The Bellevue-based work collaboration company Smartsheet announced that Praerit Garg would be leaving Amazon Web Services (AWS) to join Smartsheet as Chief Technology Officer.
Smartsheet is a market leader in cloud-based business management software. The company reports its software is being used by more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
Smartsheet was founded in 2006, gaining little traction in the marketplace until a 2010 application redesign grew their user base from 10,000 to 1 million between 2010 and 2012. The company currently employs around 760 people in its downtown Bellevue office.
“I’m looking forward to helping shape the engineering team and the product for the next decade,” Garg said in a blog on Smartsheet’s website. “It’s an absolute honor and a privilege to have this incredible opportunity to lead the Smartsheet engineering organization. I hope to accelerate our existing culture of innovation, for finding simpler solutions to hard problems, and for delivering great experiences for our customers.”
Garg has an extensive history in the tech industry, working at Microsoft for more than 12 years on different incarnations of the Windows operating system. He left the tech giant in 2007 to found Symform, a cloud storage company in the days before AWS and Microsoft would come to dominate the market. Symform was acquired in 2013 by Quantum, and Garg moved on to co-found Joggle(me) while working at Chronus Corporation as Chief Products Officer.
Garg joined AWS in 2014, working there for four years as General Manager of Identity, Directory and Access Services before departing for Smartsheet.
“Praerit brings the combination of technical management, customer focus and business savvy that are crucial for this important role,” Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader said. “We have a deep, innovative engineering team that is creating a collaborative work management platform at scale, and I’m confident we will reach even greater heights under his leadership.”
Smartsheet has made a handful of decisions in 2019 that have benefited the company financially. After raising more than $150 million in its Initial Public Offering (IPO), the company saw its stock steadily rise as it acquired various business applications. Most recently, Smartsheet acquired Slope, a business application that lets users easily manage and collaborate on projects.
At market close on Feb. 14, Smartsheet’s stock sat at $36.62, up from $26.54 when they acquired Slope on Jan. 15. The rising stock price indicates high demand for Smartsheet shares, which increases the company’s capital when traders buy stock in Smartsheet. In turn, investors expect Smartsheet to use their capital to increase the company’s long-term value.
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