company: LiveTiles
Category: Intelligent Workplaces
Location: New York, NY

Karl Redenbach is the Co-founder and CEO of LiveTiles. LiveTiles is a global software company that provides solutions and tools to build intelligent workplaces through AI, analytics and user interface design. In 2014, Peter Nguyen-Brown and Karl Redenbach founded LiveTiles with the intention of disrupting the status quo in business software tools and leading organizations into a new era of digital transformation.

Previously, Karl served as the CEO of nSynergy and Modun Resources. Karl had been working in the tech space for over 20 years when he realized that end users needed to be empowered to build their own intelligent workplaces without relying on others. Like others on this year’s Top 50 list, Karl is revered by his employees , "Karl has an engaging personality and brings an infectious energy into any room he is in. He truly leads from the front, with the entire company sharing in his passion and vision for LiveTiles. When Karl speaks it’s hard not to be excited and optimistic for all that is in store."

42. Katherine Kostereva
Company: bpm’online
Category: CRM / BPM
Location: Boston, MA

Katherine Kostereva is CEO of bpm’online, which she founded in 2013. bpm'online is a global business software company leading in the space of business process automation and CRM which provides an intelligent platform to accelerate sales, marketing, service and operations. She brings over 15 years of experience in enabling businesses to optimize sales, marketing, services, and overall operations for thousands of customers and hundreds of partners worldwide. Katherine has been ranked among the top 3 CEOs in Boston and recognized as one of the most influential women in BPM industry.

Katherine’s vision and strategy have led bpm'online to the highest customer satisfaction scores in the CRM and BPM sectors. She received over 240 nominations from her colleagues in the Top 50 SaaS CEOs process accompanied by volumes of notable comments highlighting her effectiveness as an exceptional leader. Her client portfolio includes companies such as Kraft Heinz, Bayer Crop Science, OKI, Adidas, L’Oreal and many others.

Read more: Bpm’online’s CEO Katherine Kostereva Wants More than Tech Skills from Her Employees

43. Stewart Butterfield
Company: Slack
Category: Workforce Collaboration
Location: San Francisco, CA

Stewart founded Slack in 2009 quickly garnering industry acclaim by clients. Slack is a team communication application providing services such as real-time messaging, archiving, and search for modern teams. The Company boasts large enterprise clients including ticketmaster, Airbnb, Target, CapitalOne and Oracle. Slack recently acquired its third company, Missions, a small startup with less than 10 people that makes it easy for anyone to automate routine processes and tasks in Slack.

Stewart has raised approximately $1.2 billion over time (11 rounds) from premier investors including General Atlantic, SoftBank, Thrive Capital, Social Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, GV and others. The Company has over 8 million daily active users, with approximately 3 million of those users being paid. Prior to Slack, Stewart was the co-founder of Flickr, a photo sharing website. He spent the first three years of his life in a log cabin without running water.

44. Yoav Schwartz
Company: Uberflip
Category: Marketing Technology
Location: Toronto, Canada

Uberflip was co-founded by Yoav Schwartz and Randy Frisch in 2012. The Company is a cloud-based content experience platform that empowers B2B marketers to create personalized content experiences at scale. To date, Uberflip has added more than 1,000 B2B companies to its customer roster, including Stantec, Schneider Electric, MongoDB, and Pivotal Software. Intentionally staying lean and without outside funding, they built a business funded by revenue, which led to raising a sizable series A round from Updata Partners.

Yoav grew up in an entrepreneurial household which led to designing websites in the late 90's and building web-apps in the early 2000’s. His path to CEO of a MarTech company was incredibly organic. Today, Uberflip is uniquely positioned to capitalize on some of the biggest marketing trends such as inbound marketing, ABM (account-based marketing), personalization, AI, and sales and marketing alignment.

45. Andrew Peterson
Company: Signal Sciences
Category: Cybersecurity
Location: Culver City, CA

Andrew founded Signal Sciences in 2014 to address a hole in web security that he and his co-founders identified while building the cybersecurity function at Etsy. Signal Sciences works across cloud, physical, and containerized infrastructure, providing actionable security prioritization based on where applications are targeted, and blocking attacks without breaking production traffic.

The Company, backed by CRV and Index Ventures, currently secures approximately 10,000 web applications for customers including some of the leading media, ecommerce, and financial services companies as well as other security companies. Customers include Under Armour, Adobe, Grubhub, One Medical, WeWork, and Vimeo. Andrew recently published an O'Reilly book on security called "Cracking Security Misconceptions”. The Stanford grad began his career with Google where he was a Strategic Partner Manager and Senior Product Specialist.

