Monetate Board Additions: Steps toward IPO preparation? (Update 4/5: Monetate adds new CFO)

Tom Paine

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email

Conshohocken-based ecommerce software company Monetate added two new outside board members last week, both having connections to social marketing management platform ExactTarget, which was acquired by Salesforce last year for $2.5 billion.

Tim Maudlin / Monetate website

Tim Maudlin served on the Board of Directors of ExactTarget, a NASDAQ listed company prior to its acquisition by Salesforce last year, as Lead Independent Director, Chair of the Audit Committee, and Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee. He has held similar board responsibilities for Web.com, MediaMind Technologies Inc., Fanatics, Inc. prior to its acquisition by GSI Commerce in February 2011, and Newegg. He also manages a VC firm, Medical Innovation Partners.

The other addition, Tim Kopp, served as CMO of ExactTarget prior to its acquisition by Salesforce.

Other Monetate board members are Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital (an early Monetate backer), Sam Decker (founding CMO of Bazaarvoice), Lucinda Duncalfe (Founder & CEO, Real Food Works), Adam Marcus, Managing Director of OpenView Partners (a major Monetate investor), and David Bookspan, Monetate Founder and Chairman.

These appointments don't indicate any direct relationship with Salesforce, since Kopp and
Maudlin have no current connection to the company. But they may be another step toward
preparing Monetate for an IPO, particularly given Maudlin's strong corporate governance background with public companies.

As CEO David Brussin was quoted as saying in the Daily News late last year, "in a couple of years, we'll be a public company and a lot larger."

Monetate lists ExactTarget as a "Compliant Partner", meaning its technology platform and products "natively integrate with Monetate", according to Monetate's website. In January, Monetate announced a partnership and software integration with SAP's hybris, in some regards a competitor to ExactTarget. hybris is listed by Monetate as a technology partner.

Yesterday, SAP teamed up with Adobe on a global agreement under which SAP will resell Adobe's Marketing Cloud software suite along with SAP's Hana in-memory database platform and Hybris Commerce Suite. Adobe currently does not appear among Monetate partners on its website. (Brussin cites Adobe as a Monetate competitor in the Daily News article.)

Update 4/5: This past Thursday, Monetate announced the appointment of
Bob Lawson as Chief Financial Officer. Lawson had been senior vice president and chief financial officer at RingCentral when it did its IPO last year.

"Lawson brings to Monetate proven expertise in helping pre-IPO and public companies drive organizational improvements and achieve outstanding financial results," Monetate said in a statement announcing the appointment.

Previous CFO David Stetson (see Philly Tech News profile from last year) apparently resigned at the beginning of 2014, after less than a year on the job. Around the same time, former VP of Marketing Blair Lyon (now CMO of LeadiD) left.