The Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2021

The Software Report is pleased to announce the Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2021. This year's CEO awardees represent some of the largest, fastest-growing, as well as unique software companies that are driving the industry forward. From banking technology to IT automation to trucking software and robotic surgery, these CEOs demonstrate that with vision and strong leadership, cutting edge technology thrives and spreads rapidly across the global business economy. Moreover, these CEOs have showcased their skill in cultivating a sound work environment that promotes fairness, diversity, and inclusion.

As in years past, the 2021 awardees were selected based on thousands of nomination submissions from colleagues, peers, and other software industry participants. Each nominee was evaluated closely and particular attention was paid to the written commentary provided. While it was very challenging to assign a ranking since each CEO selected is deserving of the utmost recognition, we were able to weigh the quality and consistency in the nominations submitted on behalf of each candidate in parallel with the overall size and strength of the organization they lead. We then conducted additional research into the company’s recent milestones. Please join us in recognizing The Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2021.

 

1. Max Chuard, Temenos

In almost 20 years with the company, Max Chuard has been instrumental in positioning Temenos as the World’s Number 1 Banking Software company and driving the next generation of cloud and AI based solutions. Since 2019 Chuard has been serving as CEO. In this position he's responsible for the company’s strategic direction and growth. In 2020 Chuard was recognized as the number 1 SaaS CEO — reflecting Temenos’ leadership position in cloud and SaaS technology. Chuard also chairs the company’s Global CSR & Ethics Committee and is a strong advocate for CSR, diversity, and the positive impact business can have in society.

Under his leadership, Temenos was named a leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability World (DJSI) and Europe Indices and also received the DJSI Bronze Class distinction for its excellent sustainability performance. An inspiring thought leader, Chuard speaks regularly at large scale events. Initially, Chuard joined Temenos in 2002, leading the company’s mergers and acquisitions strategy. He successfully drove 15 transactions including Akcelerant, Multifonds, Avoka, and Kony. In 2012 he became CFO of Temenos and in 2015 he was appointed COO in addition to his CFO role. During his tenure at Temenos, the company has increased its market value from $700 million to approximately $9 billion -– becoming the third-largest software company in Europe and one of the fastest-growing technology organizations in the world.

 

2. Shoaib Makani, KeepTruckin

ShoaibMakani is the CEO and Co-Founder of KeepTruckin, the leader in fleet management technology. Founded in 2013, the San Francisco-based company serves more than 100,000 businesses that power the physical economy by equipping them with the technology needed to improve the safety and efficiency of their operations. Makani and his co-founders Ryan Johns and Obaid Khan set out to serve the trucking industry, a workforce that is essential to the economy but underserved by technology companies. Today, KeepTruckin’s 400,000-strong network of connected vehicles, ranging from small trucking companies to Fortune 500 enterprises, is one of the largest in North America.

KeepTruckin’s products deliver integrated value for a diverse range of industries, from construction and oil and gas to distribution and moving and storage. At every turn, KeepTruckin provides cutting-edge hardware and software that leverages the latest advancements in AI and computer vision to solve a broad range of problems for businesses. Prior to founding KeepTruckin, Makani worked at Khosla Ventures, where he led investments in consumer and enterprise technology companies. Makani began his career at Google, focused on product management and marketing for Google Checkout. KeepTruckin’s series E round valued the company at $2.3 billion, and it currently employs more than 2,400 people worldwide.

 

3. Archie Black, SPS Commerce

As President and CEO of SPS Commerce since 2001, Archie Black has led the company to become a recognized leader in cloud-based supply chain management solutions. Today, SPS Commerce boasts the industry’s largest retail network and more than 80 consecutive quarters of increased revenues. As a cloud computing pioneer, Black has helped SPS Commerce transform the retail industry by replacing traditional enterprise software with a more responsive, agile retail platform.

Under his leadership, SPS Commerce has grown from a groundbreaking, disruptive idea into a powerhouse with an international presence. Prior to joining SPS Commerce, Black was a senior vice president and CFO at Investment Advisors. Prior to his time at Investment Advisors, Black spent three years at PriceWaterhouse. Among his numerous recognitions over the years, Black is the recipient of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s Titans of Technology. In addition, he is a frequent presenter at industry, investor, and academic events.

 

4. Fred Voccola, Kaseya

As CEO, Fred Voccola leads the vision, strategy, and growth of Kaseya and its family of brands. Founded in 2000, Kaseya is a leading provider of IT automation software for IT service providers. Kaseya's IT automation platform allows IT professionals to proactively monitor, manage, and maintain distributed IT infrastructures remotely, easily and efficiently, all with one integrated Web-based platform.

Prior to Kaseya, Voccola served as president and general manager of Yodle’s Brand Networks Division, providing digital and market automation solutions to small and medium businesses. In 2016, Yodle successfully was sold to Web.com. Prior to that, Voccola was president of Nolio, Inc., a devops SaaS company, where he drove 100% year-over-year growth and successfully sold the business to CA Technologies. Voccola also co-founded and served as president and CEO of Trust Technology Corp., where he drove significant growth over three years prior to the company’s sale to FGI Global. Earlier in his career, Voccola co-founded and served as COO of Identify Software, substantially growing the business during his five-year tenure, culminating in a sale to BMC Software. He then served as vice president of worldwide sales and services at BMC Software.

 

5. Chaim Indig, Phreesia

Since co-founding Phreesia in 2005, Chaim Indig has helped revolutionize patient intake. Under his leadership, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company has established a broad national footprint, developed strategic partnerships with some of the world’s largest healthcare companies, and earned accolades for its role in making healthcare more efficient and patient-centered. As Phreesia has grown and evolved, Indig has kept the company laser-focused on its mission of creating a better, more engaging healthcare experience.

The well-respected CEO has also fostered an innovative, supportive, and inclusive culture for Phreesia employees. This includes offering opportunities for collaboration, community, and career growth during the company’s transition to a 100% remote workforce in 2020. Prior to founding Phreesia, Indig held key roles at Spotfire and OLAP@Work. He is also a recognized business leader, trusted industry expert, and sought-after speaker. Among his many industry recognitions, Indig was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award and was featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review as a healthcare innovator.

