AI-powered finance concierge Zeni today announced it has appointed Carl Hekkert as Chief Financial Officer of Customer Success and Collin Cadmus as Chief Revenue Officer, both the first executives to hold the roles at the company. Hekkert and Cadmus join at a time of rapid expansion in Zeni’s business. Following the company’s $34 million Series B funding round in August 2021, Zeni has doubled its headcount from 60 employees to more than 120 in the last six months and plans to nearly double its existing headcount by the end of 2022.
“At Zeni we pride ourselves in attracting top talent who not only are experts in their field, but also align with our brand ethos and mission,” said Swapnil Shinde, Co-Founder and CEO, Zeni. “Carl and Collin have decades of experience and a relentless focus on perfecting the customer experience making them welcomed additions to the Zeni leadership as we enter our next stage of growth.”
In his new role as Chief Financial Officer of Customer Success, Hekkert will provide leadership for Zeni’s client-facing finance teams and drive transformational finance, partner development, and process initiatives across Zeni’s platform. In addition to serving as Zeni’s head of finance, his primary objective is to drive client success by developing a world-class controllership team and working closely with the development team to continue building Zeni’s best-in-class finance dashboard. Over the past 25 years, Hekkert has held leadership positions at Motorola Solutions, Silicon Valley Bank, Agilent, HP, Varian and Juniper Networks. Prior to joining Zeni, Hekkert was the Head of Finance for SymphonyAI where he provided finance leadership across a portfolio of AI companies in the retail, industrial, media and financial services sectors.
“I am excited to join the team as the company’s first CFO and expand Zeni’s world-class finance team,” said Hekkert. “I have great confidence in the company’s ability to significantly disrupt traditional financial management processes to provide clients with the financial enlightenment they so desperately need.”
As Zeni’s first Chief Revenue Officer, Cadmus will oversee sales, marketing and revenue operations with a goal of designing a customer experience that aligns with the needs and wants of the modern buyer. His primary objective is to drive the growth of Zeni through new, innovative approaches to sales and marketing, and he is responsible for building an organization where all revenue-generating functions of the business are aligned and seamlessly integrated. Cadmus is a veteran SaaS sales leader who has hired and trained over 300 B2B salespeople, generating over $50M in recurring revenue and over $300M in exits. Cadmus has held numerous lead sales positions including VP of Sales at Aircall and Doctor.com, most recently working as a consultant and advisor to a suite of leading businesses including Avoma, Spiff Inc, CoSell, Dasha, and preHIRED.
“I was drawn to Zeni’s culture of true innovation and eagerness to take a more integrated approach to sales, marketing, and revenue,” said Cadmus. “Founding the company on the principle that the best financial offering combines the greatest strengths of humans, AI and machine learning, Swapnil and Snehal took big risks against industry norms making Zeni one of the most well positioned technology companies of the next decade.”
Zeni is the only bookkeeping and accounting platform that provides real-time insights and flux analysis of a company’s key financial metrics via its AI-powered Zeni Dashboard, including Burn Rate, Cash In and Cash Out analysis, Universal Search of transactions across a startup’s entire finance stack, Spend and Income Trends for every customer and vendor in their ecosystem, Operation Expenses tracking, and more.
To learn more, visit www.zeni.ai.
About Zeni
Zeni is the first AI-powered finance concierge for startups powering high velocity decision making. With Zeni’s intelligent bookkeeping, accounting, tax, and CFO services, startups have access to real-time financial insights via their Zeni Dashboard, and a team of finance experts to manage every finance function for a flat monthly fee — daily bookkeeping, yearly taxes, bill pay and invoicing, financial projections, budgeting, payroll administration, and more. Zeni was founded in 2019 by twin brothers and serial entrepreneurs, Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde, who also founded Mezi, the AI-powered travel assistant acquired by American Express in 2018. Zeni has raised $47.5 million in funding to-date, backed by Amit Singhal, Dragon Capital, Elevation Capital, Firebolt Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Neeraj Arora, Saama Capital, Sierra Ventures, SVB Financial Group, Think Investments, and Twin Ventures, and prominent angel investors including Manish Chandra, Nickhil Jakatdar, Ed Lu, Anupam Mittal, Gokul Rajaram, and Kunal Shah.
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