Bob Neveu, who founded the expense-management software company Certify with his brother Alan in 2008 and grew it into one of Portland’s most successful tech companies, has stepped down as the company’s CEO. Neveu announced the news on Wednesday on LinkedIn and confirmed it for Maine Startups Insider.
“I’m a serial entrepreneur and I’m looking forward to doing some new projects and wish the team all the best in the years ahead,” he told MSI.
Today, the company announced a corporate restructuring, the main piece of which is the creation of Emburse, a new global company that incorporates Certify and five additional expense-management and related companies. Those companies are: Abacus, Captio, Chrome River, Nexonia, and Tallie—all of which either Certify or its owner, K1 Investments, acquired over the past several years.
Emburse, which employs 750 people worldwide, will maintain its Portland office. Through the various acquisitions, it now provides expense-management software for clients ranging in size, from startups to enterprise clients, and geography. The company has more than 4.5 million users at 14,000 organizations in 120 countries, according to a news release from Certify.
Taking over from Neveu will be Eric Friedrichsen, who has been named as Emburse’s CEO. Friedrichsen is a 30-year veteran of the software industry, including stints at SAP, Concur, Business Objects, and Information Builders. He is based in Denver, where he was most recently the global head of commercial growth markets for Marketo, a software company that Adobe recently acquired for close to $5 billion.
Nord Samuelson, who joined Certify as president in May 2019 and has been working closely with Neveu for the past six months, is now president of Emburse. He lives in Freeport and will lead the Portland office.
“I’m thrilled to be joining a worldwide team of 750 people, working along an exceedingly talented leadership team,” Friedrichsen wrote in a welcome message on Emburse’s website. “I’m particularly excited to work hand-in-hand in this endeavor with our president, Nord Samuelson. He has already done a fantastic job improving our operations and bringing the organizations together as one company with a singular vision to humanize work.”
In his welcome message, Friedrichsen said that existing clients of Certify and the other companies would not be affected by the reorganization.
“We will continue to actively support and will increase our rate of innovation on each of our six core expense solutions which are uniquely tailored for specific industries, company sizes, and geographies. Coming together, we are now also able to share key technologies – such as real-time expenses, sophisticated data capture and extraction, and deep integrations with corporate cards – across the different solutions.”
What’s next for neveu
Neveu said it was a good time to make his departure from Certify, though it’s still “bittersweet.”
“At the end of the day, the business is super healthy,” he said. “We‘ve had a great run. It’s a perfect time to make my exit and move on to my next venture.”
Neveu and his brother Alan founded Certify in 2008 to offer cloud-based expense management software. The company was the first in the space to offer users the ability to capture receipts with the camera on their Blackberries or Smartphones. On the back of that innovation, Neveu and his brother grew the company into one of Portland’s most successful startups. It currently employs 130 people in Portland and had made a string of acquisitions before being acquired itself in the summer of 2017 by K1 Investments for $100 million.
He told Maine Startups Insider that he began working last year with K1 Investments to find a successor.
Certify is not Neveu’s first successful company. He founded, built, and sold Recruiternet in Portland in the early 2000s before co-founding Certify with his brother Alan in 2008. Alan Neveu left Certify last summer and is pursuing new projects, according to Bob.
Bob Neveu said he’s looking forward to new ventures, though wasn’t ready to provide any specifics, preferring the focus to remain on Certify’s employees and the Emburse announcement. In a personal note on his LinkedIn page, he confirmed he wasn’t done with building companies and thanked Certify’s employees for their efforts in building the company into what it is today.
“On a personal note, the ‘entrepreneurial lifestyle’ has been good to me, and I plan to continue building teams and adding value in the technology space,” he wrote. “But today, I want to say ‘thank you’ to all my colleagues at Certify. I am forever grateful for your time, your passion, your commitment and your friendship. I am so proud of our many accomplishments working together these past 12 years. Thank you for allowing me to enjoy the journey with you.”