 

6. Chris Cabrera, Xactly

Chris Cabrera is the Founder and CEO of Xactly, a pure-play, SaaS company that provides cloud-based enterprise software and services. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Xactly offers a renowned suite of tools to allow for sales performance management, sales effectiveness, sales compensation, and employee engagement. With more than two decades of successful senior management experience, Cabrera has led Xactly from a small startup in 2005 to a public company, followed by a $564 million private equity deal.

Shortly after founding Xactly, Cabrera established the XactlyOne Foundation, a non-profit coordinating volunteer opportunities, and projects for employees in local communities. To date, Xactly has raised and donated over $250,000 and more than 1,000 volunteer hours to organizations in need. Before Xactly, Cabrera held roles at Callidus Software and SGI. He currently serves as a Board Member of Wrike and TopOPPS. Additionally, Cabrera has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and is a regular contributing writer to Forbes. He was also named the “Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business.

 

7. Jonathan Cherki, Contentsquare

Passionate about data and statistics, Jonathan Cherki founded Contentsquare in 2012. Born in Marseille, France, Cherki was destined, like his father and brother, to join the family dry legume supply business started in 1950 by his grandfather. Instead, he gravitated towards the digital space during his college years. While studying at the ESSEC business school in France, he became fascinated with the gap between the digital experiences brands thought they were offering, and what consumers were actually getting. As a college assignment, he started to develop the digital performance measurement technology that would later become Contentsquare.

He has since served as CEO of his company, growing Contentsquare exponentially and promoting the importance of UX to optimize the customer journey. He believes knowledge is power, and his mission is to change the way companies work by creating a data-driven culture that is accessible to everyone. Ultimately, he wants to help create a world where every digital interaction improves our lives. In Spring 2017, Cherki moved to New York with his family to open Contentsquare’s headquarters in the Americas. What started off as a college assignment is now an international company with offices in nine countries and more than 750 international clients.

 

8. David F. Giannetto, WorkWave

David F. Giannetto serves as Chief Executive Officer of WorkWave, a company that connects all aspects of its clients’ business through its tightly integrated, mobile-first suite of software solutions. Founded in 1984, WorkWave's offerings include PestPac, PestPac Select, WorkWave Service, ServMan, Route Manager, WorkWave Payments, WorkWave Marketing, Real Green, and Slingshot. Over the years, the company has been recognized with multiple awards for its outstanding growth and culture, including the Inc. 5000, the SaaS Awards, and Best Places to Work in New Jersey.

Giannetto has nearly 20 years of experience leading and managing international organizations focused on the deployment and usage of enterprise-level technology in a wide range of service-oriented industries. Prior to his time as an executive for software companies, he was CEO of The Telos Group, and the practice lead of the nationally respected EPM consulting practice of J.H. Cohn (CohnReznick). Earlier in his career, he was a hands-on operational leader for Airborne Express and an Officer in the US Army. In addition, Giannetto is also the author of three books and a nationally respected thought-leader on how information and technology can drive business performance.

 

9. Eric Friedrichsen, Emburse

Eric Friedrichsen has nearly 30 years of experience driving growth for software companies. In January 2020 he assumed his biggest challenge of his career when he became the CEO of Emburse, a company that helps business travelers, finance professionals, and CFOs become more efficient by eliminating manual, time-consuming tasks. To date, Emburse's innovative solutions are trusted by more than 4.5 million users in more than 120 countries.

As CEO, Friedrichsen drives the overall strategic direction of the organization, from new market growth through to product direction. Prior to Emburse, he was Global Head of Commercial, SMB and Growth Markets for Marketo, a division of Adobe. Before joining Marketo, he was SVP and general manager for SAP’s North American mid-market and ecosystems division. Earlier in his career, Friedrichsen held sales, technical, and general management leadership positions at SAP Concur, Business Objects, and Information Builders. Friedrichsen has a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Iowa.

 

10. Mark Gruzin, Frontline Education

Mark Gruzin is the Chief Executive Officer for Frontline Education, a leader in school administration software. Educational organizations representing over millions of educators, administrators,and support personnel have partnered with Frontline Education in their efforts to develop the next generation of learners. As CEO, Gruzin is responsible for Frontline’s core strategy and vision -- leading the organization in their service of the K-12 education community. Gruzin also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Frontline Education.

"As a special needs advocate and parent, I feel especially aligned to the Frontline mission and have a deep first-hand appreciation for the important value that innovative technology solutions can provide to support programs and processes." Before Frontline, Gruzin was at Blackboard, an educational technology company, where he served as president of global markets. Before that, Gruzin held multiple executive roles in IBM’s software group. Gruzin attended the University of Maryland, Smith School of Business. As an active member of the special needs community, Gruzin also served on the Board of Directors for the National Fragile X Foundation and is a Special Olympics Coach.

 

11. Johnny Boufarhat, Hopin

Johnny Boufarhat is the Founder and CEO of Hopin, a company that provides live virtual events around the globe. With the Hopin platform, users can host a live training workshop, bring a company’s remote team together, or even launch a full-scale digital conference. Since being launched in 2019, Hopin has become one of the fastest-growing companies, exploding from six employees to more than 700 fully-remote employees located in 45 countries. So far 100,000+ organizations have used Hopin to virtually host events worldwide.

Already the platform has been used by well-recognized organizations, including WeTransfer, YMCA, Poshmark, and many more. In March 2021 Hopin closed its $400 million Series C, with a staggering valuation of $5.65 billion. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Boufarhat created Hopin because he was isolated at home with an autoimmune disorder. The moment of epiphany arrived when he realized there were limited options available to network and connect from anywhere. Following that isolating experience, Boufarhat's mission quickly became to make the world feel smaller and more connected.

 

12. Louis Têtu, Coveo

Louis Têtu is Chairman and CEO of Coveo. Têtu first joined as investor and Chairman in 2008, before assuming his role as CEO in 2012. Prior to Coveo, Têtu co-founded Taleo Corporation, a NASDAQ listed provider of cloud software for talent and human capital management which was acquired by Oracle. Previously, Têtu held the position of CEO and chairman of the Board of Directors from Taleo’s inception in 1999 through 2005, and was Taleo Corporation’s executive chairman from 2005 to 2007. Before that, Têtu was president of Baan SCS, the supply-chain management solutions division of Baan, a global enterprise software company. This followed Baan’s acquisition of Berclain Group Inc., which Têtu co-founded in 1989 and where he served as president until 1996. Têtu obtained an engineering degree from Laval University in 1985. He was recently named one of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2021 in Québec.