46. Todd Skokan
Company: BirdDogHR
Category: Talent Management
Location: Des Moines, IA

Todd Skokan joined BirdDogHR as CEO in 2013 when the Company was comprised of 12 employees. He brings more than 23 years of experience in SaaS and e-learning. BirdDogHR provides enterprises with human capital solutions including applicant tracking and recruitment tools. The Company has a special emphasis on construction, contractors and engineering firms. Since joining BirdDogHR Todd has added onboarding, learning, performance and succession modules to the platform technology.

Todd previously was the Vice President of Sales for Intelladon (acquired by Tribridge) and before that was Vice President Worldwide Channels for GeoLearning (acquired by SumTotal Systems). With his strong sales experience he has consistently grown revenues at BirdDogHR 58%, 32%, and 40%, in 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively, while maintaining customer retention at 95%. Moreover his strategic direction has aided in transforming the Company and product into a complete talent management solution for each stage of the employee lifecycle.

47. Dan Dal Degan
Company: SpringCM
Category: Document Management
Location: Chicago, IL

After joining SpringCM's Board of Directors in the spring of 2016, Dan moved into the CEO role in early 2017. SpringCM provides document management software to help businesses generate and locate content faster, collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, and automate workflows that accelerate the path to revenue. The Company’s customers represent all sectors of the global economy and include large enterprises such as ADP, Aetna, facebook, ING, Popsugar, Spotify, USDA and many others.

Prior to SpringCM, Dan served as President of Ensighten, a digital marketing software company where he grew revenues by 4X in two years. For over 11 years, Dan built and led Salesforce sales teams in the central United States and nationwide. He joined Salesforce in 2002 when they had fewer than 150 employees and less than $50 million in annual revenue. Dan is referenced by Marc Benioff, in his book, Behind the Cloud, as one of the inspiring leaders at Salesforce who shaped the successful cloud business model and culture.

48. Jay Larson

Company: Optimizely
Category: Customer Engagement
Location: San Francisco, CA

Jay Larson joined Opimizely in 2017 as CEO. He was previously CEO of Birst for three years and prior to that was President of Worldwide Field Operations for Jive Software. Optimizely is a leading experimentation platform, enabling businesses to deliver continuous experimentation and personalization across websites, mobile apps and connected devices. To date, marketers, developers and product managers using Optimizely have delivered over 700 billion experiences tailored to the needs of their customers. Jay earned a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from UCLA.

The Company has raised approximately $150 million and its backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Benchmark Capital among others. Its customers include 26 of the Fortune 100 and other leading global enterprises such as Microsoft, zendesk, H&R Block, WeightWatchers, ebay and opentable among many others. Headquartered in San Francisco, Optimizely also has offices in New York City, Austin, Amsterdam, London, Munich, Cologne and Sydney.

49. Rajeev Behera
Company: Reflektive
Category: Human Resources Management
Location: San Francisco, CA

After managing a team of 85 developers at Disney, Rajeev Behera experienced the difficulties of administering effective employee feedback first-hand. As a response, Rajeev founded Reflektive in 2014. The goal with Reflektive was simple: radically change the way businesses support and foster employee development and success. In every year since, Reflketive has raised capital from prominent investors, including its most recent $60 million round from TPG Growth, Andreessen Horowitz, and Lightspeed.

The rapidly growing business serves over 450 customers around the world, with notable customers like Comcast, Demandbase, Instacart, Braintree, and Imgur among others. In addition to large enterprises, Reflektive also works with mid-market companies, many of whom are underserved by other HR technology start-ups. On the heels of strong organic growth, Rajeev has now set his sights on broadening the scope of Reflektive’s product platform through acquisition. In June 2018, Rajeev oversaw Reflektive’s acquisition of Shape Analytics, a people analytics platform based in San Francisco.

50. Bird Blitch
Company: Patientco
Category: Financial Technology
Location: Atlanta, GA

Bird Blitch founded Patietntco in 2009 after receiving a deluge of hospital bills alongside the birth of his daughter. The initial idea for the Company centered around one core premise: the existing healthcare payment experience was broken and both providers and payors demanded a new solution. In what could be a scene out of a movie, Bird secured Patientco’s first customer after running into the COO of Eagle Hospital Physicians in an elevator. In the years since, Bird has successfully managed the Company through a period of sustained growth.

Touting a near 95% positive patient feedback score and a 20% to 30% increase in payment rates for providers, Patientco continues to disrupt the healthcare payments space. The Company has successfully reached 10 million unique users, processed over $1 billion in payments, and been integrated into more than 2,000 healthcare locations across the country. The Company has raised in excess of $30 million from investors BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Accel-KKR, and Sandbox Industries.