Riviera Partners Recruits Chief Product Officer for Versapay

November 18, 2022 – Today’s chief product officer is responsible for all product-related matters, and the role is growing in demand, according to executive recruiters who place them. The position typically includes product conception and development, production, innovation, and project and product management. In many IT/ telecommunications companies, the position includes release management and production. Chief product officers generally work on product strategy based on goals set by the CEO and/ or board members. The high demand for chief product officers is keeping executive search firms busy.

San Francisco-based Riviera Partners, a recruitment provider specializing in C-level engineering, product and design leader placements, recently assisted in placing Craig Walker as the new chief product officer of Versapay, leader in collaborative accounts receivable (AR). John Termotto led the assignment.

In his new role, Mr. Walker will lead the Versapay product organization with a customer-focused approach to advance the product roadmap, prioritize technology investments, and adapt the product line for international markets. He will own product strategy and execution to deliver advancements in the company’s accounts receivable automation technology and payment network that connects nearly a million buyers and suppliers.  Mr. Walker joins the company during a period of rapid growth that includes the acquisition of DadeSystems, a strategic partnership with American Express, key C-suite hires, and the introduction of what Versapay says is the industry’s only fully-integrated platform to connect AR teams with their customers and digitize the entire invoice-to-cash cycle.

“AR Automation yields improved efficiency, but by combining automation with collaboration you achieve outsized results,” said Craig O’Neill, CEO of Versapay. “Our collaborative AR network is the only solution that delivers this combination, and Craig Walker will play a key role in continuing our track record of innovation. I know he’ll have a big impact as he leads our product organization.”

Mr. Walker brings nearly two decades of experience leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) product teams in high-growth companies. Before Versapay, he was co-founder and founding CTO of Xero, a SaaS small business accounting platform with over 4,000 employees, three million customers, and $1 billion in revenue. Mr. Walker built Xero’s founding product team, technology strategy, and core accounting platform, and also ran the company’s next-generation fintech and financial services products.

“Having spent much of my career focused on building leading fintech products, I am energized to join Versapay and further advance our market leadership in collaborative AR,” said Mr. Walker. “As the company looks to further advance its collaboration-based approach to AR automation, I am laser-focused on leading Versapay’s product organization to build a world-class platform that will accelerate this vision.”

Related: Riviera Partners Assists HubSpot with Chief Product Officer Search

Owned by Great Hill Partners, Versapay is based in Toronto with offices in Atlanta, London, Amsterdam and Miami. With 8,000-plus clients and 900,000+ buyers engaged, Versapay handles over 40 million new invoices and drives more than $60 billion in global payment volume annually.

Proven Recruiters

Riviera Partners is a global recruiting firm specializing in the technology industry. The firm provides clients with optimal placements by combining recruiter interactions and experience with data-driven findings about candidates. The firm has recruited for key executive roles at Pinterest, Postmates, Tinder, Twilio, Uber, Asana, Dropbox, GitHub, DoorDash, Hulu, and partnered with venture-backed concerns, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Benchmark, Accel, Menlo Ventures, KPCB, Greylock, and General Catalyst.


Riviera Partners Places CTO for ResMed

Riviera Partners has assisted in placing Urvashi Tyagi as chief technology officer of ResMed, a medical device company in San Diego, CA. Partner Dante Carpinito led the assignment. “Urvashi brings world-class technology and engineering know-how, combined with senior leadership experience from other top fintech and consumer tech companies, that will help ResMed accelerate growth of our digital ecosystem, and achieve our goal of improving the lives of 250 million people in 2025,” said Mick Farrell, ResMed’s chief executive officer.


Through machine learning algorithms, Riviera Partners identifies specialized, highly qualified candidates that fit an organization’s needs from 600,000 professionals across tech geographies. Riviera can often provide a short list of candidates in 30 days and has a success rate of over 95 percent. “Speed and efficiency are what clients now want, and demand, of their talent providers, especially in the PE and VC world where time is short and value creation has to happen at lightning speed,” said Scott A. Scanlon, CEO and co-founder of Hunt Scanlon Media. Leadership talent, he said, is more often than not the key lever driving it all.

Mr. Termotto is an executive recruiter at Riviera Partners with a focus on private equity and public companies, and he specializes in recruiting product (VP/CPO) and engineering (VP/CTO) leaders. He has helped Freescale (now NXP Semi), AMD, Akamai, SolarWinds, and Amherst hire executives from director to C-level, and recently decided to focus his efforts solely on recruiting technology executives.

Related: Riviera Partners Assists Life360 with Chief Product Officer Search

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media

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