 

13. Harmeet Singh, RateGain

Harmeet Singh is the CEO of RateGain, a leading B2B SaaS company that works with leading travel and hospitality brands in unlocking more revenue every day. RateGain provides solutions for competitive intelligence, distribution, and digital marketing. Under Singh's leadership, RateGain has won several accolades for its innovation; as well as shown growth during the COVID pandemic.

Singh is a growth-oriented SaaS executive who previously was a President at j2 Global, Inc., where he led and managed the Cloud Services business, a $600M revenue division. On top of that, he oversaw various cloud-based SaaS and PaaS businesses focused on serving the MSP, SMB, and enterprise segments. Under his stewardship, revenues increased $175M through a combination of organic growth, global expansion, and acquisitions. Singh was responsible for the strategic direction, operational excellence, and M&A activities of the division.

Prior to j2 Global, Inc., Singh held various leadership roles within SingerLewak LLP, a leading regional advisory and assurance firm. He specialized in working with clients in the technology and media space. Over the course of his career, Singh has participated in over 100 M&A transactions focused in the technology and media sector.

 

14. James Brown, Smart Communications

James Brown is the CEO of Smart Communications. More than 650 global brands – many in the world’s most highly regulated industries – rely on Smart Communications to make multi-channel customer communications more meaningful, while also helping them simplify their processes and operate more efficiently. Smart Communications is headquartered in London and New York and serves its customers from offices located across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Brown joined the Smart Communications team in 2018, bringing more than 25 years of software experience with him. As Founder and CEO of Zinc Ahead, Brown quickly grew the company to become a leading provider of commercial content management solutions. It provided marketing compliance solutions for more than 100 of the largest pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology firms worldwide. Following Zinc Ahead’s acquisition by Veeva, Brown served as vice president and general manager of the company’s commercial content division. Most recently, Brown served as an Entrepreneur Advisor at Accel-KKR, where he worked on new investment opportunities and consulted with a number of companies across the portfolio.

 

15. Naveen Gupta, Birdeye

Naveen Gupta is the CEO and a Co-Founder of Birdeye. Founded in 2012, Birdeye is headquartered in Palo Alto, and led by alumni from Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and Yahoo. Birdeye helps businesses grow through happy customers. Over 60,000 businesses use Birdeye everyday to increase revenue. Using the Birdeye platform -- AI, messaging,automation tools -- businesses are delivering great customer experiences to 100M+ people.

Gupta has worn many hats during the course of his successful professional career. He is an entrepreneur, product innovator, and executive -- with over 20 years of experience building startups and managing $100 million-plus P&Ls at Fortune 500 companies. Prior to Birdeye, he was the CPO at RingCentral (IPO), and led products at Yahoo and UTStarcom (IPO). He graduated from the prestigious Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India, and earned an MBA from New York University in finance and international business. In his spare time, Gupta enjoys advising cloud startups and playing table tennis.

 

16. Bernadette Nixon, Algolia

Bernadette Nixon has a strong track record of growing and scaling global businesses. She is the CEO of Algolia, the Search-as-a-Service platform. With Algolia, consumers are able to find and discover what they want easily across web, mobile, and voice. More than 9,000 companies including Stripe, Under Armour, Slack, Medium, LVMH, Lacoste, Zendesk and Birchbox rely on Algolia to manage over 85 billion search queries a month. Algolia is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Paris, London, Tokyo, New York, and Atlanta.

Most recently, Nixon led Algolia in a new funding round that resulted in the company closing $150 million in funding and a new valuation of $2.25 billion. Prior to Algolia, Nixon served as CEO at Alfresco, where she led the open source content services provider in redefining its go-to-market strategy, launching strategic new products, and building a world-class team to scale the company’s growth. Nixon has also held leadership positions at SDL PLC., OpenText, Metastorm, CA Technologies, and the United Nations in Geneva. The CEO received her Bachelor of Arts degree in business studies and marketing from the University of Hertfordshire.

 

17. Gabe Rogol, Demandbase

Gabe Rogol is the CEO of Demandbase, a company that leverages the power of its AI-enabled ABM platform to specialize in account-based marketing. It is dedicated to helping B2B marketers achieve greater business impact. As CEO, Rogol is responsible for fulfilling the company's mission of transforming how B2B companies go-to-market. Since joining Demandbase in 2012, Rogol has been integral in setting the product and corporate strategy for the company.

Impressively, Rogol led Demandbase through three acquisitions and the launch of Demandbase One, the most complete suite of B2B go-to-market solutions. Under Rogol’s leadership, Demandbase has more than doubled revenue in two years; and has won multiple awards including Inc. 5000, the San Francisco Business Times Best Places to Work, JMP Securities list “The Hot 100: The Best Privately Held Software Companies,” and the Deloitte Fast 500 and Gartner’s Cool Vendor for Tech Go-To-Market. Throughout his two-plus decade career, Rogol has held numerous leadership positions, including managing world-class customer service and sales teams at IDG and other leading publishers.

 

18. Gary Kovacs, Accela

Gary Kovacs is Accela’s Chief Executive Officer, overseeing the company’s mission-driven growth, strategic direction, and long-term value for its stakeholders. Accela provides market-leading SaaS solutions that help governments worldwide to build thriving communities, grow businesses, and protect citizens' services. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in San Ramon, California. Kovacs has more than 25 years of enterprise software and mobile technology industry leadership and executive management experience.

Prior to Accela, Kovacs served as CEO of AVG Technologies, a global leader in consumer and enterprise security software. Previous to this, he was CEO of Mozilla. He also held senior executive positions at SAP (Sybase), Adobe (Macromedia), and IBM. On top of that, Kovacs was a founder of NASDAQ-listed Zi Corporation. Kovacs is a board member for numerous mission-driven technology companies and not-for-profits, including Make-A-Wish, and Runway Capital. He also serves on the advisory boards of DocuSign and the University of Calgary. Kovacs attended the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, earning a Masters in Business Administration degree and a Bachelors in Commerce with a major in finance.

