Freshworks has added a fresh face to its management team. The company announced recently that it has hired David Thompson to be the new CMO for the business.
As a newly minted CMO, Thompson has already rolled up his sleeves and gotten to work, helping Freshworks to launch a Bay Area brand advertising campaign dubbed “Hit Refresh” that aims to instill customer confidence in Freshworks’ out of the box business software solutions.
Thompson brings a host of strategic marketing experience to the table in his new position. Prior to taking the role at Freshworks, he was CMO at Auction.com/Ten-X and a CSO and acting CMO at Domo. But he originally made his name as the founder of WebEx, an online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing SaaS company.
Thompson founded WebEx in 1999 and positioned it for a buyout from Cisco in 2007 in a deal that was valued at $3.2 billion. Thompson’s efforts on that deal helped bolster his reputation as one of the forerunning leaders in SaaS marketing.
The addition of Thompson to the leadership team at Freshworks comes after a new infusion of capital. Earlier this year, Freshworks secured a round of funding led by Accel and Sequoia Capital that was valued at $100 million. The remaining funds will go to reinvestment in the company’s software platform and continued global expansion.
The SaaS business recently unveiled a unified marketplace platform that is designed to enable clients and developers to produce apps with a 360-view of customer information. The company is betting that these insights will drive greater innovation. This recent expansion is building on the company’s Freshworks marketplace, which was first released in 2016 and offers integration across categories on the platform, allowing users to coordinate reporting, automation, productivity, knowledge management and project tracking, among other features. The ultimate goal is to increase customer retention and limit churn.
Freshworks, originally known as Freshdesk, was founded in 2010 by partners Girish Mathruboothum and Shan Krishnashamy. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices on four continents.
