To help settle into Seattle, Douglas Gourlay spent this past weekend watching Boys in the Boat, the movie depicting the University of Washington rowing team that won gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. And he’s already seeing parallels to his new job leading Qumulo.
“It’s about having the right people, putting them in the right seat, and making sure everybody is rowing together,” Gourlay said. “I think we have the right boat. I think we have the right people. I think we know what direction we’re going.”
Gourlay just took over as CEO and president of the Seattle-based data storage company. He replaces longtime leader Bill Richter, who is retiring after an 8-year stint as CEO.
Gourlay spent the past 26 years in Silicon Valley, where he worked at Cisco for a decade and later joined networking giant Arista Networks, where he was most recently a vice president and general manager.
The former U.S. Army infantry officer takes the helm at Qumulo as it continues to evolve after launching in 2012. The company initially sold its own data storage hardware but is now focused on selling software that helps customers store and access data from any location or device — in the cloud, on-premise, and at the edge.
Gourlay said the recent AI boom and growing demand for data is an opportunity for Qumulo. He specifically called out “applied AI.”
“That’s the inference workloads, the runtime workloads — getting data from systems of record into an AI system,” he said.
Qumulo raised $125 million in a Series E round in 2020, which pushed its valuation to $1.2 billion at the time. The company laid off 19% of its staff in 2022 amid the tech downturn.
Current headcount is around 300 employees.
Asked about additional funding or a public offering, Gourlay said his initial focus is on spending time with customers “to make sure that we clearly understand their priorities.” Qumulo has more than 1,000 customers across various industries including energy, entertainment, education, biotech, and others.
Gourlay said the company is generating “significant free cash flow” but declined to provide details on financial performance.
Gourlay will replace Richter on Qumulo’s board. Richter will transition to a board and executive advisor.
Richter joined Qumulo in 2016. He previously was an executive at Isilon Systems, a data storage company that sold to EMC for $2.25 billion in 2010.
Former Isilon employees Peter Godman, Neal Fachan, and Aaron Passey founded Qumulo 12 years ago. Godman stepped down as CEO when Richter was hired, and left the company in 2018. Passey left in 2016, did a 4-year stint with Dropbox, and returned to Qumulo in 2022. Fachan left Qumulo in 2022.
Eric Brodersen, who was president since 2022, has retired.
Qumulo CTO Kiran Bhageshpur joined in 2022. He was CEO and founder of Igneous, which sold to Rubrik in 2020, and also previously worked at Isilon.
Qumulo investors include BlackRock, which led the Series E round; Highland Capital Partners; Madrona Venture Group; Kleiner Perkins; and Amity Ventures. Total funding to date is $340 million.
https://ift.tt/DYZfIAd July 09, 2024 at 01:00PM GeekWire
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