15 movers and shakers driving a new breed of startups in the enterprise tech IPO rush

Kevin Thompson SolarWinds NYSE

Enterprise tech startups have been on a 12-month IPO joyride.

From MongoDB to Dropbox to Eventbrite, more than 20 startups in the enterprise tech industry have sold shares to the public and made splashy Wall Street debuts this past year.

Unlike consumer internet companies whose products are usually free and designed for the masses, these enterprise startups create products and service that are sold to other businesses. It's a massive $3.7 trillion worldwide market, and yet these startups don't always enjoy the mainstream name recognition of their consumer counterparts.

To help you familiarize yourself with this new crop of public tech companies, Business Insider has rounded up some of the key players driving the growth and the success behind the scenes.

The names may not be as familiar as Mark Zuckerberg, and there may not be movies about them, but these 15 executives are the stars you need to know about to really understand where the red-hot Enterprise tech market is going.

Eliot Horowitz, CTO and Co-Founder of MongoDB

Eliot Horowitz is one of the founders of MongoDB, along with Kevin P. Ryan and Dwight Merriman.

MongoDB, an open-source database company based in New York, went public in October 2017. MongoDB had raised $256 million before going public with a valuation of $1.6 billion. Since then, the company's market cap has swelled to $3.6 billion under Ittycheria. Today, MongoDB has over 30 million downloads and over 1,000 technology and service partners.

Horowitz’s programming career began at age four when he wanted to create a chess-playing AI. And at age nine, he started programming for his mother’s medical practice.

Starting in 2007, Horowitz wrote the core codebase for the popular open-source database today. Today, as CTO he oversees the engineering and product teams. Recently, he led MongoDB in introducing new licensing to prevent major cloud companies from selling its software without open-sourcing it.

Before MongoDB, Horowitz also co-founded an online retail search engine called ShopWiki, which he built and later sold in 2010. Horowitz had also worked as a software developer in DoubleClick.

In 2006, Horowitz was listed in BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under Age 25, and in 2015, he was listed in Business Insider’s “Under 35 and Crushing It” list. Just last year, he was also named to Crain's NY Business 40 Under 40 Class list.

Sameer Dholakia, CEO of SendGrid

Sameer Dholakia is accustomed to using both hands to accomplish a variety of jobs — and not just because he's ambidextrous.

The executive has served in numerous roles in the tech industry, from sales to product management.

Since Dholakia took the helm as SendGrid’s CEO in 2014, the company's revenue has quadrupled, and he led the company to IPO on Nov. 15, 2017. Twilio announced it would acquire SendGrid in a $2 billion deal.

Dholakia has previously served as CEO at VMLogix, which was acquired by Citrix. And he worked in sales, business development and product management for Trilogy, where he helped the startup grow to a $300 million business.

And his ambidexterity has given him another special skill: he can write with his left hand and throw a fastball with his right.

Lynne Laube, COO and Co-Founder of Cardlytics

Lynne Laube is one of the co-founders of Cardlytics, along with Scott Grimes and Hans Theisen. On Feb. 8, Laube took Cardlytics public, and since 2008, she has secured over $200 million in capital from investors. At the time, this Atlanta-based company had a valuation of $273 million.

Cardlytics partners with more than 1,500 financial institutions to run banking rewards programs for customers. It also uses insights on how consumers spend money to help marketers target likely buyers and measure the impact of marketing campaigns.

Laube wanted to build a company where people love coming to work everyday. For example, Cardlytics encourages and funds employees to start their own extracurricular groups, such as the rock band The Redeemers, a beer brewing club and a mentorship organization

In 2016, she was named one of the top 10 venture-backed female founders by Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur 360. She has also been a finalist for the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award twice.

Within Cardlytics, she launched Women of Cardlytics to provide career mentorship and support for women. Before founding Cardlytics, she worked at Capital One and Bank One.

Outside of work, Laube loves to cook, and she swears by her on-demand workouts.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider