The Company

Becoming the leading content provider of geospatial imagery for mapping & monitoring applications

Our client has its roots in rocket science… literally.   Since the first image was collected from space over 30 years ago by classified government imaging systems, only a limited number of people have been permitted access to highly detailed photos of the Earth, and the industry was tightly regulated.  Since its deregulation in the 1990’s, our client is changing this historical usage of Earth information through the commercialization of high-resolution satellite imaging and an innovative approach to conducting business with customers, partners and resellers. The company was founded in 1992 to launch satellites into space for the purpose of taking high-resolution photos of the earth for defense and intelligence, government, and commercial use.   In early 2000, the US government awarded its first significant contract for satellite imagery to the firm.  Currently, the company offers the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite imagery, the largest image size, and the greatest on-board storage capacity of any satellite imagery provider.  In addition, the company’s comprehensive ImageLibrary houses the most up-to-date images available.

In 2004, our client struck an exclusive portal agreement to supply much of its satellite imagery to Google’s new product launch, branded Google Earth.  This deal served as both validation for a broader explicit push as well as anchor tenant into the non-federal government, commercial sector.

The company is headquartered near Boulder, Colorado, with other offices and facilities in key geographies throughout the world.  Commercial division headquarters are in Needham, MA.

The company filed for an Initial Public Offering in June of 2008.

Market Opportunity

Popular business and technology soothsaying magazines have trumpeted mapping as the next “killer app.”

Image-enhanced mapping – typically associated with markets based on GIS and GPS – have now begun to penetrate the mainstream lexicon.  Use of satellite imagery is definitely no longer the exclusive province of the intelligence community but is broadly used by business and the consumer as well.  [Even somewhat capricious mapping use has taken off like wildfire, as evidenced by the overnight popularity of photo posting sites like Flickr that tag location coordinates to each image.]

Based on market data from ASPRS and Frost & Sullivan, the estimated global addressable market for sub-1 meter imagery (including aerial) is $680M.  The combination of strong underlying growth in the traditional (GIS-based) market, and new emerging web-based applications will increase the addressable imagery market to more than $1B in 2010.  Very high resolution commercial satellite imagery is expected to be the major growth driver, taking share from aerial imagery providers.

The Position

The Vice President of Sales, Americas will be responsible for managing the overall sales plan, associated P&L and budget for the commercial sales group in the U.S., Canada, and South America.  The VP Sales, Americas (VPSA) reports to the CEO.  The position and associated team is focused on driving new sales into commercial markets, including but not limited to industry sectors including Oil & Gas, Telecom, Utilities, Online Mapping & Portals, Consumer Navigation, and the broadly defined corporate enterprise.

As the Company is headquartered in Longmont, Colorado, just outside of Boulder, Colorado, this position will be based at Headquarters offices.

The successful candidate must possess excellent organizational skills and the ability to lead a multi-continent distributed sales, business development and sales support organization.  Specific sales leadership background is in the broad-based area of web-based content. He or she must have experience establishing and managing one and two tier distribution sales structures internationally.

The Americas sales team is comprised of approximately 16 dedicated staff, including regional sales managers and directors (~6), business development (2), and sales support staff (8).   A Sales operations group of approximately 20 is shared between the various sales organizations, including the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions.

Highlights of the VPSA responsibilities include:

• Exceed quarterly and annual revenue targets
• Develop and execute sales plans and strategies to position the company for sustained long-term geographic growth in the Americas, especially in key emerging geographic markets such as Brazil.
• Develop and execute sales plans and strategies to expand the industrial customer base, further grow the fast moving online and mobile content and mapping customer segment, and achieve demonstrated success penetrating the enterprise customer marketplace.
• Manage, develop and coach company’s America sales force to ensure success in each region
• Foster teamwork and create a positive work environment for a distributed sales force
• Lead and develop a dynamic and creative sales infrastructure that fits the needs of our business and the products we provide our customers
• Drive internal discussion about strategies, ideas, new opportunities and the best methods for achieving success in a changing marketplace
• Consult with customers on their needs and provide feedback to other departments supporting sales efforts
• Forecast, track and report sales performance using internal tools and application, such as Salesforce.com
• Conduct internal pipeline meetings and reviews with the executive team
• Manage overall sales plan for territory and associated P&L and budget
• Lead team in structuring strategic and integrated partnerships with key customers
• Personally assist in closing large deals and managing strategic accounts
• Travel as needed to ensure that sales and clients needs are met and exceeded
• Participate actively in business planning and budgeting process as a key member of the business unit’s executive team

Staff & Global Office Locations

Commercial Business Unit offices exist with headquarters in Longmont, CO, and other offices in Colorado, Boston area, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.   The sales team is comprised of 4 regional  Director/VPsThere are Regional Sales Managers, for a total of approximately a 5, including all sales VPs, Directors and Managers.

Financial Backing

The largest shareholder in the Company is Morgan Stanley, occupying several seats on the board. During its seed and growth stages, the company has also received venture capital (August Capital, www.augustcap.com), private equity (Frontera www.fronteracapital.com), and strategic investments (Ball Corp’s aerospace division, www.ballaerospace.com [NYSE: BLL]).

Compensation

Compensation will be competitive with the position’s requirements, comprised of three basic components– base salary, incentive compensation driven by a combination of achieving revenue targets and management-by-objective milestones, and appropriate equity stakeholder position.

Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar (www.Zipcar.com).

Scott has been CEO of Zipcar from it’s angel funding stage more than 4 years ago to today, growing the company through several rounds of venture funding including investors Benchmark and Greylock and a recent merger with FlexCar that broadens Zipcar’s offering to more than 10 cities, both here in the US as well as the UK.

Jill Smith, CEO of DigitalGlobe (www.Digitalglobe.com)

Jill has been CEO of several companies, including venture-backed eDial ultimately sold to Alcatel, and COO of Micron Electronics, a $1.5B PC manufacturer. All of this ultimately led her to take the CEO role at DigitalGlobe 3+ years ago, an imagery company providing both satellite and aerial imagery for the likes of products like GoogleEarth, the U.S. Government and other mobile, commercial, location-based services companies, and nations around the world interested in geospatial information management.

Jim Mahoney, CEO of Novomer (www.Novomer.com).

Jim early in his career was an executive at Baxter, then moved into several general management & CEO roles in biotech including CEO of SurfaceLogix. Recently Jim has taken the helm as CEO of a cleantech-renewables industry start-up targeting green chemistry funded by Flagship Ventures and several others.

In recruiting these three to the panel, we were looking to find three veteran CEOs who had been in both public and private company settings, had assembled experience in CEO positions across the growth stage spectrum of technology and science-driven companies from seed-stage funding through S1/IPO. Also, we wanted to assemble CEO panelists who had been in the CEO chair a number of times, and thus had experience with a number of boards-boards with founders on them, venture capitalists and other investors on them, as well as outside and strategic investors.

The podcast below is the audio from the evening offering some thoughtful input and CEO-to-CEO questions and answers from the audience.

The audio last a bit more than 70 minutes, and you can graze it by streaming it here, or download for car, train or plane ride listening.  Enjoy.

Venture-backed CEOs talk about Best Practices in Board Management