I’m excited to announce that John Torrey is joining Madrona as a Venture Partner. I’ve worked with John closely over many years. Hiring him away from a Wall Street firm to come help build Concur was one of the best hiring decisions we made at Concur. John is a builder of businesses and he will be a great resource to Madrona companies, whether that is at the company creation phase or growth stage, in the PNW, Silicon Valley, or scaling technology centers in Utah or Texas.
Not many people can say they joined a company, ran corporate development and were then instrumental in their company being acquired, at the highest multiples in enterprise software. John did that twice, at Concur and at Qualtrics. To make it more interesting, both companies were acquired by SAP, where he also made a significant contribution driving corporate strategy for its cloud business group.
Most recently John was at Qualtrics where he helped the company define and create an ecosystem of services, consulting, and technology partners for the Experience Management category, launch the Qualtrics Developer Platform, execute acquisitions in the SMB and industry thought leadership domains, and negotiate the largest sale of a private software company in history.
Before Qualtrics, John was Chief Corporate Development Officer at SAP SE, where he was globally responsible for M&A and strategic business development. He was also the Chief Strategy Officer of the Business Network & Applications group, which housed several of the company’s public cloud acquisitions including Concur, Ariba, and Fieldglass. John joined SAP when they acquired Concur.
At Concur, John was EVP of Corporate Strategy, a broad role focused on extending the footprint of Concur across multiple dimensions. John founded and managed the Concur Perfect Trip Fund, where we invested in businesses in and around the travel industry. He also helped extend the company’s operations in India, Brazil, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and instigated numerous acquisitions, including TripIt and the small business expense management portfolio of ADP. The work he did building the company helped lead to the acqusition of Concur to SAP for what was, at over $8 billion, the largest cloud software acquisition to date.
John brings experience and relationships across the technology industry – and across geographies, having worked in Silicon Valley, Utah, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest. He has served on numerous corporate boards and currently serves on the Board of Regents of Santa Clara University, where he was President of the Alumni Association in 2017-18 and a Mentor in the Global Social Benefit Institute at the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship in 2018. John also serves as a Fellow at Sapphire Ventures. He graduated cum laude from the Honors Program at Santa Clara University, where he majored in Accounting, minored in Music, and played for the rugby team.
He and his wife, Juliette, live in Fort Worth, Texas. He’s an avid runner and sports fan!
Related Insights
