The Fortella Difference

Who are we?

We are B2B CMOs, who were tired of using spreadsheets with stale assumptions for planning cycles. We didn’t want to stressed about creating pipeline reports on Sunday evenings. We wanted more confidence in our pipeline forecasts. We thought that there had to a better approach than ‘spray and pray’ marketing for driving revenue.

We are data scientists and engineers, who didn’t want to spend our lives dealing with messy data issues and integrating siloed marketing tools. We wanted to create better insights and smart recommendations so Marketers can make data-driven decisions, move faster and increase impact.

Above all we are dreamers, who feel that time has come to solve the ‘holy grail’ problem of marketing…

HOW TO TRULY ALIGN MARKETING TO REVENUE?

And that’s why we created Fortella!

(PS If this sounds like you, talk to us and we may be able to help you)

Executive Team

Rahul Sachdev

Co-Founder And CEO
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Nimish Mehta

Co-Founder And VP Of Business Development
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John He

VP of Engineering
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Dan LaPushin

VP of Customer Success
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Advisory Board

Raghu Raghavan

Founder Act-On Software And Responsys
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Thomas Butta

Former CMO | SignalFx. AppNexus, NICE Systems, PTC & Red Hat
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Dave Kellogg

Former CEO | Host Analytics & MarkLogic. CMO | Business Objects
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David Appelbaum

CMO | Valimail. Former CMO CloudPassage, Apteligent, Act-On Software, Antenna Software
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Matthew Schoenfeld

EIR Greylock Ventures. Former SVP Sales | FireEye
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Board of Directors

Rahul Sachdev

Co-Founder And CEO
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Nimish Mehta

Co-Founder And VP Of Business Development
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Venk Shukla

General Partner Monta Vista Capital
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Investors

Careers

Fortella is a crackerjack team of marketers, technologists, and entrepreneurs with deep expertise in SaaS, CRM, social, big data, and online marketing. We are looking to bring on more individuals who love solving complex problems with simple, elegant products.

We welcome quick learners who pride themselves on having strong communication skills, a ‘can do’ attitude, and team spirit.

We work hard, but we also value that work by providing our team with:

Competitive salary, stock ownership, and benefits package

Great location in Redwood City — near public transit

Opportunity for learning and rapid career advancement

Generous PTO

If you’re a great engineer or data scientist (or both!), email us your resume.

If you have the right skills and mindset, hopefully you’ll join our team as we create an entirely new category of B2B marketing solutions.

rahul

Rahul Sachdev

Co-Founder and CEO

Rahul is the co-founder and CEO of Fortella. He is a technology executive with 25+ years of experience in marketing, CRM and social domains.

Prior to Fortella, Rahul served as CEO of Get Satisfaction, an online community platform for marketing, advocacy and customer support. Under his leadership, the company raised a new financing round, launched a new community platform and delivered improvements in all major KPIs. Get Satisfaction was acquired by Sprinklr.

Previously, Rahul was the head of content sharing and workplace engagement products at LinkedIn, and General Manager of the Communications, Media & Energy business unit at Siebel Systems. Rahul also spent several years in management consulting at Accenture where he focused on systems integration projects for financial services customers.

Rahul holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Finance from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a BSc with Honors in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Loughborough University in the UK.

He is an ardent fan of Arsenal Football Club, passionate about Cricket (not the chirpy kind!), an avid news reader and has traveled to over 50 countries.

nimish

Nimish Mehta

Co-Founder and VP of Business Development

Nimish is the co-founder and VP of Business Development at Fortella. He is a seasoned technology executive with 30+ years of experience across CRM, big data and data integration. Nimish has held executive positions at several of the world’s most respected high tech companies, including SAP, Siebel Systems, Stratify and Oracle, where he reported directly to Larry Ellison. Nimish is also the co-founder of LumenData, a global leader in data management solutions.

Early in his career, Nimish served as a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories where he invented a high-speed data transmission service that became the precursor to DSL. As a graduate student, he also invented the multi-touch technology found in most mobile phones, tablets and laptops today.

Nimish holds an MSEE from University of Toronto, an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

He loves biking, yoga, hiking and traveling the world with his family.

john

John He

VP of Engineering

John is the VP of Engineering at Fortella. He brings 20+ years of experience across all aspects of engineering operation, including process, technical operations, team-building and product development.

Prior to joining Fortella, John served as VP of Engineering at Yahoo! where he led the product engineering and service operation for Yahoo Small Business. Previously he was VP of Engineering at Zuora, where he led the evolution of Zuora’s product architecture, built an agile-based engineering process, grew the team seven-fold and delivered several innovative products. Previously, John held senior engineering positions at Microsoft, Verity and Informix.

John holds a BS in Computer Architecture from Fudan University in Shanghai.

John is a passionate Star Trek fan. His continuing mission is to explore exciting new adventures and to boldly go where no one has gone before.

dan

Dan LaPushin

VP of Customer Success

Dan is the VP of Customer Success at Fortella. He has over 20 years of experience applying analytics and statistical methods to real-world business problems. Before joining Fortella, Dan was a Senior Manager in Accenture’s Digital and Applied Intelligence teams, where he managed the development and deployment of business intelligence and machine learning platforms across a number of industries.

