Right before the Easter holiday Pipedrive announced the appointment of Steve Oriola as the company’s new CEO. Timo Rein, co-founder and former CEO, will serve as President of the company, where he’ll get back to his roots of product, engineering, infrastructure, integrations and support services.
Pipedrive is no longer a small startup – they’ve scaled up to 70 employees split between Estonia and their Menlo Park HQ which brings in new challenges. As Rein writes on the Pipedrive blog, putting Oriola in charge wasn’t part of some grand strategy, but rather a realization he would be a good fit for the company.
It’s interesting because we weren’t really looking for a new CEO. And I wasn’t looking to fire myself from the CEO position any time soon. Our paths crossed with Steve some months ago and it soon became clear to me on many levels that it’s good to have someone on the team who has handled the growing pains we have faced, are facing and will be facing. And what’s more, we all simply just clicked with Steve.
Previously Oriola served as a VP of Constant Contact, where he joined when the company had less than 30 employees to participating in its IPO in 2007. Since then, Oriola has been the CEO of Crossboard Mobile, an ad-tech company, as well as served in a variety of senior executive roles at marketing services companies including Balihoo and Brightcove.
Rein continues:
It’s been a great journey for me helping Pipedrive grow over the last five years. We’ve grown to 70 employees and more than 10,000 paying customers worldwide. And I’ve enjoyed the personal growth that has accompanied this. But increasingly I wished I could spend more time on the areas closest to my heart — building a product that makes the lives of salespeople easier.
In my new role as President, I will work closely with Steve to run the business while getting back to focusing on product as well as support, innovation and infrastructure. I also hope to have time to write about sales management more often 🙂
To date, Pipedrive, an AngelPad alumnus, has raised $4.1 million in seed funding and is backed by Storm Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, TMT Investments and angel investors.