 

19. Neil Moses, Mi9 Retail

Neil Moses is the CEO of Mi9 Retail, a leading provider of enterprise SaaS solutions for retailers, wholesalers, and brands. In 2020, Moses led the company's launch of a new digital commerce brand called ThryveAI to help retailers launch a seamless, unified shopping experience across digital and physical storefronts. ThryveAI positioned Mi9 as a leader in the growing ecommerce market and catapulted the company to significant growth.

Prior to his role at Mi9, Moses served as vice president of operations for Perceptive Software, a subsidiary of Lexmark International, as part of Lexmark’s acquisition of Brainware, Inc. in 2012. Moses had previously served as COO of Brainware, where he led the company’s global system delivery organization, as well as the customer support, marketing, product, and business development functions within the company. Before joining Brainware, Moses worked with a number of startups and held a number of senior-level positions at AOL. Earlier in his career, Moses was also a corporate attorney at the law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP (now Norton Rose Fulbright). Moses earned a J.D. from the New York University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Emory University.

 

20. Adam Harris, CloudBeds

Adam Harris is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cloudbeds, the software solution to help hoteliers and hosts effectively run all aspects of their hospitality business in one place. As CEO, Harris has led Cloudbeds from a small startup to an award-winning company that powers tens of thousands of properties in over 157 countries worldwide. Founded in 2012, Cloudbeds now boasts over $15 billion in room sales annually. Today Cloudbeds is recognized as one of the fastest-growing travel technology companies, powering over 20,000 hotels, hostels, inns, and vacation rentals.

Harris started his career as an investment banker until his love of entrepreneurship and travel pulled him from Wall Street to some of the most remote corners of the planet. He has many years of experience in consulting, has built and sold multiple companies, and has traveled to more than 51 countries over the course of his career. Harris believes that travel and food are the keys to understanding the world and that, in particular, unique properties give travelers the best opportunity to explore and experience local culture. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

 

21. Andy Byrne, Clari

Andy Byrne is Co-Founder and CEO of Clari, a connected revenue operations platform. Founded in 2012, the company uses automation and AI to unlock all the activity data captured in key business systems such as marketing automation, CRM, email, calendar, phone, content management, conversations, and more. Byrne brings over 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, business development, and management to his position as CEO of Clari.

Prior to Clari, Byrne was part of the founding executive team Clearwell Systems, which he helped grow from pre-product and pre-revenue in 2005 to a $100 million run rate until its acquisition by Symantec in 2011. Prior to joining Clearwell, Byrne co-founded Timestock, Inc., which was acquired by Computer Associates (CA) via the acquisition of Wily Technology. Timestock delivered world-class enterprise application management solutions to large Fortune 500 corporations. Before Timestock, Byrne held sales, product management, and marketing roles at VitalSigns Software, later acquired by Lucent Technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the University of Nevada and a Master of Business Administration degree with honors from San Jose State University.

 

22. Frost Prioleau, Simpli.fi

Frost Prioleau is the Co-Founder and CEO of Simpli.fi, a leading provider of workflow software and programmatic advertising solutions. Today the company serves over 1400 agencies, advertisers, and media buying organizations. A four-time entrepreneur, Simpli.fi is Prioleau’s second company in the digital advertising space. He founded Simpli.fi in 2010 upon seeing an opportunity to potentially reshape digital advertising through programmatic ad buying.

Simpli.fi’s solutions enable customers to perform more effectively and efficiently, and to maximize ROI on their advertising spend across CTV, mobile, display, and other media types. Currently Simpli.fi’s platform delivers performance on budgets of all sizes, executing over 120,000 campaigns for 30,000 advertisers in a typical month.

Prioleau brings to Simpli.fi over 15 years of experience in online advertising with a focus on corporate strategy, driving growth, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Prioleau is a graduate of Princeton University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering management systems.

 

23. Alok Ajmera, Prophix

Alok Ajmera is President and CEO of Prophix, a firm that helps mid-market companies achieve their goals more successfully with innovative Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software. Ajmera joined the company in 2004 and rocketed from Consultant to President and CEO, wearing nearly every hat in the company along the way. Recognized as a visionary in the Corporate Performance Management industry, Ajmera regularly speaks about what it takes for businesses to adapt, survive, and thrive amidst changing economic and technological conditions, and why it's critical for finance to lead the way in establishing organizations that consistently make smart, data-driven decisions.

In the face of technological change, Ajmera presents an optimistic view of the way people and technology will work together. “Technology is your friend, but it isn’t the answer without the right people,” said Ajmera. “Technology is not meant to simply save time and money. It should move strategy forward and deliver a competitive advantage."

 

24. Umesh Sachdev, Uniphore

Umesh Sachdev, Co-Founder, and CEO of Uniphore, is a modern-day entrepreneur with a passion for technologies that have massive societal impact. In 2008 Sachdev launched Uniphore with Ravi Saraogi to bridge the communication gap between man and machine using voice and speech. Today, with offices in the U.S., India, and Singapore, Uniphore offers a global customer service platform that is powered by AI and automation technologies.

In 2016 Sachdev was globally recognized as one of the ten ‘Next Generation Leaders’ by Time Magazine. The MIT Tech Review recognized him as one of the ‘Innovators Under 35’. The CEO has also been conferred with the title of ‘Innovative Entrepreneur’ by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP). Sachdev holds patents in Speech Recognition Technologies and Voice Biometrics and is the author of many technical papers. He is an alumnus of Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, and also a renowned ‘TED Talk’ speaker.

 

25. Laura Urquizu, Red Points

Laura Urquizu is the President and CEO of Red Points. In the past 7 years, she has turned the company into one of the fastest-growing scaleups in the world and has transformed its business model into a disruptive, globally renowned SaaS solution. In addition, Urquizu is the Founder and president of the Global Legal Tech Hub, and also a founding member of the Scale-Up Europe community. Previously, she held executive and management positions at Arthur Andersen, Caja Navarra, and CAN Corporation.

Urquizu has also been a board member in numerous startups, and has advised several investment groups in technology companies. For her many contributions to the industry, Urquizu has been recognized by numerous publications. In 2018 she was named one of the “50 Most Influential Women Entrepreneurs and Investors in the European Technology Industry” by EU-Start-Ups; one of the “Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2019” by The SaaS Report; and one of the “100 People Transforming Business” by Business Insider, in 2020.

