Adaptive Insights is one of a host of cloud-based solution providers that have arisen over the past decade. In their case, Adaptive delivers Corporate Performance Management – in other words they help organizations analyze performance and continuously improve what they do. And it’s a successful model, in use by some heavy hitting tech companies, such as Mobile Iron, Zendesk, Arista and Aerohive. The company is growing like weeds with reported 100% quarter on quarter growth and a customer list with some 2200 names on it.
So given all that success, why would there be sudden executive departures in the company? Adaptive Insights CEO, John Herr, was appointed in 2011 and is no longer included in the management list of Adaptive’s website. Herr is listed as an adviser but an adviser moniker after a previous employee is generally meaningless. The CEO removal seems to have happened pretty fast – it wasn’t pre-announced and there is no CEO listed on the management page. Add to that the fact that Herr was only part way through his tenure and things look strange indeed.
I reached out to the company and a spokesperson gave me the following statement:
Adaptive Insights announced a number of changes that position us for our next stage of growth. John Herr has resigned as CEO and will transition to a senior advisor role, with Founder Rob Hull stepping into the role of Chairman. New President & Chief Revenue Officer Keith Nealon and Audit Committee Chair Jim Kelliher bring significant experience in scaling and managing both pre-IPO and publicly-traded cloud companies. These changes come amid record performance, as we continue to focus on building a great, successful company as the leader in cloud BI & CPM
So in the absence of any real indication as to what happened, we’re left to come up with some ideas ourselves:
- Perhaps Adaptive’s growth, as positive as it sounded, wasn’t enough for the board and they decided a change at the top could impact upon that?
- Maybe personality or performance issues arose which necessitated a hasty exit
In a follow up to the news, there was no mention of a new CEO or even a search for one so we’re left to conclude that this was caused by a sudden and unexpected event. It will be interesting to see how the situation impacts upon Adaptive’s growth and market position – only time will tell on that count.
