Clari Leadership
Solving big enterprise problems through machine learning is our heritage and in our DNA
Leadership
Andy Byrne
CEO
Andy Byrne
CEO
Andy Byrne brings over 19 years of experience in sales, marketing, business development and management to his position as CEO of Clari. Prior to Clari, Andy was part of the founding executive team at Clearwell Systems – Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company – which he helped grow from pre-product & pre-revenue in 2005 to $100 million run rate until its acquisition by Symantec (SYMC) in Q2 2011.
Prior to joining Clearwell, Andy co-founded Timestock, Inc., which was acquired by Computer Associates (CA) via the acquisition of Wily Technology. Timestock delivered world-class enterprise application management solutions to large fortune 500 corporations. Before Timestock, Andy was VP of Marketing at Desana Systems. Prior to Desana, Andy was VP of Product Management at Lucent Technologies. Andy came to Lucent Technologies via the acquisition of VitalSigns Software. Andy has also held sales, marketing & management roles at Bay Networks and at MiLAN Technologies, which was later acquired by Digi International.
Andy holds a BS in Economics from the University of Nevada and received his MBA with honors from San Jose State University.
Venkat Rangan
CTO
Venkat Rangan
CTO
Venkat Rangan brings over 30 years of technology innovation and leadership experience to Clari. Prior to Clari, Venkat was the Co-founder and CTO of Clearwell Systems, Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company, which was acquired by Symantec (SYMC) in 2011. At Clearwell, Venkat's team developed several industry-leading innovations in search, machine learning & predictive analytics.
Prior to Clearwell, Venkat served as VP of Technology at Rhapsody Networks – a technology leader in the storage business that was acquired by Brocade (BRCD). Prior to Rhapsody, Mr. Rangan was the VP and Chief Architect at VitalSigns Software, which was acquired by Lucent Technologies.
Venkat also served as a lead Program Manager at Microsoft, responsible for WEBM, WMI and CIM technologies of Microsoft, and as an R&D Manager at Hewlett Packard's NetMetrix division. Additionally, he developed PC NFS communications stack for Sun Microsystems, and was a member of Wang Laboratories Advanced Technologies team.
Venkat holds 13 patents along with a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida and an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Kurt Leafstrand
VP of Products
Kurt Leafstrand
VP of Products
Kurt brings over 20 years of technology & product development experience to Clari. Prior to Clari, Kurt was an early member of the product team at Clearwell Systems – Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company, which was acquired by Symantec (SYMC) in 2011. As Senior Director of Product Management at Clearwell, Kurt's leadership led to the development of world class products used by large Fortune 500 companies all over the world.
Prior to Clearwell, Kurt was the Director of Products at Emprtoris, which was acquired by IBM. Prior to Emptoris, Kurt worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Kurt has been passionate about building great products since he developed a Visicalc clone on his TRS-80 at age 13. This continued on through high school, where he coded video games and accounting software, which led to him founding an enterprise e-commerce company, Forge, shortly after graduating from MIT.
Kurt holds an undergraduate degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and an MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Malay Desai
VP of Engineering
Malay Desai
VP of Engineering
Malay brings more than 14 years of passion and experience designing & building great products. As Chief Architect at Clari, Malay is focused on the design, development and technical architecture of the Clari cloud and mobile infrastructure. Prior to Clari, Malay was an early member of the technical team at Clearwell Systems – Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company, which was acquired by Symantec (SYMC) in 2011. As technical architect at Clearwell, Malay helped develop several industry-leading innovations in search, machine learning & predictive analytics.
Prior to joining Clearwell, Malay was a senior engineer at ATG, primarily focused on building large scale portal tools and industry-leading eCommerce search products.
Malay holds a B.E. in Electronics and Communication from Gujaret University and an MS in Computer Science from University of Southern California.
