Namely benefits5/26/2023 Have you found yourself watching more cable news since the 2016 election? I’ve spent so much of my life doing it I can’t bear to count the hours. Maybe radio and other mass market outlets, too, but I never noticed those. Largely by spending an undisclosed–but I’m sure whopping–portion of the $210 million investment he attracted to the company on cable news network advertising. He kept revenue increasing at 40% or more year over year for a while. Lots of Valley start-ups pick it up while growing.Īnd growing a business is what Namely’s founder knew how to do–and fast. Parker Conrad started Zenefits and raised nearly half a billion dollars without any. I was hired 30 years ago to start an HR tech magazine without any. I’m amazed at how little importance is routinely given to HR domain expertise. Getting Larry on board is the culmination of her efforts, which included hiring Erinn Tarpey for marketing after eight years at talent-acquisition vendor iCIMS and Kevin Thompson for professional services (implementation and customer care) after 15 years at Ceridian. True, until Namely board chair Elisha Steele (also board chair at Cornerstone) became acting CEO after founder Matt Straz left in May 2018. What about the flock at Namely? Always straight-talking, Larry says, “The company almost never had anyone with HCM domain experience before.” Larry and others helped turn it into a software company. It had three or four payroll engines, at least two front-ends and the usual cluster of unintegrated acquired HR software products. At Lawson, he took HCM off its only hardware platform, the IBM AS/400 mini-computer, and created client/server products that ran on anything and eventually in the cloud.Ĭeridian was still a payroll service bureau when Ossip became CEO. Mainframe vendor Cyborg only had payroll (but what a payroll!) when Larry joined, and he helped create its first HRIS. “The same thing I’ve always done,” he says, “shepherd companies from their old products to their new ones.” So, now he’s CEO of Namely engaged in the most competitive battle in HCM outside of the Big Three, and he has zero experience in the SMB space. A likeable guy, experienced manager and very enthusiastic about good products he helped create, he did well. So, after 35 years in HCM, starting right out of college, canny Larry told me long ago that “you never get to be CEO without having run sales.” Unless you’re the founding geek who manages to hold on, which CEO David Ossip more than did at Ceridian after its private-equity owner bought his company Workforce and put him on top of the whole thing!Īfter helping David build a great new product suite, Larry eagerly became Ceridian’s new “chief revenue officer,” a ridiculous new title–CRO–for the head of sales. Sometimes, the COO or a president actually runs much of the rest of the company. In many software companies, the CEO’s primary job–despite the title–is to close new sales to generate revenue. Plus, he’s almost always been the executive (or No. But nearly all–except Zenefits–serve big companies.Īnd if you recall from that May column, Larry has only worked for enterprise software companies and their end users. Plus many others, including Ultimate, Infor, IBM, Cornerstone, ADP, Kronos, Ceridian, ServiceNow and start-ups. You’ve most often read me bloviating about the Big Three: SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle and Workday. Problem is, both Larry and I are “enterprise” guys, the term software companies generally use for customers with 5,000 employees or more and the vendors that meet their needs. Happily, there are new things to say as he’s become CEO of Namely, battling hammer and tongs with BambooHR (having nearly 10 times the customers) to become the top HCM vendor for small and medium-sized businesses everywhere. Nomber_key:001026Yes, I did just write about old friend Larry Dunivan in May as CEO of ThinkHR, automating compliance.
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