Founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas brings a wealth of management expertise to fast-growing commercial open source provider
CUPERTINO, Calif. (February 06, 2008) –
SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the appointment of Mark Leslie to the SugarCRM Board of Directors. Mr. Leslie will serve as an independent board member, effective immediately. His addition brings the SugarCRM board membership to six, including two independent directors.
“We are delighted that Mark is joining the SugarCRM board,” said John Roberts, chairman and CEO of SugarCRM. “Mark is a proven entrepreneur and leader who will bring a wealth of industry knowledge that will help SugarCRM continue to transform the CRM marketplace. His deep domain expertise in corporate governance as well as sales management will make a strong contribution to the company.”
As a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mr. Leslie teaches courses in Entrepreneurship and Sales organization, which includes Mr. Leslie’s sales methodology called the Sales Learning Curve. The methodologies expressed in the Sales Learning Curve have been leveraged by SugarCRM, and have helped the company grow to a global scale in less than four years.
“SugarCRM is uniquely positioned at the nexus of the two major trends in software: open source and software-as-a-service,” said Mark Leslie. “I am looking forward to helping the SugarCRM team continue to execute on its growth objectives.”
About Mark Leslie
Mark Leslie is the managing director of Leslie Ventures, a private investment company, in addition to his work as a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Mark Leslie was the founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas Software. During his tenure as CEO the company went from 12 employees to 5,500 employees deployed globally, and from a revenue base of $95,000 per year to $1,500,000,000 per year. In 2000 Veritas was the 10th largest independent software company by revenue, third largest by market capitalization, and achieved the distinction of becoming a Fortune 1000 company.
From 1980 until 1990 he served as president and chief executive officer of two Silicon Valley high-tech start-up companies. His prior experience included sales management, sales executive, systems engineer, and OS programmer.
Mark currently serves on the boards of Network Appliance (NSDAQ: NTAP) and a number of privately held high-technology corporations, including Cassatt Software, db4objects, Doostang, Evergrid, Model N Software, and Xsigo Corporation, and serves on the board of Overseers for the New York University Faculty of Arts and Sciences and is the Chairman of the New York University Science Advisory Board.
Mark received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and mathematics from New York University in 1966 and completed Harvard Business School’s program for management development in 1980.
About SugarCRM
SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. Sugar easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.
Media Contacts:
Chris Harrick, SugarCRM
charrick@sugarcrm.com
408-454-6947
Jen Spark, Schwartz Communications for SugarCRM
SugarCRM@schwartz-pr.com
415-512-0770
Source: SugarCRM