Reston, Va.-based customer intelligence platform Clarabridge CEO Yuchun Lee is stepping down 11 months after he first took on the role. Mark Bishof, the former CEO of Chicago software firm Flexera will take up the CEO job.
"I didn't know Sid and Yuchun, but I had heard a lot of great things about Clarabridge. It's a pretty tight tech community here," Bishof told DC Inno in an interview. "I've spent a lot of time with with them since and am really excited about the space Clarabridge leads in."
The change comes not because of problems at the company, so much as the issue of commuting, the Boston-based Lee explained. That, and the fact he is simultaneously running another company in the Bay State made it just a better idea for him to return to his previous role at Clarabridge and leave the day-to-day to Bishof. Former CEO and Clarabridge co-founder Sid Banerjee will continue in the role of executive chairman that he moved to in January.
"If you look over the last year we've been hitting our plans and exceeding our goals," Lee told DC Inno. "I only really regret I haven't been able to be here locally over that period. We can use talent like Mark's to focus on the business 24/7. The way we look at the change is more an addition as opposed to a transition."
"[Bishof] has a lot of experience that will help the company navigate and succeed over the next few years," Banerjee told DC Inno. "There's going to be continued expansion of the capabilities of the products on the market."
Clarabridge's long-anticipated IPO plans still look to be on track, despite the change. The goal right now is to reach $100 million in revenue, a goal it is more than halfway toward reaching. And there are other signs, like the internal $13.1 million raised to balance the books on the road to an IPO a few months ago. Lee said then that the timeline for an IPO is a matter of picking a moment, not ability. The paperwork for the $13.1 million is a step in making the company easier to run when it's public. But first comes the revenue growth.
"Job number one is to scale the business," Bishof said. "Making sure we have a repeatable process and focusing on things we are really good at. This is a global problem [we address], we have a global solution.
