Software exec Kevin Mosher turns uncertainty into opportunity

By Robin Shepherd, Special to the Town Crier

Silicon Valley could use more savvy executives like Kevin Mosher to wake it from its economic slumber. Mosher stands out as a man who has built a career and raised a family by understanding and embracing uncertainty.

In business, as in life, uncertainty and expectations about the future shape our choices. To be successful, we try to reduce our risks and weigh the benefits and costs of our decisions before we make them. For many people, this is easier said than done — for Mosher, it’s an adventure.

Mosher, 46, a software executive and Los Altos Hills resident, started life as the son of a Navy submarine services commander. He took advantage of New England winters to master skiing and became a ski instructor in his teens. Always eager to try something new, Mosher also worked on a farm, in a fish market and as a baker during his high school years. He put himself through college by spending grueling summers working on oil rigs in the Texas desert.

“Digging 8,000-foot holes seven days a week in 100-degree heat sent most guys packing after their first day,” Mosher said. “For me, it was an adventure that also financed my four years at the University of Connecticut.”

Mosher’s keen interest in supply and demand theory earned him a bachelor’s degree in economics, a spot on the dean’s list and a desire to succeed in business.

After college, Mosher ignored advice from family and friends and took computer training. He began working as a software programmer in the late 1970s. Realizing his enthusiasm lay more in the business of software than in the coding of it, Mosher showed a talent for sales at Applied Data Research, Oracle and Interleaf. He became one of the software industry’s most successful executives, enjoyed a runaway success at Portal Software, and then opted for another startup as president and chief operating officer of the San Francisco-based enterprise software maker Rapt Inc.

“Joining Oracle in 1985 was a bellwether decision,” Mosher said. “Working there was like earning an MBA from Harvard. You had to be intensely focused and committed to succeed.” Mosher brought in Hartford Insurance, Oracle’s first commercial account, in his early days helping to build the company’s Northeastern sales region.

At Interleaf, Mosher learned that understanding the customer was the real key to the software business. “I tried to convince Interleaf executives that while they had excellent authoring software technology, it wasn’t addressing the market shift toward desktop computing. They didn’t adapt to customer needs quickly enough and Microsoft moved in to fill the void,” Mosher said.

In 1997, Mosher received a call from his longtime colleague and friend Pete Cittadini, who’d brought Mosher in to ADR and Oracle. Cittadini encouraged Mosher to call venture capitalist Arthur Patterson, founder and general partner of Accel Partners. Patterson was looking for a sales leader for the Internet billing software-maker Portal, one of his firm’s portfolio companies.

“As a businessman, Kevin is tough, fair, always in the know,” said Cittadini, now CEO of Actuate in South San Francisco. “As a leader he’s a person others look up to, especially the younger people who are like sponges for knowledge and have ambition. I knew Kevin had the vision, strategic thinking and caring leadership necessary to lead a company through even the tough times.”

Mosher took Cittadini’s advice, flew out to California and met with Patterson as well as other board members and Portal executives. At that time, Portal had only a handful of customers and some product challenges to fix, so Mosher sought out Patterson with more questions.

“Arthur told me every successful company must have a good product, a good management team, and a good market to serve,” Mosher said. He decided Portal had the ingredients for success, and he fell in love with the Bay Area, so he joined the company.

According to Patterson, “Kevin is forceful, intelligent, and he can sell a lot of software. Under his sales leadership, Portal’s annual sales reached $300 million after only three years. Not many companies in the enterprise software area have come close to this accomplishment.”

Another Portal board member, BEA Systems founder Bill Coleman, said, “Kevin under-promised, over-delivered and constantly surprised us with partnerships with world leaders such as Microsoft, Deutsche Bank and AOL. On a personal level, I liked his openness to coaching, which is a great asset for a senior executive.”

As Portal’s senior vice president of worldwide sales, Mosher relished the new challenge to build an international sales organization and guide Portal’s global sales growth. “Kevin and I joined Portal when it had a somewhat uncertain future. He recruited good people, built a strong team, and developed a fresh strategy,” said former Portal executive Steve Sommer, now CEO of Airprism in Redwood Shores. “Kevin had a great gut feel for reading people and situations with extreme accuracy. He could adjust the sales process to accommodate wide-ranging cultural differences from Europe to Asia and Australia. He’s demanding on the job but makes the effort to bond with colleagues outside of work.”

“One year, Portal’s executive sales meeting coincided with Oktoberfest in Munich,” recalled Ian Perry, a former Portal colleague. “We found ourselves in a huge square with thousands of Germans dressed in lederhosen and dirndls, swaying to the music of an oompah band. In the midst of the revelry we looked up to see Kevin center stage, conducting the band through a traditional German song. He got a standing ovation from the crowd and endeared himself with the locals.”

A few months after joining Portal, Mosher moved his wife, Joan, and their children, Lauren and Tyler, out to California. Unsure where to look for a home, he consulted an old friend familiar with the Bay Area who said, “You’ve got to look in Los Altos. It’s a kid-friendly town, and they even have a pet parade! Joan will love it.”

Many entrepreneurs opt for early retirement after an IPO as successful as that of Portal. Mosher, however, was looking for a new adventure. “It was the California startup dream come true,” Mosher said. “Portal had a tremendous run in my three years there, culminating in a $12 billion valuation at the height of the Internet bubble. I could have retired, but it’s not about the money, it’s about building something lasting. I always want to achieve more.”

After considering several startup opportunities, Mosher took the helm at Rapt Inc. The move brought him full circle and demonstrated once again that he could turn uncertainty into opportunity. Rapt provides analytics software that helps handle uncertainty in the business environment, whether it’s on the supply side or the demand side. Rapt’s products may play a particularly important role in today’s tough economy, in which customers have already cut costs wherever they can but still need to improve the bottom line in order to grow.

“We’re helping companies look at their traditional business activity and make smarter pricing decisions for better business performance and profitability,” Mosher said. “It’s an educational challenge because it requires a new way of looking at risk reduction and the true costs and benefits of pricing decisions before you make them.”

Other companies may be vying for attention in Rapt’s market space, yet, according to Patterson, “Rapt has great technology, very proprietary, which creates a barrier to competition, and tremendous economic value to its customers like Hewlett-Packard and Sun.” Divisions of Hewlett-Packard and Sun have increased revenue by millions of dollars through better pricing, materials spending and inventory decisions with the help of Rapt software.

“Rapt’s co-founders, Tom Chavez and Paul Dagum, are very smart. Tom studied at Harvard and earned his doctorate at Stanford, and Paul was awarded a doctorate from the University of Toronto and a medical degree from Stanford,” Mosher said. “What they’ve built is not just software; there is high-grade mathematics inside that is extremely difficult to develop. Our customers are very smart too, and they’ve learned there’s more to pricing strategies than spreadsheets.”

Friends and colleagues say Mosher not only deals with complex math but is “a complex guy.” As Cittadini puts it, “Kevin has a competitive nature at work and in life. If we play tennis, I’m looking for a good workout. He wants to win the game. Then I laugh to see him gardening and cooking for his family. He’s just not worried about the high-power, high-tech image.”

Even though Mosher has chosen another startup, with the added responsibilities of a president and chief operating officer, he remains “extremely devoted to his family,” according to his wife. “He has unbelievable drive, yet he’s fun-loving, very optimistic and happy with his life.

“Kevin finds time to have dinner with the kids and help them with homework whenever possible,” Joan said. “He constantly reminds them about the value of making sacrifices throughout life in order to achieve one’s true goals, and tells them life isn’t about the home runs — it’s about trying new things, making the right decisions and staying the course.”