SUNNYVALE, CA–(Marketwired – Jun 13, 2017) – Mindtickle, the leading sales readiness platform, announced the creation of an advisory board to support its fast-growing operations globally. The five inaugural members of the advisory board include Jyoti Bansal, founder of AppDynamics; Jim Drill, investor, entrepreneur and ex-president of MOVE Guides; Vineet Jain, co-founder and CEO of Egnyte; Lars Nilsson, VP of Inside Sales at Cloudera and Raj De Datta, co-founder and CEO of BloomReach.
“Mindtickle addresses a gap in sales organizations that becomes critical as businesses look to scale quickly,” said Krishna Depura, co-founder and CEO at Mindtickle. “It’s a testament to our vision and the strength of our sales readiness platform that we have been able to attract such high-caliber executive leaders to join our advisory board and support our explosive growth.”
Mindtickle’s advisory board members include a few company founders who went on to grow their companies into “unicorn” businesses, with valuations exceeding $1 billion. Their first-hand knowledge in tackling sales onboarding, training, coaching and ongoing readiness initiatives showed them the value of Mindtickle’s engaging online platform. In some cases, the advisory board members have experienced the impact of Mindtickle in their own organizations, speeding the onboarding process and helping reps increase their sales effectiveness.
Mindtickle Advisory Board:
- Jyoti Bansal, founder of AppDynamics — Jyoti Bansal is a Silicon Valley leader, product visionary, and entrepreneur. He founded AppDynamics in 2008 with the vision of “Application Intelligence” to help modern enterprises embark on their journey of digital transformation with a disruptive approach to managing their software applications. From its founding in 2008 to 2015, Jyoti served as AppDynamics’ Chief Executive Officer, a period of rapid company and customer growth. In September 2015, Jyoti handed day-to-day operations to David Wadhwani, and served as Executive Chairman and Chief Strategist from September 2015 to August 2016. AppDynamics was acquired by Cisco in January 2017 for $3.7 billion.
- Jim Drill, veteran sales leader, investor and consultant — Jim Drill is a seasoned sales leader who has built successful go-to-market teams at Lithium Technologies, BMC, Imperva, IMLogic, MedSource Technologies, Inc. and PTC. With 28 years of experience in enterprise software, Jim has an impeccable track record of leading diverse teams, from start-ups to teams of more than 400 sales reps within dynamic, growing companies to achieve record global sales results, including two IPOs and two acquisitions. He serves as board member at MOVE Guides and FastSpring, and an advisor to LearnUp, HackerOne and Envoy Global. Jim obtained his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Vineet Jain, Founder and CEO of Egnyte — Vineet Jain is an experienced business leader who has worked in the B2B technology industry in Silicon Valley for more than 25 years. After holding multiple senior level positions at KPMG and Bechtel, Vineet set his sights on becoming a self-made entrepreneur. He started his first company, Valdero, a supply chain solution provider that received funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Trinity Ventures — and went on to a successful exit. Vineet founded Egnyte in 2007 and led the company to become a leader in the Enterprise File Sync and Share market. Vineet has secured multiple funding rounds to help grow the business from a cadre of co-founders to a global business with more than 300 employees worldwide.
- Lars Nilsson, VP of Inside Sales at Cloudera — Lars Nilsson is a proven, results-oriented inside sales and sales operations leader with 25 years of management experience building sales organizations and generating demand for products in enterprise software and hardware organizations. Lars currently serves as VP of Field Operations for Cloudera, the company that is revolutionizing enterprise data management by offering the first unified Platform for Big Data. Prior to Cloudera, Lars founded SalesSource, a premier business services consulting firm specializing in Salesforce.com customization and sales process development to aid venture backed start-ups scale and drive pipeline. Lars has also served in sales executive roles at ArcSight/Hewlett Packard, Riverbed Technology, and Portal Software. All three companies achieved an IPO.
- Raj De Datta, co-founder and CEO of BloomReach — Raj brought 10 years of enterprise and entrepreneurial experience when he co-founded BloomReach. Before launching the company, he was entrepreneur-in-residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures. Prior to that, Raj served as Cisco’s director of product marketing and was on the founding team of telecom company FirstMark/LambdaNet, which grew to $80 million in run-rate revenue. Raj also worked in technology investment banking at Lazard Freres. He holds a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
“Sales leaders know that the faster reps get up to speed and longer they stay engaged, the more effective they’ll be in generating revenue,” said Ravi Viswanathan, General Partner at New Enterprise Associates, an investor in Mindtickle. “The members of the advisory board are incredibly successful business leaders. Their endorsement of Mindtickle’s approach to sales readiness is just one more proof point that the company is well positioned to grow its presence globally.”
About Mindtickle
Mindtickle offers the industry’s most comprehensive readiness solution for closing the knowledge and skill gaps found in customer-facing teams. Sales teams across a wide range of industries use Mindtickle’s award-winning platform to train, coach, and align their sales teams to make reps and their managers more effective. Combining on-demand online training, bite-sized mobile updates, gamification, coaching and role-play with a data-driven approach, Mindtickle accelerates time-to-productivity, ensures consistent execution, and helps boost sales performance. Companies leveraging Mindtickle for sales enablement to assess and certify the readiness of each rep see bigger deal sizes, higher win rates and reduced sales cycles. Mindtickle is a global, privately-held company with headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. Investors include NEA and Accel Partners. For more information please visit mindtickle.com.
