At Sapho, we believe that when employees are armed with better software experiences, their potential is unlimited. Our investors have seen our customers’ success and are believers too. They have given us nearly $30 million to change how people work using an employee experience platform.
With decades of experience, Sapho’s leadership team, board of directors, and advisors come from leading companies, including BEA Systems, CBS Interactive, Citrix, Forrester Research, Intel Security, Mirantis, NICE, Red Hat, Redpoint Ventures, Sun Microsystems, and Veritas. They know what it takes to deliver the future of work.
Executive team
Fouad ElNaggar is the Founder & CEO of Sapho. Previously, he was the Chief Strategy Officer at CBS Interactive overseeing strategy, operations, partnerships, and M&A. At CBSi, Fouad structured deals with partners such as Yahoo, IAC, and Twitch and acquired premium brands such as TV Guide and Giant Bomb.
Prior to CBSi, Fouad was a venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures overseeing the firm’s LA office and helping establish a dedicated fund in Brazil. While at Redpoint, Fouad served on the board and helped lead investments in BlueKai (acquired), Machinima (acquired), Clicker (acquired), Grupo Xango, Scribd, and Tantalus. Fouad has previously founded three venture-backed companies – Marketing Technology Solutions (acquired), Liquid Light (acquired), and Hark.
Peter Yared is the Founder & CTO at Sapho. Previously, he was the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive and the founder of five enterprise infrastructure companies that were acquired by Sun, VMware, Webtrends, Sprinklr and Prograph. Peter’s software has powered brands from Fidelity to Home Depot to Lady Gaga. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Application Server Division and the CTO of the Liberty federated identity consortium that designed SAML 2.0.
Peter is the inventor of several patents on core Internet infrastructure including federated single sign on and dynamic data requests. Peter began programming games and utilities at age 10, and started his career developing systems for government agencies. Peter regularly writes about technology trends and has written for the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and TechCrunch.
Marque is the Chief Revenue Officer at Sapho. Previously, he was SVP of WW Sales at Mirantis, the leading open standards based private cloud company. Under his leadership, Mirantis grew revenues by 230%, significantly increasing shareholder value.
Prior to Mirantis, Marque spent 25 years building and leading enterprise sales organizations at some of the most transformational software companies in history. He was responsible for securing over $1B in software revenue at PTC, StoredIQ, and NICE. His experience, energy, and innovative sales system played an instrumental role in the explosive growth he has enjoyed at each of these organizations.
Natalie Lambert is the Vice President of Marketing at Sapho. Previously, she was at Citrix where she held multiple product marketing leadership positions and was most recently responsible for the company’s multi-product solutions, thought leadership efforts, and positioning of Citrix as a leader in digital workplace technologies.
Prior to Citrix, Natalie spent seven years at Forrester Research, where she was the leading expert on end user computing. In that role, she advised clients on technology investments and best practices surrounding the enterprise computing environment. Natalie has been widely quoted in the press, including outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and has written for Wired, Forbes and CIO.com.
Jan Surovec is the General Manager of the Sapho Prague office and oversees Sapho’s research and development efforts, in addition to leading front-end architecture.
Previously, Jan was the founder and CEO of DocFillet, a virtual dataroom solution. Prior to founding DocFillet, Jan developed high volume engagement apps for Webtrends. Jan started programming at age 9, has a strong background in physics and applied mathematics, and has authored several scientific visualization tools.
Tom Kmec is the VP of Engineering at Sapho and leads back-end architecture. Previously, Tom was the founder and CTO of DocFillet, a virtual dataroom solution. Prior to founding DocFillet, Tom created a custom CMS at Mediatel and delivered complex backend integrations at Raiffeisenbank. Tom graduated as computational physicist, loves solving complex problems, and building productivity and automation tools.
Board of Directors
Fouad ElNaggar is the Founder & CEO of Sapho. Previously, he was the Chief Strategy Officer at CBS Interactive overseeing strategy, operations, partnerships, and M&A. At CBSi, Fouad structured deals with partners such as Yahoo, IAC, and Twitch and acquired premium brands such as TV Guide and Giant Bomb.
Prior to CBSi, Fouad was a venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures overseeing the firm’s LA office and helping establish a dedicated fund in Brazil. While at Redpoint, Fouad served on the board and helped lead investments in BlueKai (acquired), Machinima (acquired), Clicker (acquired), Grupo Xango, Scribd, and Tantalus. Fouad has previously founded three venture-backed companies – Marketing Technology Solutions (acquired), Liquid Light (acquired), and Hark.
Peter Yared is the Founder & CTO at Sapho. Previously, he was the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive and the founder of five enterprise infrastructure companies that were acquired by Sun, VMware, Webtrends, Sprinklr and Prograph. Peter’s software has powered brands from Fidelity to Home Depot to Lady Gaga. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Application Server Division and the CTO of the Liberty federated identity consortium that designed SAML 2.0.
Peter is the inventor of several patents on core Internet infrastructure including federated single sign on and dynamic data requests. Peter began programming games and utilities at age 10, and started his career developing systems for government agencies. Peter regularly writes about technology trends and has written for the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and TechCrunch.
Bill Coleman is the Chief Executive Officer at Veritas. Coleman is an industry veteran who has spent 25 years running prominent Silicon Valley companies including his years as the founder/CEO of BEA Systems.