Amy Johnson
VP Customer Success
Amy Johnson
VP Customer Success
Amy brings more than 20 years of experience building and supporting Enterprise products with a passion for customers. She has successfully led organizations to truly embody a "customer first" mentality as she served in a variety of roles creating Enterprise software. She led the rollout of the Clearwell e-Discovery product as Director of Program Management at Symantec, and excelled in training internal support teams, field teams and customers. She spent time in Quality Assurance roles making sure products were fully tested in customer scenarios and built out an innovative beta program. She seeded the support organizations at two other successful startups - first at VitalSigns Software, co-founded by Jim Goetz of Sequoia Capital and then at Clearwell Systems, co-founded by Venkat Rangan. At both startups, Amy was able to infuse her level of customer focus and commitment into the organization servicing customers as a technical support engineer, field sales engineer, technical trainer, services professional consultant, and customer advocate.
Amy holds a B.S. in Computational Mathematics from Michigan Technological University.
Somrat Niyogi
VP Business Development
Somrat Niyogi
VP Business Development
Somrat Niyogi is the VP of Business Development at Clari. Before joining Clari, Somrat was the co-founder & CEO of both Stitch, a mobile-first sales productivity platform, as well as Miso, an early pioneer in the social TV space. At Miso, he led the overall vision of the company through multiple rounds of financing with top-tier investors including Google Ventures, Hearst, and Khosla Ventures. Somrat has worked at early stage startups most of his career having held various roles, including business development, sales, and product. Somrat started his career at Salesforce.com in 2003. Somrat graduated with a BS in Computer Sciences at UT-Austin.
Cornelius Willis
CMO
Cornelius Willis
CMO
Cornelius brings over 20 years of technology marketing experience to his position as CMO of Clari. Before Clari, Cornelius led product marketing and strategic communications for Google Cloud Platform at Google. Under Cornelius leadership, Google Cloud Platform entered two different Gartner leader’s quadrants, launched such innovative products as Google Cloud Spanner, TensorFlow, Google Kubernetes Engine and made inroads into global enterprise accounts including Walt Disney, HSBC, Twitter, and Coca Cola.
Prior to Google, Cornelius held executive leadership positions at Rackspace, VMware, and BEA, and has served as a co-founder, advisor, employee and investor to over a dozen startups in the infrastructure platforms, open source and business systems markets.
Cornelius started his marketing career with 10 years at Microsoft, first as a technical evangelist for Microsoft Windows, then as Product Manager for Visual Basic, and Director of Platform Marketing.
Cornelius holds an AB Degree in English from Stanford University, with concentrations in computer science and classics.
Alyssa Filter
CFO
Alyssa Filter
CFO
Alyssa Filter
CFO
Alyssa has been working with venture backed technology companies for over 12 years. She began her career as an auditor and also worked as Controller/Director of Finance for several startups before returning to public accounting. Prior to Clari, Alyssa spent four years providing outsourced CFO services to dozens of Companies.
Alyssa holds a degree in Business Administration (public accounting concentration) from Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo and is a CPA (inactive) in California.
Kevin Knieriem
CRO
Kevin Knieriem
CRO
Kevin brings more than 20 years of experience driving revenue growth and building successful sales teams for leading enterprise giants and high-growth startups. Most recently, he spent more than four years at Oracle where he held several leadership positions, including CRO at DataScience.com (acquired by Oracle in June 2018). In this role, Kevin led DataScience.com’s demand generation, field marketing, sales and customer success initiatives from pre-revenue through acquisition by Oracle. During this time, DataScience.com helped define and then lead the Forrester Wave for Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning Platforms. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at SAP where he led regional and national organizations.
Kevin holds BA in Food Marketing from Saint Joseph’s University. He’s a graduate of the executive leadership program at IESE Business School.
Board and Investors
Ajay Agarwal
Ajay Agarwal
Ajay leads the west coast office for Bain Capital Ventures where he focuses on early-stage software investing. Prior to Bain Capital Ventures, Ajay was head of sales and marketing at Trilogy where he grew annual revenues to $300 million and led Trilogy's product expansion into new areas such as enterprise pricing and incentive management. Prior to Trilogy, Ajay was a consultant with the Los Angeles office of McKinsey & Company.
Ajay has a BS in electrical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Ajay also holds a patent for the "Method and Apparatus of Configuration Solutions."
