Sanjay Sathe
Founder & CEO, SucceedSmart
Sanjay Sathe is an accomplished corporate global executive and a serial entrepreneur. He has expertise to assist early-stage startups move from “Survival” to “Thrival”, by helping with fundraising leveraging his extensive Silicon Valley and other networks, assisting with Product-Market fit, Go-to-Market Strategies, how to build lasting cultures, hiring leadership teams, how to scale the business and how to get acquired.
His third startup SucceedSmart is disrupting the ‘traditional’ executive search space an industry which really has had no innovation and technology infusion for the last 50 years. The current model is priced exorbitantly vs the value provided, is transactional, exclusionary/clubby and lacks a focus on diversity. They present an AI-driven human in the loop executive talent platform that takes a modern and democratized approach to executive search by making it faster, better, affordable and unbiased (platform naturally lends itself to diversity). His second startup GenomeSmart got acquired by Konica Minolta Precision Medicine. GenomeSmart is an AI/ML based platform in the Genetics space which helps people assess their risk of genetic disorders now so that they can catch things early and do something about it. The focus is on early detection of hereditary cancers and reproductive genetics by serving individuals through Hospital systems, Genetic testing labs, Health insurance companies and Enterprises.
In an adverse situation, when Sabre Inc (the last corporate job he had) went private and cut a significant part of the company, while being offered separation he identified an opportunity by recognizing that the traditional model of outplacement was broken. So, he decided to disrupt this $3B space and put America back to work. Raised $1.25M in angel funding in 2007 to start RiseSmart his first startup and built the technology platform (like eHarmony in the job space) and then raised $25M from top tier Silicon Valley VC firms (Norwest, Storm Ventures and Accel-KKR), built the business, delivered strong growth for years and then in Sep 2015 got acquired for $100M by Randstad a global $22B HR services leader. Though he negotiated an all-cash deal, he stayed on for the next two years and after rolling out RiseSmart Globally by building out a multi-language platform and launching the solution in international markets, he left to start GenomeSmart.
Prior to RiseSmart he was the vice president for enterprise data management and ran Big Data globally for Sabre Holdings, a $2.5B global leader in travel commerce and the parent company of Travelocity. Before Sabre, he was SVP Marketing & President International for Brierley & Partners, a CRM and loyalty management company that serves global brands such as Hilton HHonors, Hertz #1 Club Gold, Sony and Nokia and led the efforts for launching Star Alliance’s Frequent Flyer offering globally. He also worked as a Marketing and Product leader in Europe with Lufthansa, and earlier in Asia with Lufthansa, HSBC and other major corporations.
Sanjay considers himself a “global citizen” having lived and worked across the globe and has a diverse skill set having driven value across over seven industry segments. Sanjay currently is a Board Advisor and an active Angel investor, a Board of Director with ExCoLeadership a global leader in C Suite Coaching, a LP with several VC funds and a mentor with several incubators including Plug & Play Tech Center, the world’s largest incubator. He has numerous awards to his credit over the years including 2017 Stevie Award for CEO of the year, the Top 50 Outstanding Asian Americans of the year in 2016 from the Asian American Business Development Center, and the Triple A Alumni Achievement Award of AIM in 2013 and is also an Executive in Residence at AIM. Sanjay graduated with an MBM from Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines in 1988 and did an Executive Program at Wharton School of Business.