Coleman founded BEA Systems in 1995 and was Chairman and CEO of the company from its founding through October 2001, during which time BEA became the fastest software company to reach a billion dollars in annual revenue. Following BEA, Coleman was Founder, Chairman and CEO of Cassatt, Inc. an enterprise cloud software company which was acquired by CA, Inc. in 2009, and has been a partner with Alsop Louie Partners, an early stage Silicon Valley venture capital firm, since 2010. During this time, he was also Chairman and CEO of Resilient Network Systems, a cyber security software company from Feb 2012 until Dec 2013. Prior to BEA, Bill held various management positions at Sun Microsystems, Inc.,where he co-founded Sun Federal; founded Sun Professional Services; and was VP System Software, where he led the initial development of Solaris and related products. He began his career in the USAF as chief of satellite operations, Office of the Secretary.
Coleman holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the U. S. Air Force Academy and master’s degrees in computer science and computer engineering from Stanford University. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado, where he founded the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities. He is a member of the board of directors of Seagate, Avni Networks, Sapho, Virtual Power Systems, Dreamfactory, and iControl. Coleman is a Commissioner of the Trilateral Commission and a Trustee of Santa Clara University.
Stewart Alsop is partner of Alsop Louie Partners, a venture capital fund focused on helping technology entrepreneurs start companies, where he was the lead investor in Twitch and is on the boards of Sapho, Hover, Cipher, Device Authority and Phase Four. He was a general partner with New Enterprise Associates from 1996 through 2004 and lead that firm’s investments in companies such as TiVo (TIVO), Portola Communications (sold to Netscape), Glu Mobile (GLUU), and Xfire (sold to Viacom). During that time, he also wrote a column for Fortune.
Prior to NEA, Alsop was Editor in Chief of InfoWorld, a weekly newspaper for information-technology professionals. He also published PC Letter, a fortnightly newsletter for computer industry insiders, and produced the Agenda and Demo conferences for executives of companies in the computer industry. Before 1985, he served in several executive editorial positions at business and trade magazines, including Inc. magazine. Alsop graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles.
of the Trilateral Commission and a Trustee of Santa Clara University.Advisors
Joel Molinoff is an Advisor to Sapho and serves as Senior Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer for CBS Corporation where he is responsible for information security for CBS’s diverse portfolio of global media and entertainment businesses.
Prior to joining CBS, Joel was Assistant Director of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board where he supported the President of the United States and other senior government officials in the evaluation of intelligence-related matters.
Joel was also an executive of the National Security Agency (NSA) and an adjunct professor of cybersecurity at Georgetown’s Graduate School of Business. He has received numerous government awards and honors including the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the National Meritorious Unit Citation and the NSA Computer Network Operations Award.
Joel is a frequent speaker on information security and is a co-founder and Executive Committee member of the Media & Entertainment Information Security Sharing Forum (MediaISSF), a threat intelligence group formed to help media companies better protect critical assets and manage risk. He also currently serves as an advisor for The SANS Institute and is a member of the board of directors of American Corporate Partners. Joel has an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.A. from Colgate University. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and has earned several technical information security certifications from GIAC/SANS.
Guy Bayes leads Facebook’s Enterprise Business Intelligence team. He is a 20-year veteran in analytics and data warehousing with a specialty in integrating the emerging Big Data tools and concepts — such as Hadoop — with traditional BI and statistical and advanced analytics.
And yes, he is a descendant of THAT Bayes.
Annemarie Dillard leads the ecommerce team of Dillard’s Inc. as the Vice President of Digital. Dillard’s is a upscale department store chain with nearly 300 stores nationwide and over $6B in annual sales with the online revenues being among the fastest growth areas of the company. Annemarie has over 12 years of experience in wide ranging aspects of retail including founding her own shapewear focused apparel company, Posh-ture. Annemarie has a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Southern California.
Jeremy Schiff earned an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California in 2005, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2009, with a focus on applying machine learning and statistical inference to robotics. In 2006, Jeremy co-founded FotoFlexer.com, an online photo editing company that powered companies such as MySpace and Photobucket.
In 2009, Jeremy joined Ness Computing, a Personalized Search and Recommendation company. As VP of Machine Learning, he oversaw the efforts around Search, Personalized Recommendations, and other data-driven features. Ness was sold to OpenTable in 2014, where Jeremy lead Data Science for two years.
Michael Carpenter currently serves as President of Global Sales and Field Operations at CrowdStrike. In this role, he leads sales and business development, channel and partnership programs, and their respective go-to-market strategies. With 20 years of experience in the security industry, he brings deep expertise and acumen in building high-growth sales organizations at scale, spanning both the private and public sectors.
Previously, Carpenter served as President, Global Sales and Field Operations at Tanium and was the driving force behind the company’s global growth. Prior to Tanium, Carpenter had an executive sales position at Intel Security where he led the Americas sales theater, a $1.5 billion-dollar business. Earlier in his career, Carpenter founded two technology companies — a web development firm and a leading online media company for the public safety market.
As marketing leader and brand strategist, Tom has helped some of the world’s most pioneering enterprise companies challenge industry stalwarts in emerging market spaces by achieving the coveted positions of thought leader and trusted guide to the Fortune 2000.
Tom was CMO of Red Hat, PTC, NICE Systems, AppNexus, and Sprinklr. He was also Consultant-in-Residence at Andreessen Horowitz where he helped define and package the venture capital firm’s points of view about emerging technologies for the benefit of executives from leading enterprises, governments, and institutions.
Tom is a board advisor to Smigin and OpenWork.org, and is a board director of YSA.org.
Technology Partners
Sapho is partnering with industry-leading organizations to deliver complete solutions that make it easy for enterprises to triple their employees’ productivity.
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Working at Sapho
Sapho is changing how people work. We experience this today in our flexible, fast-paced work environment.
With our headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area and our core R&D in Prague, Czech Republic, we are a global team striving to create the future of work.