Leadership and Experience

Kirk Krappe
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Kirk is a veteran of Enterprise Software, having been involved in the very first instances of the internet and enterprise applications. Kirk has extensive experience marketing, selling and delivering enterprise solutions to organizations, worldwide. Previous to Apttus, Kirk held the role of Executive Vice President of Worldwide Markets with I-many, where he managed Sales, Marketing, Business development and International.

Additionally, Kirk was Chief Executive Officer of Nextance, a privately-held contract management solutions provider and earlier in his career, he was the Senior Vice President at Corio through its initial public offering where he pioneered the original concept of ASP before it became mainstream. Kirk also served as Vice President of Solutions Marketing with Oracle and Vice President of Industry Solutions with Siebel Systems. Earlier in his career, he was with Bain and Company as a strategy consultant and began his career as an engineer with Ford Motor Company.  Kirk has an Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Degree from the University of London and an MBA from INSEAD, Europe’s leading business School


Neehar Giri
President and Chief Solutions Architect
Neehar is an internet and enterprise software “visionary” and veteran in the Contract Lifecycle Management and Enterprise Quoting business processes. He co-founded Nextance, a provider of enterprise software for large organizations in 1999 - Neehar was the Vice President of Products and Chief Strategy Officer at Nextance. Previously, Neehar was Chief Solutions Architect at Clarify, a leading CRM company. He architected and led the efforts for Clarify’s Service / Support Software Offering, Vertical Solutions for the Telecom Industry, and the Next Generation SFA / CRM Modules. Prior to Clarify, Neehar also spent several years at Apple playing various technical leadership roles in the Apple Internet Services and IS&T groups in the early days on internet technology.  Neehar has an MBA from San Jose State University and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Madras, India.

Paul Averill

General Manager EMEA

Paul is responsible for rapidly scaling Apttus across the EMEA region and leading the performance of an international team.  Paul is a proven and experienced leader who specializes in securing and expanding strategic  customers and partners in Europe.  Paul brings a wealth of experience in building managing and expanding international sales and operations. Paul has managed sales teams within global enterprises such as EMC and Oracle.  Paul has a variety of market acceleration experiences including driving emergent initiatives such as the EMEA market entry for EMC Symmetrix and leading the Oracle UK team to achieve the highest performing, large enterprise software services business globally.

Paul's prior experiences also include developing go to market teams at Openwave and Cloudmark, specifically targeting and selling to tier-1 Telco organizations across Northern and Central Europe.  Immediately  prior to Apttus, Paul was Vice President and General Manager EMEA for Zuora, where he set up operations and gained key global enterprise customers with particular emphasis in the Telecom and Media sectors.

Nathan Krishnan

Chief Technical Officer
Nathan has over twenty years of experience in various roles such as application software architect, ERP solution architecture, chief internet technologist and CTO.  Nathan is a deep technical evangelist with skills covering all contempary and advanced technologies - web applications and integration, ERP products, salesforce.com, Peoplesoft, Oracle, SAP & J.D Edwards applications, J2EE & XML applications, multicast based clustered applications and various other leading edge technologies.  Previous to Apttus, Nathan was the cofounder and CTO of Nextance, Nathan has also held roles as the Chief Internet Technologist at DTI and for other organizations.


Kent Perkocha

Senior Vice President of Sales and Customer Success
Since 2006 Kent has been instrumental in advising customers on maximizing value from their Apttus solutions.  His expertise covers domain knowledge in advanced strategies for contract management, quoting, revenue management, renewals and all aspects of the quote-to-cash process.  Kent has over twenty years of enterprise sales experience in the software Industry.  Kent is recognized as an industry leader in contract lifecycle management and has been a frequent speaker at industry leading Contract Management events.  Prior to Apttus Kent held senior sales management roles at contract lifecycle providers, I-many and Nextance.  Earlier in his career Kent held marketing and sales management roles at Oracle.  Kent has a degree in Geography from UC Davis. 

Alston “Al” West

Senior Vice President Americas Sales
Al oversees Apttus field sales and is responsible for driving revenue growth for the company throughout the Americas.   Al has over two decades experience in enterprise software sales and sales management.  Al has extensive domain expertise in both configure price quote and contract management solutions.  Al has developed deep domain expertise gained through his work with hundreds of customers to address quote-to-cash needs across a broad range of industries.  Additionally, Al has a comprehensive background in Return on Investment solutions, having managed Return on Investment services at Platinum Technology.  Prior experience includes sales and sales management positions at enterprise software companies:  Computer Associates, Platinum Technology, Kana Software, I-many, and Emptoris.  Previous to enterprise software sales, Al held technical positions in database administration.  He has a BS in Computer Science from Louisiana Tech University.