At Bain, Ajay's passion is working with early-stage founders on team-building, culture, iteration of product market fit, and scaling the early go-to-market operations. His primary investment themes include commerce enablement, the revolution of the sales and marketing functions, and the use of big-data to transform business applications. In 2012 and 2013, Ajay was named to the Forbes Midas list of Tech's Top 100 Investors.
In addition to his firm and portfolio company responsibilities, Ajay serves as the National Board Chair for BUILD, a not-for-profit dedicated to helping underprivileged high school students attend college.
Ajay grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a die-hard Steelers fan. Ajay lives in Palo Alto, CA with his wife and three daughters. To read his blog, please click here.
Mark Gainey
Mark Gainey
Mark Gainey has been building successful companies for nearly 20 years. He currently serves as the co-founder and CEO of Strava, an online network that connects the global community of athletes. Founded in 2009, millions of athletes have joined Strava for the competition and camaraderie found in tracking and sharing their fitness activities. Gainey also founded Kana Communications, an enterprise software firm, in 1996 and served in various capacities, including CEO, president, and chairman. He has offered his expertise to a wide array of companies over the years, joining the boards of BoardVantage, Alter-G, and Coaching Corps.
Enrique Salem
Enrique Salem
Enrique Salem brings more than 25 years of executive leadership, business strategy, and board experience to Clari. Most recently, Salem served as president and CEO of Symantec, where he worked for 19 years in a variety of leadership roles. Prior to Symantec, he served as CEO of Brightmail and SVP of products and technology at Oblix and Ask Jeeves. In March 2011, Salem was appointed to President Barack Obama's Management Advisory Board.
Aaref Hilaly
Aaref Hilaly
As a partner at Sequoia, Hilaly works with enterprise, internet, and mobile companies. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2012, Hilaly served as CEO of Clearwell Systems, where he worked closely with Byrne and Rangan. He was also the founder and CEO of CenterRun, a pioneer in datacenter automation, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems.
Venkat Rangan
Venkat Rangan
CTO
Venkat Rangan brings over 30 years of technology innovation and leadership experience to Clari. Prior to Clari, Venkat was the Co-founder and CTO of Clearwell Systems, Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company, which was acquired by Symantec (SYMC) in 2011. At Clearwell, Venkat's team developed several industry-leading innovations in search, machine learning & predictive analytics.
Prior to Clearwell, Venkat served as VP of Technology at Rhapsody Networks – a technology leader in the storage business that was acquired by Brocade (BRCD). Prior to Rhapsody, Mr. Rangan was the VP and Chief Architect at VitalSigns Software, which was acquired by Lucent Technologies.
Venkat also served as a lead Program Manager at Microsoft, responsible for WEBM, WMI and CIM technologies of Microsoft, and as an R&D Manager at Hewlett Packard's NetMetrix division. Additionally, he developed PC NFS communications stack for Sun Microsystems, and was a member of Wang Laboratories Advanced Technologies team.
Venkat holds 13 patents along with a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida and an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Andy Byrne
Andy Byrne
CEO
Andy Byrne brings over 19 years of experience in sales, marketing, business development and management to his position as CEO of Clari. Prior to Clari, Andy was part of the founding executive team at Clearwell Systems – Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company – which he helped grow from pre-product & pre-revenue in 2005 to $100 million run rate until its acquisition by Symantec (SYMC) in Q2 2011.
Prior to joining Clearwell, Andy co-founded Timestock, Inc., which was acquired by Computer Associates (CA) via the acquisition of Wily Technology. Timestock delivered world-class enterprise application management solutions to large fortune 500 corporations. Before Timestock, Andy was VP of Marketing at Desana Systems. Prior to Desana, Andy was VP of Product Management at Lucent Technologies. Andy came to Lucent Technologies via the acquisition of VitalSigns Software. Andy has also held sales, marketing & management roles at Bay Networks and at MiLAN Technologies, which was later acquired by Digi International.
Andy holds a BS in Economics from the University of Nevada and received his MBA with honors from San Jose State University.
