Being the son of a tech pioneer is a big pair of shoes to fill, but Naveen Singh doesn’t seem to be missing a beat.
He’s the son of longtime Concur CEO Steve Singh and the nephew of Concur co-founder Raj Singh, and now Naveen is stepping into the spotlight as the CEO of his father’s new venture, Center.
Naveen and Steve co-founded Center in 2014, the same year Naveen finished his undergraduate degree at the University of San Diego, and unveiled the company in March.
The company’s first product is CenterCard: a smart corporate credit card, complete with a touchscreen and a battery, that’s designed to make expense reporting and budgeting easier.
“Nobody has been able to pull this off,” Steve Singh told GeekWire in a previous interview. “There’s not one product in the marketplace where you have a digitally-connected card that’s the size of a regular card.”
Steve Singh is the company’s sole backer and hasn’t disclosed how much money he has put into the venture. It’s a family affair: Steve’s wife, Heather Singh, also works at the company as its chief marketing officer, which puts Naveen in the unique position of being his mother’s boss.
Naveen Singh co-founded the company with his father and has served as its VP of product management for the past two years. He previously served stints at Concur as a corporate development and product development intern.
Naveen will now lead Center’s strategic development, focusing on CenterCard, which is set to launch this summer.
“There is a tremendous opportunity to drive value for customers by integrating budgeting tools with the tools we use to spend corporate funds. CenterCard applications learn with each transaction to help our customers create and manage their budgets,” Naveen Singh said in a press release. “I am excited to lead Center and work with an incredible team to deliver next generation software and financial tools to help our customers run and manage their businesses.”
Center is based in Bellevue, Wash., with an office in Kitchener, Ontario. Its team now has 40 employees and includes former BlackBerry, Concur, Gates Foundation and AmEx executives.
— Lisa Conquergood, the co-founder and former chief marketing officer for photo editing service PicMonkey, has joined Seattle-based e-commerce and gift-finding platform Knack as its interim CMO.
Conquergood formerly held leadership positions at Google, Expedia and Picnik. She co-founded PicMonkey in 2012 and served as CMO there until December of 2015.
“Knack is at an exciting inflection point, we’ve proven our business model and are ready for major growth. Lisa will play a key role in fueling that growth,” Knack CEO Laura Jennings said in an emailed statement.
— Skilljar, a Seattle-based startup that helps companies teach customers how to use their software, announced the addition of Pam Dodrill as VP of customer success.
Skilljar’s cloud-based learning management system is used by companies like Uber, BECU and Tune to help their customers, clients and partners learn how to use their enterprise services.
Dodrill will be leading the company’s customer engagement efforts. She was most recently the VP of customer success at Bay Area software company ServiceMax, and formerly held roles at Salesforce and Oracle.
“I’ve struggled for years with balancing a phenomenal customer experience with a cost effective approach,” Dodrill said in a press release. “Skilljar helps solve this problem by providing customer success teams with the insights they need to build a data-driven education program that spans the customer lifecycle. I’m thrilled to be leading a team that enables customers to deliver flexible and seamless training programs, which minimize frustration and allow them to focus on their business’ success.”
— RealNetworks, a pioneer in media streaming services, has added a new chief financial officer to its executive team.
Cary Baker will take on the role as his predecessor, Marjorie Thomas, leaves the company to serve as the CFO at the Allen Institute. Baker’s first day will be May 5.
Baker previously served as the CFO of Heat Software, a San Francisco-based cloud technology company that completed a merger in January. He was formerly the CFO of Seattle-based NetMotion and has held financial leadership roles at Clearwire, Boost Mobile and Sprint.
“I’m excited by the growth potential I see at RealNetworks,” Baker said in a press release. “Real has a long history of incredible innovation, and I look forward to helping the company achieve its goals in the upcoming months and years.”
“Over his career, Cary has demonstrated a strong record of operational success and leadership during periods of transition and growth. Cary’s professional experiences and accomplishments are a perfect fit, both for where Real is today and especially for where we are heading,” RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser said in the release.
— Genyo Takeda, a hardware visionary who has led innovation at games company Nintendo for the past 45 years, will retire this June.
Takeda led the development of the company’s Wii and GameCube consoles and initially rose to fame for developing the unique joystick on the Nintendo 64 controller. He was also well known for his stance that better graphic quality shouldn’t be the keystone of hardware innovation for games consoles.
Takeda has served as a co-representative director and technology fellow at the company since 2015, taking a high-level advisory position on the same scale as the company’s star game designer Shigeru Miyamoto.
Takeda will be succeeded by Nintendo’s current hardware lead, Ko Shiota.
— Digital product design agency Smashing Ideas announced the addition of Kevin Wick as the agency’s creative director.
Wick joins the company from San Francisco-based global design firm frog, where he served as the creative director for the past five years. He has also held positions at Premera Blue Cross, Ascentium, Blink Interactive and more.
“We’re thrilled to incorporate Kevin’s experience leading design initiatives and long history of building digital experiences and UX practices at agencies and on the client-side,” Smashing Ideas CEO Brian Burke said in a press release.
