SPMB Completes Search for NewView Capital
March 17, 2022 – SPMB, an executive search firm that helps find transformative executives throughout Silicon Valley, has assisted in placing Chetan Chaudhary as a partner with Burlingame, CA-based venture capital firm NewView Capital (NVC). Suzanne Heske, who heads SPMB’s investment practice, led the assignment. Mr. Chaudhary is a seasoned executive, with more than 20 years of experience driving sales revenue and international business development for both start-ups and large operations. At NVC, he will provide go-to-market guidance across the firm’s portfolio, with a focus on hiring, identifying new routes-to-market, and establishing sales productivity and sales motions.
“Expert operational support is a foundational aspect of NVC,” said Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner for the VC firm. “We’re thrilled to welcome Chetan to the team. He has extraordinary experience scaling companies and is an ideal fit for our culture and the operational focus of our firm.” Prior to joining NVC, Mr. Chaudhary served as chief revenue officer at Scale.ai and as global VP of vertical sales at Twilio. At Twilio he ran the platform sales team and established the IoT business unit, the vertical sales team, and the partnership team. Earlier in his career, Mr. Chaudhary led Asia-Pacific sales operations and commercial business development at Cisco Systems. He began his career at Oracle in sales.
A Feeling of Magic
“In my career as a sales executive, I did not expect to pursue venture capital,” said Mr. Chaudhary. “However, Ravi’s vision and leadership inspired me to rethink the role of venture in building high-growth businesses. There is a palpable feeling of magic happening at NVC. Over the last several years, I have been fortunate to work alongside some of the best distribution executives in the world,” he said. “I look forward to sharing those learnings and my strategic perspective with our portfolio companies.”
Mr. Chaudhary brings his operational expertise to NVC at a key moment in the firm’s continued growth. NVC recently raised an additional $544 million to advance its unique portfolio acquisition strategy and investments into industry-defining growth companies, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to over $2.2 billion.
With over $2.2 billion in assets under management, NewView Capital works to empower entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investors with the freedom to drive continual innovation and sustainable growth. The firm offers direct investments and curated portfolio acquisitions in mid- to growth-stage opportunities, with an emphasis on B2B software as a service (SaaS), fintech, consumer internet, and artificial intelligence. The NVC portfolio includes Plaid, Duolingo, Forter, Hims & Hers, MessageBird, and Scopely.
Achieving Scale
For over 40 years, SPMB has worked alongside its clients to build executive teams that ensure venture capital and private equity-backed game-changers achieve scale, and position multi-billion-dollar public companies to unlock innovation.
Related: SPMB Assists Cervin Ventures in Recruitment of New Partner
Specializing in technology and innovation, SPMB recruits upper management and board members to growth-oriented companies in tech, consumer, and sustainability industries. SPMB has also placed dozens of senior executives at the portfolio companies of leading private equity firm partners including Blackstone, KKR, and TPG.
SPMB Recruits CEO for Shutterfly
The private equity sector is witnessing an explosive bidding war for top leaders as portfolio companies expand their needs for C-suite talent. SPMB, an executive search firm that helps find transformative executives throughout Silicon Valley, recently placed Hilary Schneider as the new CEO of Shutterfly, which was acquired earlier this year by private equity firm Apollo Global Management. She succeeds Ryan O’Hara, effective Jan. 15. Partner Becky Stein led the search.
“Hilary is an accomplished executive with significant digital industry expertise and a focus on innovation and superior customer experiences that will support Shutterfly’s next chapter,” said Reed Rayman of the Apollo private equity team and a member of Shutterfly’s board of directors. “We look forward to partnering with Hilary as well as the Shutterfly management team and employees to grow its three divisions and deliver the best products and services to consumers.”
Ms. Heske joined SPMB in 2019 to spearhead its investment practice. She is focused on recruiting transformational leaders to private equity, venture capital and asset management firms. Ms. Heske is also leading the firm’s cryptocurrency and blockchain efforts. She came to SPMB from Caldwell Partners, where she ran the firm’s West Coast financial services team. Prior to becoming an executive search professional, Ms. Heske spent 15 years working for financial services companies, including Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, and Piper Jaffray as an institutional salesperson.
Recently Ms. Heske also helped to place Daniel Karp as a partner with Cervin Ventures. “With a shared focus on finding disciplined entrepreneurs disrupting the enterprise application, infrastructure and tools spaces, Cervin and Daniel’s collaboration will be an exciting one to follow,” said Ms. Heske.
Mr. Karp’s investments include: TriggerMesh, Isovalent, Gong.io, MemVerge, Sealights, Rookout, LightBits Labs, illusive Networks, Habana Labs (acquired by Intel for $2 billion), GuardiCore (acquired by Akamai for over $600 million), Elastifile (acquired by Google), Prospera (acquired by Valmont for $300 million), Stratoscale (acquired by Zadara), Ctera, Celeno (acquired by Renesas Technologies for $315 million), Jungo Connectivity, QWILT and Innovid.
Cervin Ventures is actively investing in companies disrupting the enterprise application, infrastructure, and tools spaces. The firm backs entrepreneurs who are revenue driven, aim to quickly achieve product-market fit and own their categories all while capitalizing the business appropriately at every stage.
Related: Talent Chiefs Emerge Among Fastest-Growing Roles in Private Equity
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
