—Brian Goldfarb became the senior vice president for platform marketing at Salesforce, where he will oversee marketing efforts for products like Salesforce1 and Heroku. He left a position as Head of Marketing for Google Cloud Platform, where he oversaw efforts to market products like Google App Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL and more. Prior to his work at Google, Goldfarb was the director of marketing for Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform.
It’s not yet clear what Goldfarb’s role at Salesforce will entail, aside from marketing the company’s cloud platform to potential users. Any Microsoft connections he has may prove handy, however, since the two companies have partnered in certain areas of their business after Satya Nadella took the reins as Microsoft CEO.
—Kymeta announced today that it named Nathan Kundtz its chief executive officer and Marc Stolzman its chief financial officer. Most recently, Kundtz has served as Kymeta’s president and chief technical officer, a post that he took on after the company spun out from Intellectual Ventures in August 2012. Prior to that, he served as the senior manager for IV’s Center for Metamaterials, which birthed Kymeta.
“The board is extremely confident in Nathan as CEO and is as optimistic as ever regarding Kymeta’s future,” Microsoft co-founder and Kymeta board member Bill Gates said in a press release.
Stolzman joins the company from Zulily, where he served as the flash sales site’s chief financial officer, before leaving in February after the company’s earnings missed expectations. Prior to his work there, he also served as CFO for Zumiez, Blue Nile and Imperium Renewables.
—Rex Tibbens joined Lyft as its Chief Operating Officer. Tibbens joins the transportation startup from Amazon, where he served as a vice president. He worked on projects including the launch of the company’s “Mayday” button for its Fire smartphone and tablets, which allows users to connect directly with a tech support representative. Most recently, he led the development of the infrastructure for Prime Now, Amazon’s one-hour shipping product that the company is gradually rolling out across the U.S.
Tibbens is taking the place of Travis VanderZanden, who left Lyft last year and went on to join Uber. Lyft is currently pursuing litigation against VanderZanden, and has accused him of stealing trade secrets.
—LabKey Software hired Michael Gersch as its new chief executive officer. Most recently, Gersch was the senior vice president of global marketing, sales and customer experience at ProQuest, where he had also served as the general manager of ProQuest Workflow Solutions. Previously, he worked at Serials Solutions, and also served in a wide variety of roles at LexisNexis.
“Given our vision to build the best data platform for research scientists, we are fortunate to have a leader of Michael’s caliber,” Randy Main, LabKey Software board member and chief financial officer at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said in a press release. “He has the experience and drive to scale LabKey to meet the steadily increasing demand for the company’s services and solutions.”
—F5 CEO John McAdam became the chairman of the Advisory Board for SysMech, a U.K.-based company that makes big data analytics software for mobile data network providers. McAdam, who also sits on the boards of Tableau Software and Apptio, will soon have more free time to devote to his chairmanship, since he’ll be stepping down from his post as F5 CEO this year.
“John is a visionary leader with a proven track record in empowering and growing the very strongest businesses,” SysMech CEO Rob Green said in a press release. “SysMech is entering an era where CSPs are looking to apply network wide big data solutions to help them improve network operations and customer experience while also growing revenue streams steadily. We’ve got the technology to do it, and we’re excited to combine this with John’s wealth of experience in helping software firms capitalise on our market opportunities for growth.”
—Zapproved announced the hiring of two new executives today: Christian Prusia will join the company as its vice president of worldwide sales and Brett Scantlebury will be its vice president of marketing. Prusia joins the company after a six year stint as the vice president of worldwide sales at Jama Software. Prior to that, he held roles at companies including M-SIX, Enuclia Semiconductor (which he co-founded) and Pixelworks. He also serves as a board member for Little Bird.
Scantlebury brings with him more than 20 years of engineering leadership experience, including recent stints at CLEAResult, Portland Energy Conservation, Inc., and Chrome Data Solutions.
“I am very happy to welcome Christian and Brett to Zapproved’s executive team at this critical juncture ” said Zapproved CEO Monica Enand. “Their expertise in high-growth companies will help Zapproved navigate this phase of our development.“