Prior to Accenture, Dan had an extensive career in finance and banking, having led quantitative risk modeling teams focused on market risk and credit risk measurement at Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Sungard Capital Markets.

Dan holds an MBA in Analytic Finance and Econometrics from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a BA with Honors in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

His passions include family, fitness and jazz guitar performance with several groups in San Francisco.

raghu

Raghu Raghavan

Founder Act-On Software and Responsys

Raghu is the founder and former CEO of Act-On Software, an integrated marketing automation platform designed to align inbound and outbound marketing campaigns across the customer lifecycle. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of Responsys, the industry leader in email and life cycle marketing solutions for high-end retailers.

Raghu got started down the entrepreneurial path when he quit a cushy job and took a giant pay cut to join a small startup named Mentor Graphics, which had a small team of smart, passionate people and zero revenue. He participated in its frantic growth through a very successful IPO and revenue of well over $400M by the time he left seven years later.

Raghu holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota and a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay.

ThomasButta (1)

Thomas Butta

Former CMO | SignalFx. AppNexus, NICE Systems, PTC & Red Hat

As CMO, Tom has helped pioneering companies achieve the coveted leadership position of trusted guide in new industry categories. The result has been billions of dollars of enterprise value for SignalFx (acquired by Splunk for $1.1B); Sprinklr (last valued at $1.8B); AppNexus (acquired by AT&T for $1.6B); PTC (pivoted from CAD vendor to PLM leader); and Red Hat (2nd highest IPO in NASDAQ history & most-valued Open Source company).

At SignalFx, Tom positioned the real-time streaming analytics platform to help companies innovate at speed and scale while identifying and resolving errors before they disrupted customer experience.

At Sprinklr, Tom created the Digital Customer-First Transformation System to help big brands struggling to be relevant in the digital era.

At Andreessen Horowitz, Tom developed the firm’s POVs to establish a16z as the place for the Fortune 2000 to learn about the future of technology.

At PTC, Tom created Product First: The Way to Create and Capture Value as the industry framework for companies aligning their enterprise around product development.

At Red Hat, Tom positioned the brand as flag bearer of the Open Source movement and challenger to antiquated methods used by Microsoft.

Tom is a Director of YSA.org, and Advisor to early & mid-stage companies.

DaveKellogg

Dave Kellogg

Former CEO | Host Analytics & MarkLogic. CMO | Business Objects

Dave has been a consultant, independent board member, and advisor, as well as a successful CEO and CMO. In 2019, he was named to the Top 5 Most Respected Leaders in SaaS by the 15,000 attendees of SaaStr. He brings a balanced and rare perspective to enterprise software company challenges, having 10+ years experience at each of the CEO, CMO, and board levels across ten different companies ranging in size from $0 to over $1B in revenues.

From 2012 to 2018, Dave was CEO of cloud enterprise performance management vendor Host Analytics (Planful), where he quintupled ARR while halving customer acquisition costs in a competitive market, ultimately selling the company in a private equity transaction.

Earlier, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at NoSQL database provider MarkLogic, which grew from zero to $80M in run-rate revenues during his tenure. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as we grew from $30M to over $1B.

DavidApplebaum

David Appelbaum

CMO | Valimail. Former CMO CloudPassage, Apteligent, Act-On Software, Antenna Software

A seasoned software-marketing executive with 25 years’ experience across a variety of technology areas, David is also an award-winning innovator in the use of social media and digital mediums for B2B marketing. His campaigns have been covered in the NY Times, AdWeek, and across social media and Hollywood. Throughout his career, David has helped to generate billions of dollars in value through acquisition and IPOs.

Matt-S

Matthew Schoenfeld

EIR Greylock Ventures. Former SVP Sales | FireEye

Matthew Schoenfeld is a 20 year Sales veteran. He has held senior sales leadership roles at companies like VMware, FireEye and multiple VC backed companies who have had successful exits. Matthew’s last operational role was running the ~$500m/350person Americas business at FireEye/Mandiant. Currently, Matthew is an EIR for Greylock Partners where he spends most of his time assessing and assisting with key GTM functions across a large, diverse portfolio; with a  specific focus on Sales process/discipline, differentiated messaging and  value selling. Matthew is also a coach, speaker and mentor to up and coming Sales leaders who wish to learn how to delineate themselves  from the rest of the pack.

venk

Venk Shukla

General Partner Monta Vista Capital

Venk is a general partner of Monte Vista Capital where he has been involved with numerous emerging start-ups.

Among his many achievements, Venk served as CEO of Nusym Technology, an intelligent verification solution acquired by Synopsis. He was SVP of marketing and business development at Magma Design Automation, which reached $220M in revenue at its peak. He was co-founder of Everypath, a mobility solution, where he raised $86M and built an innovative solution that garnered numerous industry awards.

As President of TiE Silicon Valley and Chair of TiE Global, Venk has had a transformational impact on the organization. As the founding President of Foundation for Excellence for the first 17 of its 20 years, Venk set the stage for its current success in providing scholarships to thousands of talented but poor students pursuing engineering and medical education in India.

He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.Eng in Electronics Engineering from MA National Institute of Technology, Bhopal.