Management

Executive Team

John Herr – CEO

John has over 15 years of senior executive experience in the SaaS, Internet, and financial services sectors. He has a strong track record of scaling internet businesses into large enterprises, with areas of expertise that include sales and marketing, business development, product management, team building, global expansion, operational efficiency, and mergers and acquisitions.

Prior to Adaptive Planning, John was an Executive in Residence (EIR) at Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), where he nurtured early-stage companies, helped to coach and guide growth-stage companies, and developed new investment opportunities. Before NVP, John was the President and CEO of EZ Shield, a technology-enabled services company serving consumers and small businesses. From 2001 – 2007, John served as Vice President & General Manager at eBay, working across the eBay, PayPal, and international businesses. During this time, revenue grew 15 times, from $400 million to $6 billion, and employees increased from a few hundred to 15,000. Prior to eBay, John was Chief Revenue Officer at Buy.com, a leading e-commerce company, where he was responsible for scaling revenues from $35 million to $860 million. Earlier in his career, he held senior roles at Ziff Davis Media, Johnson & Johnson, and Bain & Company.

John earned an Economics BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Robert S. Hull – Founder, President

Rob has over 20 years of executive and financial management experience and a solid track record of building market-leading venture-backed businesses and high performing teams. Drawing on his own experiences as CFO, Rob founded Adaptive Planning with a vision of providing CFOs with an easy to use SaaS-based solution for corporate performance management. Rob has significant experience both in leading corporate planning and reporting as CFO, and in contributing to the planning process as an operational manager.

Prior to founding Adaptive Planning, Rob served as CEO of ChemTracker and as CFO for a number of market-leading software companies, including LoopNet and Risk Management Solutions. Rob raised over $40M in equity and debt capital for his companies and has completed several successful M&A transactions. Rob has been an active part of SaaS-based companies for the past 10 years and is a frequent speaker on both corporate planning and SaaS. Prior to his financial management roles, Rob was a consultant for Booz, Allen & Hamilton.

Rob has a BA in Economics from Stanford University.

David Pefley – CFO

David has more than 30 years of senior level finance experience managing rapid growth for leading public and private technology companies. As a long-time CFO and finance professional, he is keenly aware of the challenges that CFOs face in managing better planning, forecasting, analysis, and business performance as well as the benefits of the Adaptive Planning solution in driving speed, accuracy, and productivity into the process. He is adept in formulating business strategies, utilizing teamwork and planning to succeed in competitive markets, and driving rapid growth and increased profitability through hands-on management.

Prior to Adaptive Planning, David held CFO or senior financial leadership roles at several large, global, high-growth software and technology companies including KLA-Tencor, National Semiconductor, Yield Dynamics, Virtutech (acquired by Intel), Daisy Systems, and Aspect Development (acquired in one of the largest software mergers in history). At KLA Tencor, he managed financial and business planning efforts at the company as annual revenues increased from $113 million to $1.2 billion.

David earned a BA in Economics from the University of California, Davis, and an MBA from Cornell University.

Neil Thomas – Vice President, Sales

Neil is an experienced sales executive with deep domain expertise in business intelligence, budgeting and forecasting, and financial management.

Prior to joining Adaptive Planning, Neil was a sales executive at Cognos. At Cognos, he led the region that generated the company's strongest sales growth, delivering nine successive quarters of year-on-year growth. Prior to his tenure at Cognos, Neil held Area Vice President of Sales, Area Vice President of Channels, and General Manager positions at Adaytum, a market-creating budgeting and planning vendor that was acquired by Cognos. He joined Adaytum as one of the original team in 1996 and played a key role in driving the company's growth from $1 million to $61 million in revenue. From his many years as Group Financial Controller at Dimension Data and Marketing Controller at Johnson & Johnson, Thomas also brings valuable financial management insight to the Adaptive Planning team.

Neil received a Masters Degree in Accounting and Finance from Thames Valley University in London and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Neil is a certified accountant and chartered company secretary.

Greg Schneider – Vice President, Marketing

Greg is an accomplished professional with 20 years of experience in enterprise software marketing, corporate performance management, and financial planning and analysis.

Prior to joining Adaptive Planning, Greg was Director of Product Marketing at Epiphany, where he was instrumental in leading the company's transition to an industry-focused sales and marketing model. While at Epiphany, Greg also directed worldwide channel sales and business development, as well as partner marketing. Prior to Epiphany, he drove industry marketing and business development initiatives for Peregrine Systems, and business development and demand generation for Extricity. Prior to his career in enterprise software, Greg gained significant experience with financial planning and analysis at both Hewlett-Packard and Prudential Financial.

Greg received an AB in economics from Duke University, where he graduated magna cum laude, and an MBA from Stanford University.

