Looking back at Veeva Systems' rise

Tom Paine


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I was writing about Veeva Systems when it was still named Verticals onDemend. Few outside of certain Pharma and SaaS circles knew much about it, or what its business actually did.


Verticals onDemand becomes Veeva Systems
(May 2009)

Verticals onDemand, the Pleasanton, California-based SaaS CRM vendor that has much of its sales & marketing staff in Radnor, has changed its name to Veeva Systems (see press release). The new name, a derivative of the Latin word meaning "to live", is intended to emphasize Veeva's total focus on serving the life sciences market. With the name change, the company has also indicated it plans to get deeper into that vertical, providing applications that go further into an organization than just CRM. Announcements of some more details on this should be forthcoming.

The two-year-old company’s application runs on Force.com from salesforce.com. In fact, of its top 4 execs three came from Salesforce.com, with the exception being EVP & GM Matt Wallach, who came from Health Market Science in King of Prussia but was formerly with Siebel (now part of Oracle).

Veeva Systems recently expanded to Europe, and next week in Philadelphia is holding what it calls "the largest Pharma SaaS CRM Gathering" (May 19 & 20).





Veeva (NYSE: VEEV) now has a market cap of $14 billion. Today, when I look at the reaction to a simple press release, its an endless stream of tweets from around the world. Wall Street jumps on every rumor or bit of information.

Things usually look messier to insiders, but to the public eye, execution has been almost flawless.

Investors' Business Daily ran a story yesterday, Top Stocks: Veeva Systems Stands Tall In Fast-Growing Software Sector.

I am sure that Veeva must have a chart in its offices showing all known segments of the digital life sciences market. and those that ere not yet digital. And many are still beyond its current scope. The opportunity to move into other spaces exist, but Veeva is very methodical and careful about what it takes on.