Maria Pergolino

Vice President, Marketing
Maria Pergolino is responsible for Corporate Marketing, Customer Marketing and Demand Generation.    Prior to Apttus, Maria was in leadership roles at the fast growing salesforce.com partner and Marketing Automation SaaS solution provider Marketo.  Through her extensive writing and speaking sessions she has established herself as a content and marketing automation expert.  Additionally Maria has deep domain expertise in all aspects of business to business marketing strategies, campaign optimization, inbound and social media marketing. 

 

Recently she has won numerous awards, including a Stevie Award for Women in Business and has been named to both the Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management and 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management lists.  She has over a decade of marketing experience as well as a Marketing Degree and MBA from the School of Business at Rutgers University.   Maria is a salesforce.com Certified Administrator and user group leader, and a frequent speaker on varied Marketing industry trends. 


Jim Willis

Vice President, Global Alliances and Channels

As head of alliances and channels Jim is responsible for engaging and developing partnerships with key strategic partners, global SI/VARS as well as regional and specialized channel partners.   Jim is a seasoned industry veteran with extensive experience in building high value relationships for solution providers with salesforce.com, Oracle, Microsoft, System Integration channels and ISV partners.  In the past Jim has been a key member of management teams of several successful SaaS ISVs.   Prior to Apttus, Jim established and grew the Jitterbit global System Integrator and VAR channels, including the relationship with salesforce.com.

 

Prior, he ran alliances at Cast Iron/IBM where he also built strategic relationships with salesforce.com, Oracle and their respective SI channels.  Earlier in his career, Jim held key sales or business development positions for a number of highly successful companies including Lotus Development and Adobe Systems.  Jim is a retired U.S. Army Colonel (O6, Infantry).  During his military career he held a variety of active duty and reserve command and staff positions.  Jim has a MS Degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California and a BA in Political Science from San Jose State University

Gordon Loudon
Senior Vice President of Worldwide Services

Gordon is responsible for Apttus global professional and education services. Gordon has extensive experience in delivering world class services, support, and education to customers globally. Gordon’s proven expertise has resulted  in significant customer success and high customer renewal rates. Prior to joining Apttus, Gordon was an executive with Oracle, driving Oracle’s global Enterprise Management deployments for Oracle’s enterprise customers. Gordon has also managed expanded strategic partnerships, services and education. During his career, Gordon consistently built superior service teams resulting in customers' maximization of their investments in software technology.    

Gordon’s past roles include executive positions at AmberPoint, Sun Microsystems, Forte Software and Ingres. With AmberPoint and Forte Software, Gordon played a significant role in the founding, IPO, and eventual acquisition of both companies by Oracle and Sun Microsystems, respectively. Gordon prides himself on his leadership and a strong track record of delivering solutions to customers across a broad of technologies.  Earlier in his career, Gordon’s experiences included customer training, product development, systems integration, and consulting. Originally from Australia, he attended the University of Central Queensland.

 

Jesal Mehta

General Manager, India Operations

Jesal is a seasoned software engineer and India operations manager.  With over two decades in the IT industry at various organizations, Jesal brings a diversified and international perspective to his role.  He has held senior positions at numerous technology companies including iMANY, CIGNEX, Novell and Tata Consulting Services.  Jesal has both deep domain expertise in Enterprise Contract Management as well as first-hand experience in successfully building and managing offshore Development and Support operations.  Jesal has an MBA from Santa Clara University in the USA, and a Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Engineering from Gujarat University, India.

 

 

David Belove

Vice President of Sales Enablement

David leads Apttus' sales operations, lead generation, sales engineering and partner programs.  David brings a wealth of salesforce.com domain and Sales 2.0 process experience to Apttus.  Prior to joining Apttus, David was responsible for global sales operations at Cloud9, a SaaS sales analytics Salesforce.com AppExchange partner.   Before Cloud9, he ran salesforce.com integration company Altos Automation.  In 2011, David was named a salesforce.com Community AllStar.  He has served as co-chairman of the Silicon Valley Salesforce Users Group since 2010 and has been a speaker at  Dreamforce and Cloudforce events.  David has been involved in a number of high-profile high-tech startups including teleconferencing pioneer Polycom, Internet backbone provider Level3 Communications, and digital music specialist Gracenote.   David has a MBA from Santa Clara University and a BS degree from San Jose State University.

 

Perry Oza
CFO
Perry brings over 17 years’ experience to Apttus with deep financial domain in technology companies and Silicon Valley. Starting with a "Big 5" accounting firm, Perry performed a number of different roles encompassing auditing, cash management and corporate compliance. His career extended to numerous other major technology organizations based in Silicon Valley. Perry has held a number of financial management positions at well-known companies such as Apple Computer and Boston Scientific.