Ward Cunningham, the Portland software developer who is credited with developing the wiki, has joined New Relic as a staff engineer. He will continue to be based in Portland, where New Relic has a growing engineering staff.
“New Relic has changed the way software gets built by introducing production usage data into agile development processes,” said Cunningham. “Working as a member of New Relic’s outstanding team of engineers who are known for rapid innovation, I hope to help shape the next generation of New Relic products. My first task is to evaluate our product initiatives with an eye to streamlining and accelerating their already speedy processes while maximizing their internal engineering talents.”
New Relic, which is developing tools for developers to better monitor the performance of apps, raised $80 million at a $750 million valuation in February.
The Keiretsu Forum, an angel investment group, has named Nate Doran as entrepreneur director in the northwest region. He replaces Harry Lee who stepped down last month to take a job at a San Francisco startup. Doran previously worked with the Northwest Energy Angels, and co-founded C6 Systems. Keiretsu’s Nathan McDonald said that Doran “will be a strong asset as he serves the needs of the many entrepreneurs who turn to our organization to secure funding.”
Venture capitalist John Doerr has joined the board of Zynga, the struggling San Francisco social gaming company which also maintains an office in Seattle. “In just five years Zynga has connected hundreds of millions of people to their friends for fun,” Doerr said in a statement. “I’m excited about working with Mark and the Zynga team in its next chapters of growth.” Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, also sits on the boards of Bloom Energy, Google and Flipboard.
And speaking of Kleiner Perkins, venture capitalist Ray Lane is stepping down from the chairman position of H-P. A partner at Kleiner Perkins and former president of Oracle, Lane will remain on the board. Ralph Whitworth will take over the chairman role as the company seeks a permanent replacement. Board members John Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson also are resigning.
Room 77, the hotel search engine that is backed by Expedia, Concur, Zillow’s Rich Barton and Spencer Rascoff and others, has named 36-year-old Drew Patterson to the position of CEO. Patterson was one of the original employees at Kayak, leaving the travel search company to start Jetsetter. He most recently founded the startup CheckMate, which Room 77 is acquiring as part of Patterson’s hiring. “Travel search is a category with huge potential, further accelerated by the rapid shift to mobile. I‘m thrilled to get back to my search roots in an industry I love, and I look forward to building Room 77 into a global hotel search leader,” said Patterson. Room 77 has raised $43 million to date.
Cray, the Seattle supercomputer maker, has named Dr. Prithviraj Banerjee to the board as an independent director. He will start in the role on May 1. Banerjee is Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director of the Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Spoken Communications, an 8-year-old Bellevue company that’s developed cloud-based software used in customer support centers, has tapped John Nassar as its new executive vice president of sales and marketing. He previously worked at Avaya where her served as vice president of worldwide sales. Before that, he worked at Cisco.
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