Company / Management
Executive Team
William A. Soward — President & CEO
Bill is a seasoned enterprise software executive with 25 years of experience in technology management and operational finance roles.
Prior to Adaptive Planning, Bill was an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners. Prior to Accel, he was General Manager of FRS, a business unit of S1 Corporation that provided financial institutions worldwide with enterprise risk and regulatory compliance solutions. While at S1, Bill transformed FRS into the company's most successful business unit, more than doubling revenues while building profitable and sustainable customer relationships with global financial institutions. Additionally, as a member of S1's executive team, Bill helped spearhead the build out of S1's European operations and served as the interim CEO of both S1 Europe and S1's Edify business unit. Prior to joining S1, he held a variety of executive roles at Edify Corporation, where he built and managed the company's highly-successful online financial services software business and helped drive the company's acquisition by S1. Previously, Bill served in management roles with Siemens-Rolm and IBM, and was Managing Partner and CFO of a residential construction company.
Bill holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert S. Hull — Co-Founder, CFO & Vice President, Client Services and Support
Rob is a talented executive with deep financial management expertise and a solid track record of building market-leading businesses and high performing teams.
Prior to co-founding Adaptive Planning, Rob served as CEO of ChemTracker and as CFO for a number of technology companies, including MailFrontier, LoopNet, and Risk Management Solutions. Rob has significant experience in both leading corporate planning and reporting as CFO, and in contributing to the planning process as an operational manager. This background has provided him with a strong understanding of the keys to improving financial processes throughout a company. Rob also has experience with numerous business models, and is skilled at helping companies incorporate challenging revenue recognition scenarios into their plans. Prior to his financial management roles, Rob was a consultant for Booz, Allen & Hamilton.
Rob has a BA in Economics from Stanford 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.
Hamid Bahadori — Vice President, Engineering and Hosted Operations
Hamid is an experienced executive with a proven track record of developing highly-scalable on-demand solutions, as well as a thorough understanding of business intelligence software.
Prior to joining Adaptive Planning, Hamid served as Vice President of Engineering and Hosted Operations at WebTrends, an on-demand and on-premise digital marketing provider with thousands of enterprise clients. Prior to WebTrends, he was Vice President of Engineering at Coremetrics. Prior to that, Hamid served as the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Actuate Corporation, where he drove the delivery of highly-scalable business intelligence products and played a key role in helping grow revenues five-fold, leading to a successful initial public offering. Before Actuate, he held the role of Vice President of Engineering at Envive, a software performance management company, as well as senior development positions at Oracle and technical positions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Bahadori holds a doctorate degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Greg Schneider — Vice President, Marketing
Greg is an accomplished professional with 15 years of experience in marketing, business development, 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.
Kumar Thiagarajan — Chief Community Officer
Kumar is an accomplished technologist who has over 19 years of research, teaching and industry experience.
Before joining Adaptive Planning, Kumar served as Founder/CTO of CastBridge Inc. Prior to CastBridge, Kumar served as Director of Engineering at Zaplet (now MetricStream). Before Zaplet, Kumar spent seven years in senior engineering and management roles at Sun Microsystems (including SunLabs, Solaris and Java groups). Prior to his career at Sun, Kumar was a visiting faculty member teaching quantitative business courses at University of Illinois, Springfield.
Kumar holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Southern Methodist University, a Master's degree in Quantitative Business from the University of Texas at Dallas, a Master of Science in Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Science and a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Bangalore University.
Advisors
John Dillon
John Dillon is currently the chief executive officer of Navis, a leading provider of information technology solutions that manage the flow of goods within and between facilities in the supply chain. Prior to Navis, John was the CEO for salesforce.com, the leading supplier of online CRM. Previously, John was CEO for Arbor Software and Hyperion Solutions, leading vendors of enterprise software for business reporting, analysis and planning. John's professional history also includes management positions in sales and engineering for Oracle Corporation and EDS.
John holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and a Master's of Business Administration from Golden Gate University.
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.