Leadership Team
Stephane Dubois - Chief Executive Officer, Founder and Director
Stephane Dubois founded Xignite to pioneer financial cloud services, and today he is leading Xignite in the creation of the industry’s only pure-play market data cloud platform. Prior to Xignite, Stephane was vice president of product marketing at Advent Software, the leading provider of software solutions to the investment management industry. During his tenure at Advent, the company went public, doubled its market share to 45%, and grew from $20M to $100M in revenue. Stephane was responsible for building a highly skilled product marketing organization that oversaw product and market strategy, market validation, and positioning for all product lines. His team also developed the industry’s first institutional account aggregation service for investors and their advisors.
Prior to Advent, Stephane held senior management positions in the product marketing organizations of Walker Interactive Systems and Oracle Corporation. During the client/server computing wave, he led teams that developed and marketed financial applications in areas such as accounting and purchasing over multiple product releases touching hundreds of corporate customers. Stephane holds an M.S in Management from M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and M.S. and B.S. degrees in international management from the MBA Institute in Paris.
Stephen Van Horne has nearly 20 years of experience in the financial community. He has run finance, human resources, accounting and legal departments, and managed mergers and acquisitions. He is an expert at building and strengthening capital structure, establishing internal controls and policies, and many other aspects of the role.
Prior to Xignite, Stephen most recently served as Chief Financial Officer of RockYou, Inc. Stephen has managed finance and operations at Yahoo, Inc., as well as an international financial project for Sanwa Bank in Japan.Stephen has also held senior management positions Bechtel Enterprise Holdings, and AT&T. Stephen holds an M.B.A. and M.A., in International Policy Studies from Stanford University, a B.A., in History and Asian Studies, from Dartmouth College, and graduated from an intensive Japanese studies program at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
Joel York - Chief Marketing Officer, General Manager Direct Business
Joel York has 20 years of experience bringing software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products to market and is a recognized leader in the cloud community. Joel has managed global sales and marketing organizations serving over 50 countries, including local operations in the US, UK, Germany, Israel and India. His experience ranges from freemium SaaS subscriptions to $5M enterprise deals. Joel shares his expertise on SaaS and cloud business strategy at Chaotic Flow, Cloud Ave and Cloud Bulls.
Prior to Xignite, Joel provided SaaS strategy and operations consulting services at Affinitos, where he worked with rapidly growing Web 2.0 startups such as Zendesk and Conduit. Joel has held senior management positions leading the sales and marketing organizations from startups to public companies, including Navis, eMind, Passlogix and SPSS. Joel began his career at Deloitte Consulting. Joel holds a B.S. in Physics from Caltech, an M.S. in Engineering Physics from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Al Chang - Vice President, Engineering
Al Chang brings strong engineering leadership at high-growth software companies to Xignite with a combination of startup and financial services experience. Prior to joining Xignite, Al was head of engineering for partner solutions at Google, where he led a global engineering organization that enabled strategic partnerships such as AOL, Dell, T-Mobile, Virgin Media, Sony, and EchoStar by extending Google's core product offerings in search, ads, Android, apps, YouTube, and TV.
As Vice President of Product Development for Advent Software, Al led the creation of an integrated portfolio management, accounting, and CRM solution built on enterprise Web architecture. Al also managed various strategic relationships, including SEI Investments, Allianz, and the acquisition of a custodial data reconciliation operation. Al cofounded TenFold Corporation, which grew from 5 to 700 employees, $90M in revenue and went public. At TenFold, Al held senior management positions in engineering and professional services, successfully implementing mission-critical enterprise applications at Fortune 500 companies such as Barclays Global Investors, JP Morgan Chase, and Allstate. Al started his career at Oracle as a software engineer. Al holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and a B.S. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cameron Karr - Vice President, Customer Success
Cameron Karr has over 20 years of experience in customer operations and loyalty programs in technology and financial services. Cameron’s proven track record of building impactful customer loyalty programs makes her the ideal leader to create a new standard of service for the financial market data community at Xignite. Throughout her career, Cameron has partnered closely with executive teams to maximize business performance by improving customer experience and retention. Cameron has spent the past decade building and managing global customer loyalty programs in technology firms, where she has successfully combined her six sigma black belt expertise with voice of the customer (VOC) insights to drive measurable results.
Prior to joining Xignite, Cameron held executive positions in sales and marketing at MarketTools, a leading provider of enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions. Before joining MarketTools, Cameron was senior director of corporate strategy and worldwide customer loyalty at SAP Business Objects where she developed and managed the enterprise-wide customer loyalty program, integrating VOC data into virtually every aspect of the organization from product development to sales to customer support to executive compensation. Prior to SAP Business Objects, Cameron spent 15 years in the financial services industry, including services and operations management positions at Advent Software and Montgomery Asset Management. Cameron holds a B.S. from the University of Colorado.
Chas Cooper - Vice President, Product Management
Chas Cooper has over 15 years of experience building, marketing and managing software and cloud products. Prior to joining Xignite, Chas was the founder of Clear Crown, an interactive entertainment software company, where he guided the startup from inception to profitability in less than three years.
Previously, Chas led product management for several startups. At Ipedo, Chas helped the startup achieve product superiority in the XML database space against much larger competitors, winning the firm’s first customers and raising the average deal sizes to six figures. At Evoke Software, Chas managed products which grew in average deal size from $400K to $2.2M. Chas first found his passion for product management as a consultant at Ernst & Young LLP, when he grew a five-figure project into a $60 million account by defining and selling a data warehousing solution that was subsequently productized. Chas holds a B.B.A. in Management of Information Systems from the University of Georgia.
