Manny Medina has stepped down as CEO of Outreach, the Seattle-based sales automation software company he helped start a decade ago.
Abhijit Mitra, who joined the company last year as its president of product and technology, will replace Medina as Outreach’s new CEO.
In a LinkedIn post, Medina said the transition will help Outreach “step up our execution” in regard to implementing AI across its products.
“Abhijit’s depth of experience, vision for our market, and passion for customer-obsessed innovation, makes him the right person to lead Outreach,” he wrote.
Mitra previously was chief product officer at Comure and was a senior vice president at ServiceNow. He also spent time at SAP and Oracle.
Medina will become executive chairman of the company’s board.
“As a founder, finding the right human and the right leader to continue your life’s work is hard,” he wrote. “Founders lead with vision, see into the future, and make others believe. They get into the details and elevate the company from their current trajectory into a new orbit of performance, achievement, and growth. Abhijit has always exhibited the attributes of a founder, and has a stellar track record growing businesses at scale.”
Outreach, launched in 2014, has more than 6,000 customers including Zoom, Twilio, and McKesson. It aims to help companies improve their seller workflows and win more deals.
Outreach is ranked No. 1 on the the GeekWire 200 list of privately-held tech companies in the Pacific Northwest.
The company has raised nearly $500 million and reached a $4.4 billion valuation after raising $200 million in 2021.
But it went through multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few years to cut costs amid a slowing venture capital industry.
Outreach competes with other sales engagement companies including Salesloft, Apollo, and Clari. Tech giants such as Microsoft and Salesforce offer their own products aimed at streamlining and automating sales processes.
Medina co-founded Outreach in 2014 with Wes Hather, Gordon Hempton, and Andrew Kinzer.
The four co-founders went on a roller coaster startup journey together. They originally launched a recruiting software company called GroupTalent in 2011 after going through the Techstars Seattle accelerator. But the entrepreneurs pivoted in 2014 to focus on building tools for salespeople.
That idea gained traction. Outreach became a so-called unicorn in 2019, reaching a $1 billion valuation in 2019 after raising a $114 million round.
Outreach is backed by Sands Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Operator Collective, Lone Pine Capital, Spark Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Trinity Ventures, Mayfield, and Sapphire Ventures.
Amritansh Raghav, the company’s former executive vice president of engineering, resigned in September of last year. Min Zhu, the former vice president of engineering, left in January.
https://ift.tt/x70zCZB September 12, 2024 at 02:35PM GeekWire
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