In the first month of the new year, Colorado's startup hiring activity moved at a feverish pace, with local companies adding new executives to fuel their growth in 2021.
We track the major player personnel moves in our daily newsletter, the Beat.
Below, we’ve listed the top Colorado technology and startup hires reported in December:
As Denver’s education and upskilling company Guild Education prepares to grow and expand its product amid an increased national interest, the company has promoted two internal technology leaders to new executive roles. Jessica Rusin will serve as the company’s new chief technology officer and Bijal Shah will serve as the company’s first-ever chief experience officer, and head of platform. More on both hires here.
There was a pretty big shakeup in Colorado's tech ecosystem as Techstars announced that the company’s board of directors appointed Maëlle Gavet as CEO. Outgoing CEO and co-founder David Brown will continue to serve on the board. Techstars also announced that David Cohen, co-founder, will assume the new role of chairman of the board of directors. Check out our Q&A with Gavet here.
Denver security operations startup Swimlane announced that it has kicked off 2021 with a substantial funding round and brought on a new leader to guide the company forward. The $40M funding round was led by EIP and will accelerate the company’s partnerships and alliances, expand research and development and enable further global expansion. Swimlane has appointed James Brear as the company’s chief executive officer. Brear previously served as the CEO of Veriflow, which was sold to VMWare in August 2019.
Fresh off a $200M funding round that cemented its unicorn status, Colorado Springs startup Quantum Metric announced the appointments of Ed Goldfinger as chief financial officer, and Scott Southwood as chief revenue officer. Quantum Metric’s platform helps organizations build better digital products faster. Its technology helps businesses capture customer behaviors and technical issues and prioritize product decisions based on real-time data. More on both of those hires here.
Denver's QRails, a cloud-based payment solutions startup, announced that Brian Brinkley has been appointed as CEO. The Google Wallet co-founder has been a key member of the QRails leadership team since 2019, previously serving as chief technology officer. Gerard Griffin, co-founder of QRails and CEO since 2019, will take on the role of chairman following this move. QRails raised an $8M Series A round led by EFM Asset Management in March and has brought on $18M to date. More on the hire here.
Broomfield-based Conga, a digital document management company, announced the appointment of Grant Peterson as chief product officer. Prior to joining Conga, Peterson spent 12 years as the chief technology officer at DocuSign. After retiring in 2019, he served as a consultant at Conga over the past two months, working directly with the product and engineering teams. Now, Peterson has come out of retirement to join the company full-time, with an eye on merging the efforts of the product and engineering teams. More on the hire here.
Boom Supersonic is kicking-off the new year with two new senior hires. The company announced that it has brought on Joe Massaquoi as chief financial officer and Kathy Savitt as president and chief commercial officer. More on the two hires here.
Denver behavioral health startup SonderMind announced two additions to its executive team. Corley Hughes joins as chief financial officer and Nabeel Meghji as chief product officer. More on both of those hires here.
Denver's Voyager Space Holdings, a global space exploration holding company, announced the appointment of Dr. Cheryl Shavers to the company's Board of Directors. Shavers currently serves as founder, chairman and CEO of Global Smarts, a technology company that specializes in the integration of capital, technology and information. She has more than 25 years of experience in the tech industry, including engineering and managerial positions at Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Intel. More here.
Denver's Ping Identity, an identity security firm, announced that Paul E. Martin has joined the company’s board of directors. Martin is an acclaimed IT visionary, most recently serving as CIO and senior vice president for Baxter International, where he led the company’s global IT strategy, operations, security and processes. Previous experience includes IT leadership positions at U.K.-based Rexam PLC, CIT Group, BNSF Railway and Frito-Lay. More on the appointment here.
Boulder's Brandzooka, a self-service platform democratizing the digital advertising landscape, has appointed Michael Beaudoin to its board of directors. Beaudoin is the director of private equities at Mark IV Capital, which recently led Brandzooka's $5.6M Series A round of fundraising. More on the move here.
Two months after the company announced its $75M Series E, JumpCloud is back with more capital that brings the round to an even $100M. The company announced that it has added $25M to its Series E financing, closing the oversubscribed round at $100M. As part of the company's effort to keep up with demand, JumpCloud also announced the addition of Kevin Biggs as chief revenue officer to the executive leadership team.
Loveland-based Lightning eMotors announced that Teresa Covington has joined the company as its new chief financial officer. Covington joins Lightning’s senior leadership team as it transitions to being a public company as a result of a reverse merger with GigCapital3. Most recently, Covington served as chief financial officer for asTech, a cloud-based automotive technology and diagnostic services provider. Lightning eMotors, formerly known as Lightning Systems, installs electronic drivetrains and power systems in commercial delivery trucks, cargo vans, buses and other large fleet vehicles, turning them into zero-emission electric vehicles. More on the hire here.
Connected fitness startup CLMBR announced the expansion of its executive team with the appointment of Paul LaFontaine to the position of chief operations officer and Matt Culig to the position of chief financial officer. LaFontaine has held a variety of roles at Disney, Ticketmaster, Sulake OY and UK-based Betfair. Culig has over 30 years of finance, accounting and operational experience, most recently serving as the CFO for 3QU Media, a producer of animated family films. More on both of those hires here.
Oregon's Vacasa, a vacation rental management platform, announced it has appointed Jamie Cohen as the company’s CFO. Cohen previously held the same role at Denver's ANGI Homeservices, a digital home services marketplace, and will join Vacasa at the beginning of March. More on that hire here.
Denver-based insurance software company Vertafore announced that insurance industry veteran Jon Newpol will lead the company's distribution and compliance management segment as senior vice president and general manager. Newpol joined Vertafore this month after serving in several senior executive positions with Thomson Reuters, Truven Health Analytics and IBM. More on the hire here.
Denver's ClinOne, a virtual patient management startup, added a key leader to its executive team by hiring clinical research expert Keli Platco as senior VP of operations. Prior to joining ClinOne, Platco worked at Signant Health, where she was the VP of client services and project management. More on the hire here.
Jacqui Dietrich, former manager at Denver-based startup hub The Commons on Champa has taken on a new role as head of brand, sales & marketing at Tampa Bay's Startup Space, a platform for community building. Dietrich will lead the company's strategic vision enabling small businesses to start and grow through community support and access to resources. More on the new role here.
New Denver tech giant Palantir announced that Lauren Friedman Stat has been appointed to the company's board of directors and audit committee of the board. Stat's previous experience includes 15 years at Accenture, where she served as a senior advisor to Fortune 100 companies. More on the appointment here.
