SPMB Places CFO for Deepwatch
March 13, 2023 – SPMB Executive Search, which helps find transformative executives throughout Silicon Valley, has assisted in placing Mel Wesley as chief financial officer of Tampa, FL-based Deepwatch, which provides advanced managed detection and response security. The search was led by Sarah Auten, client partner at SPMB.
Mr. Wesley is a seasoned finance executive with over 25 years of experience in financial planning, analysis, and operational finance, with a proven track record of driving growth and building high-performance finance teams. For the past 18 years, he has served as chief financial officer for publicly traded and private technology companies. As Deepwatch’s CFO, Mr. Wesley will support the company during hyper-growth while overseeing finance, legal, and corporate development.
“Mel is a proven CFO with a superior track record of creating value and delivering results in fast-growing organizations,” said Charlie Thomas, Deepwatch CEO. “He is an extremely talented executive who understands scaling and operational excellence. He will play an important role as we execute the next phase of Deepwatch.”
In the last 10 years as a CFO, Mr. Wesley supported three companies through financial transactions and exits totaling nearly $3 billion. As CFO, he has managed investor relations, directed IPO-readiness efforts, and raised significant equity and debt.
Strong Experience
Mr. Wesley remains on the board of directors of Cofense Inc. (formerly PhishMe Inc.), where he previously served as CFO. During his tenure, he supported the company’s growth initiatives and IPO-readiness efforts, and steered the company through a significant sale for $400 million.
Before that, Mr. Wesley held multiple CFO positions. During his tenure at comScore Inc., the company purchased and merged with another public company. During his tenure at Mandiant Corp., the company was sold to FireEye Inc. for over $1 billion. Mr. Wesley remained at FireEye as CFO of global services and cloud solutions, supporting integration efforts. During his tenure at OPNET Technologies, the company’s revenue grew from $50 million to $175 million before the company sold for over $1 billion.
“I’m excited to join Deepwatch during a time of significant opportunity,” said Mr. Wesley. “The company and its talented leadership team have made tremendous progress in a very short period of time. I look forward to helping further advance Deepwatch’s market leadership and moving the company forward.”
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Founded in 2019, Deepwatch provides early detection and response to cyber threats together with tailored guidance to help clients mitigate risk and improve their organization’s security posture. Deepwatch can support security operations centers (SOC) in full, or co-manage the SOC, stand up a new cloud-native SOC, or help manage EDR or VM solutions. Its team serves a range of Fortune 500/Global 2000 companies. The company’s services include: computer security, managed security services, infosec, information security, SOC, MSSP, MDR, managed detection and response, security operations center, endpoint detection and response, edr, vulnerability management, VM, vuln, and cybersecurity.
Veteran Recruiters
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. 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 Assists Cervin Ventures in Recruitment of New Partner
Tremendous opportunity lies ahead in integrating a set of distinctive human capital solutions that will deliver exponential value to private equity firms and their portfolios. At the core of this drive are private equity talent leaders and executive recruiters who are developing solutions to help clients navigate change and power value creation early in the hold period. Creating value in portfolio investments, to be sure, begins with assimilating the right team, and executive recruiters continue to step up.
Recently SPMB, an executive search firm that helps find transformative executives throughout Silicon Valley, assisted in the placement of Daniel Karp as a partner with Cervin Ventures. Suzanne Heske, who heads SPMB’s investment practice, led the assignment. “We are thrilled for our client Cervin Ventures who welcomes Daniel Karp as a partner,” said Ms. Heske. “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.”
Specializing in technology and innovation, SPMB Executive Search 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.
Some of SPMB’s recent C-level technical assignments have included filling key roles for: Disney Streaming (media and entertainment), Google Cloud (cloud services), and Comcast (communications and media) among many others.
Ms. Auten joined SPMB in 2018 from Heidrick & Struggles. Since then she has helped launch SPMB’s Los Angeles office and co-leads the financial officers practice, recruiting accomplished and strategic CFOs and VPs for venture and private equity backed expansion and growth stage companies in consumer, cleantech, fintech, and SaaS. As a former attorney, she also launched the general counsel practice at SPMB, recruiting top legal talent in consumer companies.
Related: SPMB Completes Search for NewView Capital
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