 

26. Vetri Vellore, Ally.io

Vetri Vellore is the CEO and Founder of Ally.io., a strategic goal-planning and execution management software helping businesses execute strategies and reach their goals. Launched in 2018, the firm enables businesses to shift from traditional, disjointed planning and execution to a modern, OKR-based framework. Ally.io is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and has a team of 130+ split mainly between Seattle and Chennai, India, with satellite offices in several major cities.

A serial entrepreneur, Vellore built Ally’s OKR solution as an internal tool to help his team at his previous (and still successful) enterprise SaaS company. The realization that we live in a new world where agility, alignment, and transparency are mission critical to growing businesses hit hard, and Vellore discovered the OKR framework: a simple, yet powerful model. Prior to founding two SaaS businesses, Vellore turned around the $200M+ Systems Management enterprise software business at Microsoft. He led the Visual Studio platform team and managed the partner ecosystem, shipping several V1 and award-winning products over his 14-year tenure at Microsoft.

 

27. Diaz Nesamoney, Jivox

Diaz Nesamoney is an accomplished technology entrepreneur who founded three successful technology companies, all harnessing the power of data to power enterprise and consumer applications. Currently Nesamoney is Founder, President, and CEO of Jivox, a company that provides a technology platform for data-driven personalized advertising and marketing. Before founding Jivox, Nesamoney founded Celequest and served as its CEO until early 2007, when the company was acquired by Cognos/IBM.

Notably, Celequest introduced the market’s first business intelligence and analytics appliance, a disruptive innovation that led to its acquisition. Before that, Nesamoney co-founded Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he steered from a startup to a publicly traded company in 1999. Informatica pioneered data integration software as a category and is now the market leader with more than $1 billion in revenue and a $5 billion market capitalization.

Born in India, raised in Africa, the well-traveled Nesamoney holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India. He is also the holder of seven technology patents. When he's not wearing his CEO hat, Nesamoney is an accomplished author, having published the first book on using data and technology to personalize digital advertising.

 

28. Dan McCall, Influitive

10 years ago, Influitive pioneered the market for customer advocacy, online engagement, and digital communities. These markets are now mainstream and Influtive is a recognized leader according to G2, TrustRadius and Gartner Digital Markets. Influitive’s software powers customer marketing initiatives at many of the world’s most prestigious brands, including Adobe, Cisco, IBM, and HPE. Since joining in 2019, Dan has led Influitive through both the global pandemic and a transformation from venture-backed financing to self-funding, profitable, and poised for rapid growth. In 2021, Influitive was recognized for the first time as a Top 100 Software Company, and a Great Place to Work®. A technology veteran with over thirty years’ experience, Dan has co-founded two companies, Guardent (acquired by Verisign in 2004) and Virtual Computer (acquired by Citrix in 2012), and held executive positions in marketing, product management, corporate development, and engineering at four publicly traded companies.

 

29. Chris Sullens, CentralReach

As CEO of CentralReach, Chris Sullens is leading the company in its mission to provide an end-to-end platform of software and services that enable Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) clinicians and educators to produce superior client outcomes for people with autism and related disorders. Sullens brings decades of experience to the company and has a proven track record of building strong company cultures and taking customer-centric technology companies, like CentralReach, to the next level.

His keys to success include investing heavily in the company’s people, process, systems, and client satisfaction initiatives. Prior to CentralReach, Sullens spent 10 years as president and CEO of WorkWave, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions for the field service and last mile logistics industries. Sullens has a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and a Master of Business Administration degree with Honors in finance, strategy and entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

 

30. Marco Beicht, powercloud GmbH

Marco Beicht is the Founder and CEO of powercloud GmbH, a fast-growing cloud software provider for the energy sector. The entrepreneur has already founded several companies before this one, including Intellishop in 2004, which he led as a board member until 2010. With his investment company, Karemha Holding, formerly MBB Technologies Group, he also holds shares in other companies, such as the electromobility specialist Chargecloud. Among other things, Beicht studied at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) before earning his MBA.

In 2012 powercloud was founded and has since undergone robust growth. The German-based company supports energy supply utilities with innovative solutions for digitisation. The “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model helps ensure that expensive investments in software are not necessary. Using the powercloud solution, energy providers can better acquire new end-customers with the dynamic pricing engine and better manage their existing end-customers on all channels with full digital processes and automation. This has made the enterprise one of the fastest-growing CRM and settlement system within the industry.

 

31. Mario Vuksan, ReversingLabs

In 2009, Mario Vuksan founded ReversingLabs, a company that delivers game-changing threat detection and analysis solutions to help organizations combat the latest generation of intelligent cyber attacks. Their unique and innovative Active Decomposition technology classifies all the binary materials for proactive threat defense. Vuksan serves as CEO, driving all aspects of the company's strategy, operations and implementation.

Previously, Vuksan has held senior technical positions at Bit9 (now Carbon-Black), Microsoft, Groove Networks, and PictureTel (now Polycom). He is also the author of numerous research studies, and speaks regularly at FS-ISAC, RSA, Black Hat, and other leading security conferences. Vuksan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics, art history, computer science from Swarthmore College. He also holds a Master of Arts degree in art history from Boston University.

 

32. Salim Elkhou, Onna

Onna CEO Salim Elkhou founded the company in 2015 when he realized a technology solution was needed to address a major problem created by the proliferation of cloud-based workplace apps: knowledge fragmentation. Elkhou saw that knowledge was becoming increasingly difficult to access in organizations, costing them huge amounts of time and money just to search for their own information. So, he started Onna with a mission to make people and organizations’ proprietary knowledge accessible, useful, and secure.

As CEO, Elkhou is focused on ensuring that the business stays focused on the long-term vision, and for transmitting that vision to shareholders, potential investors, and current and future employees. He is also focused on protecting the company's culture as it grows, and on bringing new senior leaders into the business. Elkhou has 20 years’ experience in technology. Straight from university he created eStet, a successful eDiscovery business that was acquired by Ernst & Young.

 

33. Neil Carson, Yellowbrick

Neil Carson is CEO and Co-Founder of Yellowbrick Data, a Silicon Valley-based company founded in 2014. Built for enterprises and the hybrid cloud, the company is known for simplifying data storage. The Yellowbrick Data Warehouse deploys powerful analytics anywhere, with best-in-class economics, thus empowering companies to make faster decisions with all of their data. Previously, Carson served as executive vice president and chief technology officer at Fusion-io where he was responsible for company strategy, product definitions, roadmaps, corporate development, strategic partnerships, and key customer acquisitions.

Before Fusion-io, Carson was chief application architect at Dell, where he led the platform architecture team across MessageOne, Everdream, Silverback Networks, and other acquired development groups. Carson joined Dell through the acquisition of Everdream, where he had been the acting chief architect. He has also held roles at BMC/Remedy and Liberate Technologies, including principal product architect and principal engineer. Carson has served as a technical advisor for startups Oxygen Finance and Datera Inc. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering from Cranfield University.

 

34. Jody Shapiro, Productiv

Jody Shaprio is CEO and co-founder of Productiv, the leading provider of SaaS management solutions. Founded in 2018, the company raised its Series C funding in March, and a total of $73 million from Accel, IVP, Norwest Venture Partners, Okta Ventures and Atlassian Ventures. Companies like Fox, Uber and Zoom use Productiv to create a system of record for their SaaS portfolios with the most detailed view into how software is actually used. Before co-founding Productiv, Jody spent nine years at Google, eventually serving as Global Head of Google Analytics Premium. During his tenure, the product became the de facto measurement tool for most websites around the world. Jody has experience working on technologies that impact millions of people. In addition to his work at Google, Jody previously worked on Picturetel’s video conferencing and 3D at Silicon Graphics.

 

35. Nir Shalom, floLIVE (tie)

Nir Shalom is the CEO of floLIVE, an IoT thought-leader who has built floLIVE to excel in offering a range of connectivity and network solutions for enterprises, IoT Service Providers, and mobile operators. Shalom has 25 years of executive experience in software companies and global telecommunications. Previously he's worked with large enterprises such as GM of AT&T Israel, managing more than 1,000 employees. But he's also found success by working in more agile start-up environments. Since joining floLIVE, Shalom has developed a strategy for removing the inherent friction of global connectivity and networking --thus revolutionizing legacy technologies into a modern, cloud-native platform.

As a result, revenues have grown 120%, and many seasoned executive leaders have jumped on board to form a strong and robust team at floLIVE. Under Shalom’s leadership, floLIVE’s solutions range from global connectivity management services, end-to-end IoT platforms and private 5G networks for campuses, to robust and resilient national and international deployments. floLIVE's solutions are all based on the same software infrastructure, providing a high degree of flexibility and customization to fit future market needs.

 

35. Eyal Feldman, Stampli (tie)

Eyal Feldman is the Founder and CEO of the Mountain View, California-based startup Stampli, an AI-focused Accounts Payable invoice automation solution. With Stampli, clients can reduce the time spent chasing invoice approvals by 5X. Prior to Stampli, Feldman was the VP of Business Solutions at Ness, a leading IT solutions provider. Among his many accomplishments, Feldman gained a government-wide agreement for the now paperless administration, in addition to building the Documentum business in Israel from its beginning to market leadership.

Formerly, Feldman was a Business Analyst at Colgate-Palmolive, a worldwide consumer products enterprise focusing on the production, distribution, and provision of a wide variety of goods. At Colgate-Palmolive, he executed the company's world-wide project to unite all its subsidiaries under one SAP ERP. Feldman graduated with honors from Ben-Gurion University with a Bachelors of Arts degree in economics and later earned his Master of Business Administration degree from The Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management.

 

36. Patricia Horotan, BlueMatrix

Patricia Horotan is the CEO and Co-Founder of BlueMatrix, a SaaS solutions provider for the global investment research market. The New York-based firm’s applications are used by more than 3,000 research analysts at investment banks and independent research providers in more than 35 countries. Horotan founded BlueMatrix in 1999 with her business partner, Skye Hauptman, after recognizing an opportunity to drastically improve the publishing workflow. They built the industry’s first online application, fundamentally altering how investment research firms did business. Since then, Horotan has set BlueMatrix apart in the marketplace by fostering a culture of collaboration — internally and in the industry — and remaining as innovative and service-oriented as the company was on day one.

As CEO, Horotan's passionate vision has guided BlueMatrix into becoming a multimillion-dollar brand. The company is widely considered the industry’s gold standard for the authoring, distribution, presentation, and evaluation of structured content. This year, despite the pandemic, Horotan remained focused on her core values — serving the people — resulting in one of BlueMatrix’s biggest growth years yet. Prior to founding BlueMatrix, Horotan worked in technology development positions at CIBC, Goldman Sachs, and UBS.

 

37. Peter Messana, Searchspring

Peter Messana is the CEO of Searchspring, a global leader in ecommerce search, merchandising, and personalization. Since he was appointed in 2019, Messana's firm resolve, quick adaptability, and inspiring leadership propelled the company to grow by 45%. This positioned Searchspring as the Best Place to Work in San Antonio two years in a row. As a result of Messana's servant leadership and entrepreneurial spirit, Searchspring has also been named to the 2021 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S.

With over 16 years of experience in the retail and technology space, Messana brings a fresh and unique approach to ecommerce. Previously, the seasoned leader co-founded Austin Kayak and served as COO of GroupBy, and CEO and President of Summit Sports. Additionally, Messana has held leadership roles at Dell and Home Depot; and is regarded as one of the leading retail technology minds in digital commerce. When he’s not immersed in all things ecommerce, Messana can be found exploring the great outdoors with his family.

 

38. John Jahnke, Tackle.io

John Jahnke is the CEO of Tackle, a platform that helps software providers build a cloud GTM leveraging AWS, Microsoft, and GCP Marketplaces. Jahnke was an early investor and advisor to Tackle before taking on the role of CEO in 2018. Under his leadership, the company has raised $48M from Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners to drive digital transformation of B2B software sales. This year the team has doubled to 100 remote employees and tripled its ARR from the previous year. Tackle helps hundreds of companies start selling, and scale their Cloud Marketplace business. To date, these companies range from startups to some of the largest software organizations in the world.

Prior to Tackle, Jahnke spent 20 years in executive leadership roles at B2B technology companies like Pivotal, Greenplum, EMC, and Cognizant. Tackle has been a fully remote company from day one, and its CEO leads the team from Buffalo, NY, where he is an active investor and advisor to other founders who want to build B2B SaaS venture-backed companies. Jahnke is passionate about building amazing remote teams. He especially enjoys helping software companies with their go-to-market strategy. In addition to his CEO responsibilities, he also serves as an active member of the Forbes Technology Council.

