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Now, here are the top hires, promotions, departures and layoffs from Austin technology startups from July 2018.
LocalShark Tank alum EverlyWell, a platform and kit for easy, affordable lab testing, announced that it has named Nick Parker as its new CTO. Prior to joining EverlyWell, Parker was the CTO with Austin-based online shipping marketplace uShip. In November, the fast-growing startup nabbed $1 million from shark Lori Greiner on the popular ABC show.
Cosential, an Austin-based maker of software for architects, added Bob Nye, a general partner at JMI, to its board of directors as part of a funding deal. Cosential was founded in 1999 by Dan Cornish.
Swivel, which quietly was formed in 2016 by Scott Harmon and Mike Maples Jr., emerged from stealth in July. Its other co-founders are Greg Kattawar, David Proft, Tabrez Syed and Wade Cohn. They share a lot of common background. Harmon, Maples, Kattawar and Proft all worked previously at Tivoli Software, which is among the most pivotal software startups to come out of Austin during its formative tech startup days. And those three, along with Cohn and Syed, all worked at Motive, a software developer that was founded by Maples and Harmon and was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in 2008. Also worth noting, Maples went on to found Floodgate, a well-known Silicon Valley investment firm, and Kattawar went on to become a co-founder at Spiceworks.
E-commerce platform BigCommerce has hired former Umbel CEO Lisa Pearson as its chief marketing officer. Pearson, a former CMO at Bazaarvoice at the time it IPOed, joined Umbel as its CEO in Spring 2017. In February this year, Umbel merged with MVPindex and that company’s CEO, Stan Woodward, became CEO of the combined company. Shortly after that happened, BigCommerce closed a $64 million Series F investment led by Goldman Sachs, signaling another spurt of growth at an already fast-growing company.
GroupBy, and Austin ecommerce solutions company, announced that Peter Messana will be its chief operating officer. Messana started at GroupBy in 2014 as a retail client. He moved on to be SVP of product and support last year. Before GroupBy, he was founder and CEO of Austin Kayak for a decade-plus.
Dell has been Austin’s biggest tech powerhouse for years. But its local headcount has largely been on the decline in recent years. Now, the company reports that its headcount has increased by about 1,000 to reach 13,000. That’s down from the peak of 21,000 in the year 2000, the ABJ reports.
Walter Robb, co-founder and former co-CEO of Whole Foods, has taken a new role as executive-in-residence at Chicago VC firm S2G Ventures, the ABJ reports. He’ll be lending his strengths to identifying startups in the food industry. Robb will continue to lead Stonewall Robb Advisors, a firm he created last year to advise and invest in people and companies committed to social justice and animal welfare. Among his investments are Heat Genie, Food Maven and New Barn Inc.
GroupBy Inc. promoted Srikant Nayak from VP of finance and senior director of finance to chief financial officer. Nayak joined GroupBy in 2015. Prior to that, he was director of Homeland Energy Group.
DISCO, a Houston based ediscovery startup for law firms, hired Kristin Zmrhal-Murray as its VP of customer success. Prior to this, she led litigation support operations at Google. She is based in Austin.
It must be cool to have an astronaut on your board. Firefly Aerospace, a Cedar Park-based company making rockets to send small satellites into orbit, today announced an advisory board that includes William F. Readdy, a veteran astronaut who flew on space shuttle missions STS-42, STS-51 and STS-79; Jeff Bingham, a former senior advisor on space for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr., current president of LSINC and former associate administrator and COO of NASA; and George Nield, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration‘s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
GroupBy, an Austin e-commerce solutions company, named Mark Stibbe as its chief information officer. In addition to IT projects, he’ll oversee integration of GroupBy company acquisition’s IT systems. Stibbe joined GroupBy as a partner in 2013. He previously worked at Oracle Endeca as its practice director for North America East.
Q2 Holdings, a digital banking company, announced today that IBMveteran, Rekha Garapati, is its senior VP of client operations and services. Garapati’s time with IBM included roles in innovation and operations leadership, data science and global software development and more.
And, one last note: We typically don’t break out the violins for CEOs' salaries. But to win top talent for innovative companies, pay matters. With that in mind, it looks like Austin is facing some headwinds, CNBC reports. A new study by Comparably, a salary and jobs comparison site, showed the average CEO in Austin makes $159,233. That’s compared to $240,000 in San Francisco, $218,000 in Seattle and $216,000 in New York. But, of course, it’s cost of living that makes all the difference. Plus, I mean, come on, it’s Austin — you wanna be here.
