News & Resources
Alexander Hutton is pleased to announce the addition of Sean Thompson as a Strategic Advisor.
Sean is an experienced executive with over 30 years in the Software industry including several stints leading M&A efforts. Most recently, Sean was CEO, President and Board Member of NAVEX. NAVEX is a Private Equity Owned (BC Partners and Vista Equity) $400m revenue SaaS leader in Governance, Risk and Compliance. NAVEX has 13,000 customers, 70 million end-users, offices in Oregon, North Carolina, England and India. During Sean’s tenure, he led 2 formal sales processes supported by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs as advisors.
Prior to NAVEX, Sean spent 5 years at SAP, a multinational software company. Two of those years were spent as Chief Revenue Officer for the Small & Medium ERP business unit and three years as Executive Vice President of SAP’s Business Network, the world’s largest B2B commerce marketplace with over 5 million trading partners, over $4T in commerce annually and over $600m in annual recurring revenue.
Earlier in his career, Sean spent almost 10 years at Microsoft. He moved from Group Project Marketing Manager to Director of Product Management, and then to Managing Director of Strategic Alliances for Microsoft’s largest partnerships with SAP and Accenture. With SAP, Sean was instrumental in forming a joint product between Microsoft and SAP that generated over $300m in recurring revenue within 3 years. Sean also helped elevate Microsoft’s relationship with Accenture as an early first mover in cloud application services within Azure. Throughout Sean’s time at Microsoft, he was ranked among the top 3% of Microsoft’s high-potential leadership program.
Sean is also a former business operator. After his tenure at Microsoft, he then became CEO and Co-founder of Nuiku, a leading-edge, natural language processing & AI company that brought voice-driven user interfaces to enterprise applications and home automation domains. During Nuiku’s 5-year journey, the company was granted a key NLP processing patent that was sold to Nortek (NASDAQ: NRTK) in 2016.
The Alexander Hutton team is excited to begin working with Sean as an advisor for our software clients, especially in this new age of AI disruption.
Managing Director James Thompson commented,
“Like all of our Managing Directors and Strategic Advisors, Sean has built and sold a business (Nuiku). He is a highly respected software executive with a deep professional network, having worked in roles with some of the most respected companies in software. His latest tour running a Vista/BC Partners-backed NAVEX is a great example of how he can help our client companies and augment their efforts in achieving successful exits. At Alexander Hutton we get in early and help prepare companies for liquidity events and in software, Sean is an ideal addition. As such, Sean will be joining the Advisory board of ImageSource, a current Alexander Hutton Strategic Advisory client.”
On his decision to join Alexander Hutton as a Strategic Advisor, Sean commented,
“Obviously I am a big fan of what the Alexander Hutton team provides to its many clients. Having exited my own company, I wish I had a dedicated team to help me prepare for the optimal outcome. This role enables me to provide guidance, open my network and help software entrepreneurs make the right decisions to drive the highest value for all shareholders.”
About Sean Thompson
Sean received his Master in Business Administration from Harvard University and his Bachelor of Business Administration with high honors from Gonzaga University. Sean was also awarded a CPA in Washington State.
About Alexander Hutton
Led by a team of former business operators and executives who have built and sold companies, Alexander Hutton is a boutique, middle market M&A advisory firm that has completed 229 successful transactions. We offer a unique understanding of what it takes to run a business and an accessible team dedicated to client service. By running a high-touch, competitive transaction process for each of our clients, we are able to help them achieve their ideal outcome.
Connect with the team at Alexander Hutton and talk to us about the future of your company.