Podium Appoints Rick Hasselman as Chief Financial Officer and Chance Olson as EVP of Strategy and Business Operations

LEHI, Utah, Nov. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Podium, the leading interaction management platform for local businesses, today announced the appointment of Rick Hasselman as Podium's first Chief Financial Officer and Chance Olson as EVP of Strategy and Business Operations. With the new hires, Podium's employee count has risen from 430 at the beginning of 2019 to 661 at the start of November.

"In just over five years, Podium has gone from my co-founder Dennis and I in the spare bedroom of my apartment to helping over 40,000 local businesses create over 17 million interactions with their customers every month," said Eric Rea, Co-Founder and CEO of Podium. "In order to continue this incredible growth trajectory, we had to find the very best leaders in the industry. We are pumped to have Rick and Chance join our team and bring their experience to guide Podium into truly modernizing the way that business happens on a local level."

With over two decades of experience in public and private corporate finance and operations leadership roles, Rick Hasselman most recently served as VP of Finance and Operations for Sumo Logic, a leading global provider of cloud-based machine data analytics. Hasselman helped Sumo Logic through the process of becoming one of the fastest-growing private SaaS companies in the US -- during his tenure, the company's annual revenue grew to ten times what it was when he started. Prior to Sumo Logic, he served in several roles at Google including leading large acquisitions and divestitures and working with CapitalG, Google's growth equity investment arm. Before Google, Hasselman was a director at PwC, where he advised private equity and corporate clients in a variety of roles, including M&A advisory, accounting and tax. Hasselman is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive) and has an MBA from Emory University and a BSBA from Bowling Green State University.

"Helping Podium become a world-changing company that shapes the way consumers interact with local businesses is a powerful vision, and we are primed to make that happen," said Hasselman. "Podium has experienced growth that is rarely seen, even in the SaaS industry. Based on the value Podium's platform provides and the sheer size of the market we are operating in, I feel we are still just scratching the surface of the impact this company can make. I am thrilled to help the team continue this expansion and take the next steps forward in that process."

Chance Olson has a decade of experience guiding both high-growth technology companies as well as Fortune 500 corporations in a variety of financial and operational functions. Most recently, Olson served as the VP of Strategy and M&A at Pluralsight, where he was responsible for setting and executing the company's corporate strategy. Additionally, Olson led Pluralsight's recent $170M acquisition of GitPrime. Prior to Pluralsight, Olson was a consultant at McKinsey & Company where he led growth strategies and operational improvements for multiple Fortune 500 companies. Olson has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as well as a BS in Business Management from Brigham Young University.

"I feel there is a real opportunity at Podium that is rare to find," said Olson. "In the past several years, there has been a massive shift in the way that consumers are preferring to interact with businesses. Podium is uniquely situated to be the go-to platform for these businesses that comprise such a large portion of our economy. I am excited for the challenge that comes with this large of an opportunity."

About Podium
Podium is an interaction management platform that enables companies with a local presence to conveniently connect with their customers at critical touchpoints to help them strengthen their business. By conveniently facilitating millions of customer interactions, such as driving customer-generated online reviews and providing improved customer messaging tools, Podium serves more than 40,000 local businesses to create over 17 million interactions with their customers a month. Headquartered in Lehi, Utah, and founded in 2014, Podium is currently backed by IVP, Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Y Combinator. To learn more, visit www.podium.com or contact us at [email protected].

SOURCE Podium

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