 

39. Sumit Aneja, Voxco (tie)

Sumit Aneja is the CEO of Voxco, an omnichannel software survey platform and a global market leader in the multi-modal survey software sector. The company provides market research organizations, government agencies, universities, and global corporations with a platform to collect data anytime and anywhere. Founded over 45 years ago, and with offices around the world, Voxco services more than 450 clients in over 40 countries. Aneja brings strong leadership to Voxco, with his extensive M&A and financing advisory deal experience in the middle market, most recently as an investment banker with Houlihan Lokey, covering the Business Services sector.

Prior to Houlihan Lokey, Aneja spent two and a half years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch advising Financial Institutions and Technology Media & Telecom clients. He performed sell-side and buy-side M&A advisory, debt, and equity financings, strategic alternative assessments, and valuations. Throughout his career, he's worked at the intersection of technology, finance, and data. Aneja founded Pivoton Capital (acquired Voxco in 2019) with a passion to help lower middle-market companies unlock untapped value. He holds an MBA from Yale School of Management, an Master of Science degree in financial engineering from Claremont Colleges Consortium, and a BE in electrical engineering from Punjab Engineering College.

 

39. Sunil Patro, SignEasy (tie)

Sunil Patro is the CEO and founder of SignEasy, the leading eSignature solution for businesses and professionals worldwide. SignEasy enables its customers to sign, send, and manage documents through its cloud-based, device-agnostic platform. Trusted by more than 159,000 customers worldwide, SignEasy is now used in 180 countries and supports 24 languages. Under Sunil’s leadership, SignEasy has grown to be a global innovator in eSignatures and now employee over 100 employees between its headquarters in Dallas, TX and and office in Bangalore, India.

 

40. Ed Daihl, TrackVia

Ed Daihl, CEO of TrackVia, has four decades of leadership experience in the SaaS and enterprise software market. Most recently, he served as CEO for Accela, a cloud-based productivity and engagement solution for governments. Prior to that, he was senior vice president for Epicor, where he managed retail software auto industry solutions spanning 5,000 clients in 11 international markets. From 2006 to 2014, Daihl served as CEO for Surgical Information Systems (SIS), a leading provider of software solutions for the healthcare industry. He also served in various executive positions at Manugistics, CAPS Logistics, and BaaN.

At TrackVia, Daihl works to develop strong executive teams and healthy corporate cultures while driving both top-line growth and increased margins. His vision and strategy have led his company to be one of the fastest-growing citizen development platforms, which enables businesses to digitize their processes and expand the use of low-code within their organizations.

 

41. Edward Chiu, Catalyst

Edward Chiu is the CEO and Co-Founder of Catalyst, an intuitive and flexible Customer Success Platform built by CS Leaders for CS teams. It is the fastest-growing CS platform on the market and is helping the top brands in SaaS optimize customer experience and drive retention and growth. So far Catalyst has raised over $40 million in venture funding from leading enterprise SaaS investors including Accel, True Ventures, Spark Capital, and Work-Bench.

Previously, Chiu built and led the customer success team at DigitalOcean, one of the fastest growing cloud companies in the world, helping the company grow to $100+ million in revenue and over 1 million customers. From his firsthand experience there, he recognized that companies needed better tools and processes to retain and expand with existing customers, and the value of a platform that would allow Customer Success teams to collaborate cross-functionally in an efficient and seamless way.

 

42. Jae Ahn, BizFlow Corp.

Jae Ahn brings nearly three decades of experience in technology businesses and front-line understanding of business process management to the leadership helm of BizFlow, a strategic technology company in Falls Church, Virginia. Ahn assumed his current position of Chairman and CEO of BizFlow Corporation in 2005, most recently initiating a repositioning of the company from primarily a software product focused company to a broader strategic technology company offering Systems Integration (SI) and Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) services for government and corporate clients.

This new positioning meets what Ahn sees as a “critical need in the market to support clients not only with strong technology, but with thoughtful and strategic solutions and judgement on how to solve their most pressing digital business process problems.” Previously, in 1991, Ahn joined Handysoft, then a startup software company that quickly grew to dominate the groupware market. As CFO, Ahn directed the successful IPO of the company in 1999. Currently, Ahn is also a member of AFCEA NOVA, the Army Navy Club (ANC), and the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

 

43. Dave Carruthers, Voxpopme

Dave Carruthers is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Voxpopme, the video survey software company loved by Fortune 500 brands. With Voxpopme’s powerful video surveys, Dave helps leaders in every business uncover rich, qualitative consumer insights that companies pay attention to, quickly and at scale.

Under Dave’s stewardship, Voxpopme has experienced successful global growth, collecting video feedback for Anheuser Busch, Clorox, Mars-Wrigley, and many more multinational corporations. Dave creates understanding, empathy, and connection with customers for these companies by delivering best-in-class software and a team to match. As a result, Voxpopme has been voted the number one qualitative solution for insights, experience, and marketing professionals in the GreenBook Industry Trends Report (GRIT) in 2020 and 2021.

In addition to his role as CEO at Voxpopme, Dave Carruthers is a Board Director for the Insights Association. He has been involved in technology businesses for the last 17 years and has been the driving force behind several successful startups.

 

44. Chetan Venkatesh, Macrometa

Chetan Venkatesh is a technology startup veteran and executive focused on enterprise data center, cloud infrastructure, and software products/companies. He has 20 years of experience in building primary data storage, databases and data replication products. Venkatesh holds a dozen patents in the area of distributed computing and data storage. Previously, Venkatesh was the Founder, President, and CEO of Atlantis, a pioneer of software-defined storage with more than 900 mid to large enterprise customers.

