Best-of-Breed Leadership and Advice from Our Seasoned Board of Directors
Innovating a market not only takes a strong company team, it takes committed support from a strong, expert Board. PivotLink's Board includes investors who are savvy about business intelligence technology and SaaS, as well as extremely successful CEOs who changed the way their customers did business.
Meet Our Board
Dennis Madsen - Chairman of the Board
Dennis Madsen brings first hand customer experience to PivotLink, as one of our first major customers. From 2000 to 2005, he was President and CEO of Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), a retailer and online merchant for outdoor gear and clothing. He served as REI's Executive Vice President and COO from 1987 to 2000, and prior to that held numerous positions throughout the company. Dennis brings a strong perspective in leading a large people-oriented and customer service driven organization. He also serves on several boards, including Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air and West Marine Inc.
Jack Noonan
The most recent addition to PivotLink's Board, Jack Noonan brings both a seasoned chief executive's guidance as well as deep expertise in the business intelligence market. A 30-year software veteran, Jack has served in senior executive roles for leading software companies and is widely recognized for catalyzing the business analytics market at SPSS, Inc. Jack became President and Chief Executive Officer of SPSS in 1992, was appointed Chairman in 2008 and led its $1.2 billion acquisition by IBM Corp in 2009. Over his 18 years with SPSS, Jack grew the company from a $30 Million entrepreneurial organization with a single product to a market-leading $300 Million public company with over 40 product offerings.
Deborah Farrington
Deborah Farrington is a founder and general partner of StarVest Partners, L.P., a New York City based venture capital firm that invests in software, e-Commerce and business services. Founded in 1998, StarVest has invested in many leading Software-as-a-Service and internet marketing companies. Deborah has over 30 years of private equity and venture investing, finance and operating experience. Prior to founding StarVest, Deborah held positions including: President and CEO of Victory Ventures, LLC, a New York-based private equity investment firm where she also served as chairman of Staffing Resources, Inc.; and Managing Director of Asian Oceanic Group, a Hong Kong-based merchant bank. She is a graduate of Smith College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she is a member of the Dean’s Visiting Committee.
Gordon Ritter
Gordon Ritter is a founder and general partner of Emergence Capital Partners. He has spent more than 15 years building companies that pioneered new markets, including embedded web-based interfaces, server appliances, on demand services for the SMB market and web-native application development. Prior to founding Emergence, Gordon was Co-Founder and CEO of Software As A Service, a web services platform company he created with Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. He is a graduate of Princeton University.
Evangelos Simoudis
Evangelos Simoudis joined Trident Capital in 2005 as a Venture Partner and has been a Managing Director since 2007. Evangelos focuses on investments in Internet, new media, and software businesses. Prior to Trident, Evangelos spent 5 years as a partner at Apax Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm where he invested and served on the boards of early and mid-stage IT companies. Prior to entering venture capital, Evangelos had more than 20 years experience in high tech industries, with executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. Evangelos earned a PhD in Computer Science from Brandeis University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Caltech.
Bruce Armstrong - President & Chief Executive Officer
Bruce brings over 25 years of experience developing, marketing, selling, and investing in technology to PivotLink, with an emphasis in data warehousing and analytic applications. Prior to joining PivotLink, Bruce served as Chairman and CEO of venture-backed Kickfire, a pioneer in next-generation data warehouse appliances focused on the open source MySQL database market (acquired by industry leader Teradata in 2010). Earlier, Bruce served as President and CEO of publicly-traded KNOVA Software, a leading provider of search and analytic applications for unstructured data. Prior to that, he was EVP of Sales & Marketing at Broadbase Software, where he helped create the analytic application category for CRM, and VP & GM of the Server Products Group at Sybase, where he ran the company's $700M enterprise database management business. Bruce started his career at Teradata Corporation, where - after seeing the company through a successful IPO and acquisition by AT&T/NCR - he was named VP & GM of the $500M Enterprise Solutions Division, President of Teradata, and a company officer of AT&T. Mr. Armstrong has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ching Wan - Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Before founding PivotLink in 1998, Ching Wan was a senior technical architect at Cambridge Technology Partners, specializing in data warehouse practices. Ching also worked at several startup companies in the Los Angeles area. He led a number of pioneering software development projects, including an object-oriented database management system, a graphic spreadsheet application, and warehouse management systems. Ching earned a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in China.
