David Obrand isn’t moving to Georgia for his new job. Instead, he will be leading one of Atlanta's premier startups from New York City.
Last month, sales engagement unicorn Salesloft announced that Obrand has been appointed as its new CEO. The company’s co-founder and former chief executive Kyle Porter will remain a member of the board.
Obrand comes into his new leadership role as a software-as-a-service veteran with over three decades of experience in sales, technology and operations.
Prior to Salesloft, he served as president of California-based wealth management company Addepar Inc. He also worked as chief customer officer at Yammer, an enterprise social network that was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012, and vice president of vertical sales at Salesforce Inc. In private equity, he previously served as a general partner with Valor Equity Partners.
His first connection with Salesloft was through sharing mutual investors with companies he’s previously been involved with. He first interacted with Porter was while making a reference call for Steve Goldberg, who was later hired as Salesloft’s chief revenue officer. When Goldberg, Porter and Obrand connected in New York in the fall, they began discussing the leadership transition.
“Transforming the profession of sales is a profession I've spent most of my career in and one that speaks deeply to me,” Obrand said. “Companies I've gravitated to the most are ones that are customer-obsessed and put customers at the center of their mission.”
Salesloft's growth
Salesloft was founded in 2011 by Porter in the Atlanta Ventures studio, an incubator from serial entrepreneur David Cummings. It helps customers, such as Google, Slack and Shopify, find and close sales through a virtual engagement system. Headquartered in Midtown, the company has locations in Guadalajara, Mexico; Indianapolis; London; New York and San Francisco.
In December 2021, Salesloft reached a $2.3 billion valuation following a majority stake investment by Vista Equity Partners. Salesloft has also achieved surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue, opening a London headquarters and launching a data center in Germany.
Salesloft’s CEO shift comes weeks after the company confirmed it had laid off workers, making the sales engagement business one of many tech companies in the past several months to cut staff. It did not disclose how many workers were affected.
"We will always put our customers and mission at the forefront of our decision making,” a spokesperson previously told the Chronicle. “These changes solidify our ability to lead this market and deliver for our customers."
Obrand echoed a similar statement as to how and why the layoffs impacted the company. Obrand said Salesloft will continue investing in “customers, increasing our pace of innovation and investing in our people.”
Salesloft's next phase
Obrand also takes on the position ahead of what he calls a “transformational” move for the company.
It will soon launch Salesloft Rhythm, a platform for sales teams which uses AI to rank and prioritize the actions they should take. The company believes Rhythm stands out from existing selling tools that aren’t equipped to handle large committees and multiple signals from app sellers.
“This [company] is built around capturing feedback from our users and customers through our success organization within the business and feeding that into the product and engineering team,” Obrand said. “Rhythm is the culmination of that feedback mechanism coupled with our strength of innovation.”
