Bellevue, Wash.-based project management software company Smartsheet has brought in Jenny Ceran, a veteran of Silicon Valley heavyweights like eBay, Cisco and Box to be its first ever chief financial officer.
In her new position, Ceran will manage the company’s finance, legal and IT departments. Ceran, who started Monday, said she had never heard of Smartsheet until the Bellevue, Wash.-based company began recruiting her. Ceran, who has been in tech for 16 years, is passionate about simplifying the ways people work.
“I’ve experienced a lot of challenges in my career of how you share information and how you get a process done,” Ceran told GeekWire. “I’m not an engineer, but I understand the high level strategic perspective of that.”
Smartsheet has topped 70 percent year-over-year revenue growth for five years, Mark Mader, Smartsheet’s CEO, said. Ceran will be a steadying force for the company, Mader said, making sure that Smartsheet balances short-term growth and long-term investment.
Smartsheet’s growth has included new features too. The company introduced a visual organization system called Card View in June and a dashboard-like system called Sights that it introduced in March.
Though project management and collaboration will always important for Smartsheet, Mader said the company has broadened its focus to include automation and industry-specific solutions. Smartsheet’s primary goal is to improve productivity, and automating some tasks and creating specific plans for various industries fits with that mission.
Ceran, who uprooted her Silicon Valley life to come to Smartsheet, thinks the company’s growth is not an aberration. Smartsheet, she says, is here for the long haul.
“Smartsheet has a disruptive product poised to change the way people work, the company is incredibly ambitious and, quite frankly, it’s a company that I believe in,” she said. “I’ve seen more companies than I count in the Valley come and go, and it’s clear to me Smartsheet has some serious staying power.”
Today, Smartsheet has about 390 employees. Mader projects that within approximately three years, the company could employ as many as 1,000 people. Smartsheet is close to choosing a site for a new office on the East Coast and looking at its first office abroad.
Smartsheet is growing in its hometown of Bellevue as well. The company occupies 52,000 square at Bellevue Place in downtown Bellevue, and it is building out an additional 13,000 square feet. In total, the Bellevue office has room for about 500 people.
Smartsheet says it has millions of users at 95,000 organizations in 190 countries, including more than half of Fortune 500 companies. Some of its customers include the U.S. General Services Administration, Google, Salesforce and Cisco.