Venkatesh is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Macrometa, a Silicon Valley-based edge computing startup. Macrometa specializes in developing real-time stateful server-less applications. It delivers a global, stateful, real-time serverless database, event processing, and compute runtimes across 175 worldwide edge data centers. Some of Macrometa’s SaaS clients use its global data network as a global data cache for handling surges in usage and keep regional copies of data and API results across its regional data centers. The company was founded in 2017 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

 

45. Hemant Sikaria, Sibros

Hemant Sikaria is CEO and Co-Founder of Silicon Valley-based Sibros. His company, founded in 2018, is a leader in automotive cloud solutions. Under his direction, Sibros is marrying the intricacies of embedded firmware development and cloud software development. This has led to the creation of a secure end-to-end platform that has scaled to serve millions of vehicles with daily log data collection on the petabyte scale. Before Sibros, Sikaria spent five and a half years at Tesla, joining the team in 2011 as the ninth firmware engineer.

One of his most notable accomplishments is the design, implementation, and deployment of the very first large-scale OTA software update system. This system currently handles updates to the entire Tesla fleet and has completed millions of software updates. By the time Sikaria retired from Tesla, he was in charge of the Body and Chassis Firmware teams for all car models. As part of his role, he oversaw the design, implementation, and integration of systems such as the Model X Falcon Wing doors, the air suspension, seat controls, self-presenting door handles, keyfob, security, and authentication to the vehicle. Sikaria earned his Bachelor and Master degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

46. Eyal Benishti, IRONSCALES

Eyal Benishti, CEO and Founder of IRONSCALES, pioneered the development of the world’s first self-learning anti-phishing email security solution. The firm uses machine learning and neural networks to help other firms stem attacks that bypass legacy email gateway defenses. Under Benishti’s leadership, IRONSCALES has filed four patents for anti-phishing and email security solutions. It has also secured three funding rounds from K1 and Israel’s RDSeed.

Benishti brings to his executive leadership role nearly 15 years of software industry experience with enterprise and startup companies. Prior to founding IRONSCALES in 2013, he was a security researcher and malware analyst at Radware and worked as technical lead for various information security solutions at Imperva. Previously, Benishti held a variety of R&D roles with Comverse and Amdocs. A passionate cybersecurity researcher from a young age, Benishti earned his Bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics from Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

 

47. Tom Coburn, Jebbit

Tom Coburn is Co-Founder and CEO of Jebbit, a SaaS customer engagement and first-party data-tech platform. Founded in 2013, the Boston-based company’s commitment to creating better brand experiences has resulted in a staggering 522% increase in platform users in 2020. Instead of relying on third-party data, which is often highly inaccurate and incomplete, enterprise brands use Jebbit to capture consumer intentions, motivations, and preferences. Jebbit's impressive roster of clients includes top global brands, such as Procter & Gamble, Live Nation, Shiseido Group, the NFL, the NBA, Asics, Clorox, Bliss, Tyson Foods, and many more.

Coburn's vision has fueled the rapid expansion of Jebbit’s partner network, securing integrations with giants like Salesforce, Adobe, Facebook, Hubspot, MailChimp and Pinterest. Notably, Jebbit’s recent Shopify app launch enabled Shopify’s more than 1 million businesses to harness first-party data to personalize every step of the customer journey, build closer consumer relationships, and grow revenue. Jebbit was named one of the Top 25 Most Promising Companies in the World by CNBC, the Best Tech Culture in Boston 2016, and its co-founders are Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees.

 

48. Arthur Lozinski, Oomnitza

Arthur Lozinski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Oomnitza, a leading technology solution that delivers a platform to secure and manage a corporation’s digital estate. In 2011, he joined Trent Seed, Co-Founder and CTO of Oomnitza, to realize the vision for the company and establish a new way of tracking, mapping, and managing anything that could be connected to the internet. Since then, Oomnitza has grown to manage tens of millions of assets across hundreds of companies ranging from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 giants.

Oomnitza is constantly evolving to deliver trustworthy data, extensible cross-discipline automation, and actionable insights that allow for signficant increases in operational efficiency. Prior to founding Oomnitza, Lozinski worked full-time at SAP as a technical project manager. Helping to manage a team at SAP that facilitated complex proof-of-concept software tests for potential customers, Lozinski thrived in the fast-paced, high-stakes environment of enterprise sales.

 

49. Greg Taylor, Orion

Greg Taylor is the Chief Executive Officer of Orion, the leading voice-first, intelligent collaboration platform that empowers deskless workers. Taylor drives the company’s vision, strategy, and day-to-day operations while accelerating the company’s leading market position and global growth. Taylor’s servant-first leadership shaped the inclusive, performance culture that propelled Orion’s emergence as a leader in the enterprise frontline collaboration category.

Under Taylor’s leadership, Orion marked a 250% increase in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), 400% growth in pipeline, and 12x growth in subscription commitment over the last 12 months. Taylor oversaw innovation investments in Orion’s category-leading platform, obtaining 16 new patents. Last year, Taylor closed Orion’s Series B funding led by Dell Technology Investments and Celesta Capital.

Taylor is a veteran executive and entrepreneur in enterprise technology. He recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer of global SaaS leaders HighQ (acquired by Thomson Reuters) and Eka Solutions Inc. Notably, Taylor served as Executive Vice President and Partner at Triple Point Technology, the Fintech global leader for in-cloud commodities management software from 2007 to 2013. He oversaw the company’s explosive recurring growth in revenue and EBITDA, leading to a successful sale to ION in one of the largest enterprise software company transactions of 2013.

 

50. Todd Usen, Activ Surgical

Founded in 2017, Activ Surgical is a digital surgery company that completed the world's first autonomous robotic surgery of soft tissue. Usen joined Activ Surgical in January 2019 after serving as the president of the Medical Systems Group at Olympus Corporation of the Americas, where he helped lead the expansion from 6 medical divisions to 11 in 3.5 years. Prior to joining the Olympus Corporation, Usen held the position of president, Orthopedics, at Smith and Nephew, overseeing the Total Joint, Sports Medicine, and Trauma divisions. Additionally, he held several other vital positions for Smith and Nephew including senior vice president and general manager, Joint Reconstruction; senior vice president, Sports Medicine; and senior vice president, Endoscopy.

Prior to Smith and Nephew, Usen worked for Boston Scientific as the vice president of Sales for the Neurovascular division, director of Endoscopy Sales, and global manager of Field Development. Usen did his MBA work at Pepperdine University and graduated from the Isenberg School of Business at the University of Massachusetts. Usen played baseball at UMASS and was recognized and inducted into the “Outstanding College Students of America'' and the Golden Key National Honor Society.