Peter Caswell - Chairman of the Board and CEO, NetBase
Peter Caswell is a Silicon Valley veteran and currently CEO of NetBase. Peter brings more than 25 years of experience driving operational excellence, financial discipline and exponential revenue growth throughout technology organizations.
Prior to NetBase, Peter was CEO of Siperian where he was responsible for the overall strategic direction, growth and management of the company. He drove the business to operating profitability and grew revenue by seven times in three years before selling to Informatica for more than $130M.
Previously, Peter served as the CEO at Enkata Technologies and Advent Software. While under his direction, Advent grew its revenues from $8M to approaching $200M while quadrupling its operating margins. Peter has held executive sales and marketing positions with MSA (a Dun & Bradstreet Software company) and Hogan Systems. Peter holds the equivalent of an M.B.A. in Management Studies and a B.A. in Agriculture from the Seale Hayne College in the United Kingdom.
Deborah Farrington - Director and General Partner, StarVest Partners
Deborah Farrington is a founder and general partner of StarVest Partners, L.P., a New York City-based venture capital firm founded in 1998. StarVest was an early investor in the software-as-a-service trend: in 2000, it invested as the only venture firm in NetSuite (NYSE: N) whose December 2007 IPO, at the time, was the highest market capitalization for a venture backed company since Google. Other noteworthy investments include MessageOne, acquired by Dell Computer; Connected, acquired by Iron Mountain; iCrossing, acquired by Hearst; Insurance.com, bought by QuinStreet; and ideeli, a leading flash sale site and #1 on the 2011 Inc. 500 list.
Prior to founding StarVest, Deborah held positions including: President and CEO of Victory Ventures, LLC, a New York-based private equity investment firm where she also served as chairman of Staffing Resources, Inc.; and Managing Director of Asian Oceanic Group, a Hong Kong-based merchant bank. Earlier in her career she was an investment banker and securities analyst with Merrill Lynch based in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Deborah currently sits on the Boards of NetSuite, where she is lead director and chairman of the Compensation Committee, Host Analytics, and PivotLink on behalf of StarVest. She is also a director and chairman of the Compensation Committee at Collectors Universe, Inc. (NASDAQ: CLCT). She was named to the Forbes Midas 100 List of top venture capitalists in the United States in 2008, 2009 and 2011. Deborah is a graduate of Smith College and holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where she is a member of the Dean's Visiting Committee. She is also a member of the President's Advisory Council and Investment Committee of Smith College; a board member of the Harvard Business School Club of New York City; a member of The Committee of 200 and the Economic Club of New York; and a board member of Opportunity International, a leading international microfinance organization.
Anthony Lee - Director and General Partner, Altos Ventures
Anthony Lee is a General Partner of Altos Ventures, where he focuses on software and digital media investments. Anthony currently serves as a director of BrightEdge, Demandbase, Hooked Media Group, Kontagent, Koofers.com, MyERP, Netbase Solutions, Roblox, and Xignite. He was also a director of GuardianEdge, which was acquired in 2010 by Symantec (SYMC).
Before joining Altos Ventures, Anthony led marketing efforts for three start-up companies. He served as Vice President of Marketing for services automation leader Evolve Software (EVLV, later acquired by Oracle) and Vice President of Marketing for social search pioneer Clip2.com. He also co-founded Signature Wines, a national distributor of private-labeled wines. Previously, Anthony was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and published a national magazine.
Anthony serves as Chairman of TechSoup Global, the world's largest non-profit distributor of computer software and hardware. He co-founded and co-chairs the C100, a network of top Canadian technology leaders dedicated to supporting Canadian entrepreneurs. Anthony is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a charter member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is a founding member of the Full Circle Fund, a venture philanthropy group based in San Francisco. Anthony received his M.B.A. from Stanford University and earned a B.A. in Politics and Economics from Princeton University.
Bob Rees - Director and General Partner, Startup Capital Ventures
Bob Rees is an experienced venture capitalist with a 25-year track record of forming, incubating, funding, and growing successful young companies. His background also includes operating executive experience in sales, marketing, and strategic planning positions with two Fortune 500 companies (Mobil and Tenneco). As a Special Limited Partner of Woodside Fund from 1993 to 1999, Bob built a successful investment record including exits for Innova Corporation, Hotrail, and AccelGraphics. Bob and three of his Woodside Fund partners left the firm in 1999 to form Access Venture Partners, an affiliate of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. As a Managing Director of Access Venture Partners until 2004, Bob sourced technology deals in Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and syndicated these deals with top-tier venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. At Access, Bob led the firm’s syndication of Dallas-based Cashworks, Inc. which was later sold to General Electric Card Services.
Prior to his venture roles at Woodside Fund and Access Venture Partners, Bob led the successful diversification of Rees/Source Ventures, Inc., a family-owned oil and gas business, through creation of a venture capital investment program. In 1987, he launched the Oklahoma City Innovation Center as Oklahoma’s first privately run business incubator. He also played an active role in helping the state develop its own entrepreneurial and venture capital initiatives, which culminated in the founding of the Oklahoma Capital Investment Board (OCIB) and Oklahoma Technology Commercialization Center (OTCC).
Bob continues as an active board member of QuanTEM Laboratories, one of the Oklahoma companies originally incubated by the Oklahoma City Innovation Center. He holds an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BA in business from Principia College. At Startup Capital Ventures, Bob serves on the boards of WhiteHat Security and Xignite. He is also a board observer at EzRez Software, Suturenetics, and Think Finance.