Philly Tech People News 1/19: Local guy Patterson making good at PTC ThingWorx

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Rob Patterson

Rob Patterson was recently named VP, Strategic Marketing at PTC, responsible for a portion of ThingWorx' market. Before that, he was VP, Product Marketing, and he joined PTC through its acquisition of Wayne-based of ColdLight Solutions (where he was in marketing and corporate strategy roles) in 2015. ColdLight was acquired as an integral part of ThingWorx' strategy.

He continues to work from Philly's western burbs (Exton) where ThingWorx also remains based. PTC ((NASDAQ: PTC), which acquired ThingWorx in late 2013 and made it and IoT one of the centerpieces of its corporate strategy (and made 4 other acquisitions around it), is headquartered in Needham, MA.

Since graduating from St.Joe's with a food marketing degree, Patterson has climbed through the ranks at a veritable who's who of Philly area employers, including Wawa, Microsoft Malvern, and Qlik Technologies. When he started with Qlik there were only 10 employees at its Radnor headquarters, Patterson told me in a phone conservation (Qlik originated in Sweeden), and from a marketing point of view they must have been starting from scratch. He was there when Qlik did its 2010 IPO.


Through this experience, Patterson gained expertise in BtoB marketing, not so much the mass market variety, but very targeted at a smaller universe of potential buyers. He applies this knowledge with ThingWorx, where he leads marketing for oil & gas, utilities, and "smart cities", the latter segment getting considerable publicity of late. ThingWorx' industrial marketing, and the management of its important GE relationship, are separate from that.

ThingWorx largely set the standard for industrial IoT by building an operating platform for it. It is not in consumer-related IoT, which is usually quite different in terms of standards, networks and applications. Although PTC's alliance with GE and its Predix software has gotten the most ink for ThingWorx over the past couple of years, the work of Patterson and others shows that it continues to develop the rest of the market as well.

From PTC's earnings report released yesterday:

"Bookings results were driven by strong performance in IoT, including one IoT mega deal (>$5m in bookings) and one IoT large deal (>$1m in bookings)."

Also this from the Boston Business Journal yesterday: Needham tech firm PTC hits highest stock price in 17 years.











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