Kespry, an aerial intelligence platform provider, today announced that, George Mathew has been appointed as the company’s new chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman. Mathew takes the reins from founder and first-time CEO Paul Doersch who led the team that developed and commercialized the Kespry Drone System. Doersch remains a shareholder in the company.
Mathew was most recently president and chief operating officer of self-service analytics software provider Alteryx. “We needed a CEO like [George] with great experience scaling a fast-growth data analytics company. Kespry is growing so fast the team wanted an experienced leader,” John Vrionis, a partner with Lightspeed, told TechCrunch.
With 20 years of experience at growth-oriented technology startups as well as category leading software providers such as salesforce.com and SAP, Mathew has held a wide range of senior leadership positions, from driving company strategy to leading product management, development, sales and marketing teams.
“The founding team at Kespry has done a remarkable job,” said John Vrionis, general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and a member of the Kespry board of directors. “We now have the opportunity to accelerate our growth tremendously, and George has a proven track record and a true knack for building high-growth, sustainable businesses at a global scale. For the past several years, he has lived at the intersection of analytics, big data and cloud computing, all of which are critical to where the industrial drone market is going as the use of drones and the data they provide spreads globally.”
Mathew led Alteryx through exponential growth in the self-service analytics market by focusing on product innovation and customer success. Prior to Alteryx, Mathew was global vice president and general manager for business intelligence (BI) at SAP. There he led post-merger product strategy for SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects while shaping several Sapphire Ventures investments, including Alteryx. He eventually became general manager for SAP’s entire BI portfolio, growing it into the world’s largest business in this software category.
“Kespry has quickly and methodically carved out a compelling and highly-differentiated position in the industrial drone space,” said Mathew. “By developing a highly-integrated end-to-end solution that provides customers unique aerial insights and analytical models, Kespry is enabling markets such as insurance, aggregates and construction to imagine new uses that were not previously possible.”
A May 2016 PwC report projects the global commercial drone market to grow to more than $127 billion by 2020. Kespry has already experienced rapid customer growth across key vertical markets, with three of the top five construction materials firms and the top five aggregate firms in North America now using the Kespry system. Kespry customers are leaders across aggregates, construction, and surveying industries, including Fluor, Lehigh Hanson/Heidelberg, Sully-Miller/Colas USA, Terus Construction, Webcor, Whitaker Contracting, Woolpert and many others.
Kespry provides an automated and fully integrated drone system that is easy for companies to deploy at scale. Companies use Kespry drones to more easily collect, analyze and share aerial information via a unique cloud-based service. The Kespry system saves time and money, while increasing traditional survey frequency, helping change how customers operate their business. Current Kespry customers average more than nine flights per month, compared to traditional quarterly or annual surveying methods.
Kespry is funded by leading venture capital firms and global technology investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, DCM Ventures, Spectrum 28, Wilson Sonsini and others.
Frank Schroth is editor in chief of DroneLife, the authoritative source for news and analysis on the drone industry: it’s people, products, trends, and events.
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