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Quorum appoints rock guitarist to play CEO lead

Company hopes John Newsom will end game of exec musical chairs

Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) start-up Quorum has appointed John Newsom as its fifth CEO – the fifth in the eight years since it was founded. He is a guitarist in a rock tribute band in his spare time, so lets hope his lead as CEO is as good as his rock soloing.

Quorum has one-click disaster recovery and hybrid cloud products. The firm has had eight rounds of funding, with an A-round of $5.3m in 2009 and then annual drip feeds of venture funding: $2m in 2010, $3m in 2011 and $5m in 2012, plus $2m of debt finance. Then $11m and $10m B and C-rounds happened in quick succession in 2013, followed by another $4.6m venture drip feed last year.

Why the drip feed history and the apparent micro-managing? Didn’t the investors trust the CEO with a big tranche of money? In fact the CEO history looks odd too:

  • John Newsom – March 2015-present
  • Walter Angerer – Now exec chairman after being interim CEO from August 2014 to March 2015
  • Edward Sharp – May 2014-August 2014 and now chief strategy and tech officer at PMC-Sierra
  • Walter Angerer – November 2013-May 2014
  • Larry Lang – September 2010-November 2013 and now on Violin Memory board
  • Robert Habibi – 2009-2010 and went to Cisco

There are two investors, Airtek Capital Group and Toba Capital. Angerer is a venture partner at Toba – which led the 2013 $11m B-round – and was previously at Quest Data Protection. The pattern of funding and CEO changes indicates investors are keeping Quorum on a tight leash and have been unhappy with its growth.

Incoming CEO John Newsom is, like Angerer, an ex-Quest exec, where he was VP and GM of the app management business unit. Before that, he looked after the enterprise sales, pre-sales, post-sales and product management teams. His Quorum exec bio says: “In his spare time, he also plays lead guitar for a dance rock band called Audio Bomb* that covers popular music from the 1980s, 1990s and today.”

Audio Bomb

Audio Bomb in concert; John Newsom on left. Click image to see the video clip

Quorum says its DRaaS sales have grown 600 per cent over the last two years. It is odd that it doesn’t say what the 2013-2014 growth was – presumably less than 600 per cent. We’re told revenues from its reseller channel rose 200 per cent, “helping the company further extend its business opportunities worldwide”.

Newsom had an 8-month break after his time at Quest. Let’s hope this rock covers star can get Quorum growing, as the history so far is indicative of a failure to launch. ®

* "Audio Bomb totally rocked our 800-person sales kick-off in Las Vegas! I highly recommend the band for any corporate event where you want to party. They are great musicians and [singer] Tommy keeps the crowd going the whole time!" said Doug Garn, President & CEO, Quest Software.

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