Profile
Brent is the Chief Executive Officer of BigCommerce. A retail and ecommerce veteran of 20 years, Brent has served in a variety of executive leadership positions, successfully growing industry-leading companies including HomeAway and PayPal.
Reviews
Brent took over for the BigCommerce founders at a time when revenue was sub-$50 million and the company was struggling to transition from startup to fast-growing market leader. BigCommerce was considered a late entrant into an industry with 500+ global competitors, including many of the world’s largest software companies (IBM, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, Adobe, Shopify). Brent immediately focused on repositioning the company from a platform that exclusively served SMBs to one that served fast growing mid-market businesses and some enterprise retailers as well. This move required major changes across business model, product, support, marketing and sales – a significant undertaking for any business and its employees. Under Brent’s leadership, the company surpassed $100 million in Annual Run Rate (ARR) in 2018 and has become the #1 SaaS ecommerce platform serving the mid-market. Other accomplishments include: 1. Brand transformation – Guided by Brent’s revised mission and vision, visual design and marketing messages were updated to clearly position the company as a leading SaaS solution in the mid-market. Since the redesign, BigCommerce has quadrupled the number of $1M+ merchants on the platform and has brought on globally recognized, enterprise-level brands that would never have included BigCommerce in their decision set four years ago. 2. Product expansion – Brent partnered with his executive team to understand product gaps and build market-leading product functionality that meets the needs of all customers regardless of industry, size or business type, including the launch of headless commerce and BigCommerce Shipping. 3. Partnerships – Brent and BigCommerce went all in on an open SaaS philosophy that gives merchants access to a massive ecosystem of industry-leading businesses partners and best-in-class tools and simplifies efforts around shipping, payments, security, marketplaces, marketing, accounting and more. This freedom of choice for merchants is in stark contrast to how some of the other top ecommerce platforms approach partner management and has proven to be notable competitive selling point for BigCommerce. 4. Aggressive Approach to Growth – Brent will say himself that he doesn’t believe success is achieved by focusing on one thing at a time. He attacks every opportunity as it presents itself, often times simultaneously. He would rather go after an opportunity imperfectly and improve upon it over time than lose the opportunity due to hesitation. It’s the same approach he successfully implemented in his previous roles with HomeAway and PayPal.
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