Carolee Gearhart, Vice President of Global Channels & Partners

Carolee brings deep experience in driving strategic partner success in enterprise software with nearly twelve years in senior executive partnership roles including SAP and PeopleSoft. Carolee has a passion for delighting customers leveraging the diversity that great alliances can bring. The years of business development expertise have honed her ability to craft truly accretive business outcomes. Her proven leadership in building partnerships and alliance success is helping Adaptive Planning to accelerate global expansion and to enhance channel programs and strategies geared towards large enterprises.

Carolee’s roles at SAP included Global Vice President of OEM, Head of the Strategic Partner Organization, and Vice President of Business Development where she managed more than $1 billion of annual revenues in systems integration partnerships and owned $200 million in resale license revenues and $100 million in OEM revenues. Her team included a 100+ employee organization, and delivered 15 percent growth in revenues from top tier partners.

At PeopleSoft, she held the position of Vice President of Global Channels where she built and owned the global strategic plan and business development, and expanded initial channel revenues from $0 to $21 million. Prior to PeopleSoft, Carolee was in consulting at Deloitte & Touche.

Carolee earned a BA in English from the University of California, Davis.

Maurizio Gianola – Vice President, Engineering & Hosted Operations

As Adaptive Planning’s Vice President of Engineering and Hosted Operations, Maurizio oversees all product development and SaaS/IT operations. He brings extensive technical expertise in web and on-demand applications, enterprise software, open-source software, and development tools, as well as significant operational experience in building and managing enterprise-class SaaS applications, distributed engineering organizations and open source development communities.

Prior to joining Adaptive Planning, Maurizio held executive engineering management positions at MySQL, PeopleSoft, Elance, and Annuncio Software, a CRM company he co-founded and later sold to PeopleSoft.

Maurizio holds an MS in Computer Science from Pisa University (Italy), and is a graduate of the AEA Stanford Executive Institute Program.

Keli Forsman – Vice President, Professional Services

Keli has over 20 years of experience in accounting, financial planning and analysis, project management, and professional services. As Adaptive Planning's Vice President of Professional Services, Keli oversees all product implementations, training and support.

Prior to joining Adaptive Planning, Keli held various finance positions at Synopsys, IBM and Alex. Brown & Sons. While at Synopsys, she advised and supported top executives in making operating decisions to achieve their financial goals. Prior to Synopsys, Keli held a financial planning and analysis role at IBM where she was responsible for the information systems and capital planning function for the Santa Theresa Laboratory. Keli's roots in customer service originated with experience gained at Alex. Brown, where she managed multi-million dollar brokerage transactions, employee stock option programs and 401K investment funds.

Keli earned a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and a MBA from Santa Clara University.

Connie DeWitt – Vice President, Product Management

Connie is a seasoned executive with over 18 years of experience in product management, development, and marketing of network-based services for businesses.

Prior to joining Adaptive Planning, Connie served as Vice President, Marketing at venture-backed startups RouteScience Technologies (acquired by Avaya) and Sigma Networks, where she was responsible for product strategy and execution, as well as corporate marketing. Connie also served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at Concentric Network (later XO Communications), where she was responsible for marketing and product management of small-medium business services, and during her tenure led the small business webhosting service to a #2 market share position. Connie also served as a Senior Director at Sprint Corporation, where she owned an interactive voice services product line through a period of 20x growth over 20 months, and later served in a strategic planning capacity for Internet services.

Connie received a B.E.E. from Georgia Tech where she graduated with honor. She is a co-inventor on two U.S. patents for software innovations for business services.

Advisors

John Dillon

John has thirty years of experience building successful technology companies. He began his career as a Systems Engineer for EDS (Electronic Data Systems) and then held sales management positions at various high tech companies including Oracle Corporation. During the past 20 years, John has served as President and Chief Executive Officer for Hyperion Solutions and CEO for Salesforce.com. From 2002 - 2008, John served as CEO for Navis, LLC, specializing in software systems for operating large Marine Container Terminals and distribution centers. He currently is the CEO of Engine Yard. Engine Yard is the leader for expert cloud deployment and management of business-critical Ruby and JRuby on Rails applications John holds a B.S. in engineering from the United States Naval Academy and an MBA from Golden Gate University. He served on active duty in the nuclear submarine service for five years before beginning his civilian career.

Leslie Murdock

Leslie was founder and President of Horn Murdock Cole, Silicon Valley, previously Murdock & Associates. Under his leadership the company became the Silicon Valley's premier consulting firms, and has been a pioneer in providing CFO services to venture backed companies. In addition he was one of the first to recognize the need for senior level financial consulting services, including corporate governance. In 2004 Leslie retired from Horn Murdock Cole is a presently an investor and entrepreneur.

Prior to Murdock & Associates, Leslie held several positions with Ernst & Young. He is a Chartered Accountant and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Leslie has passed the CPA Exam, is a member of the AICPA, the California Society of CPA's and the Institute of Internal Auditors. In addition, Leslie is past-President of both the San Jose/Dublin Sister City Program and the San Jose Conservation Corps, a non-profit job-training program for at-risk youth.