San Diego's ServiceNow Driving Hard as Revenue Soars; Expands to Silicon Valley

ServiceNow co-founder Fred Luddy told me in January that the San Diego-based provider of Web-based IT management services was on a fast-growth track, and he saw a “clear path” to $1 billion in annual revenue. I wouldn’t say it looked clear to me at the time, nevertheless the company’s trajectory is becoming more apparent today.

ServiceNow, which has been on a hiring binge, says it is opening a new office in San Jose—calling it the company’s “long overdue debut” in Silicon Valley—and the possibility to tap into the Bay Area’s deep bench in cloud computing.

Founded in 2003 ServiceNow went cash flow positive in 2007 on annual revenue of $13 million. Luddy told me the company had 275 employees in January. The headcount was 310 three months later, when ServiceNow named former Data Domain CEO Frank Slootman to head the company.

The company as well named Moti Eliav as vice president of platform development. He will be based in the new San Jose office, and plans to triple the size of ServiceNow’s platform development team in the straightway year. Slootman describes the new San Jose office as “a kind of mini-hub to San Diego,” which will include Eliav’s team, sales, and operations staffers. By the end of the year, he expects ServiceNow will employ more than 50 people in San Jose.

Slootman, now in his fourth month as ServiceNow’s CEO, tells me that a fast-growth business can’t grow piecemeal. Sounding a bit like Bobby Allison at Daytona, Slootman recommended the company hadn’t “stepped on …Straightway Page »

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