Akeneo Appoints Enterprise Technology Veteran Steve Harris as Vice President of Sales for North America

Harris joins recent executive hire Mark Holenstein as Akeneo continues its ambitious global expansion fueled by this spring’s $135M Series D funding round. Last month, Akeneo announced the launch of Akeneo Product Cloud, a category-changing product that will redefine the way brands and retailers organize, optimize, and deliver product experiences to consumers and business buyers. The company has grown its footprint in the US with plans to expand its presence in Boston with an upgraded North American headquarters in the first quarter of 2023. It currently has around 60 employees in the Boston area alone, up 27% from last year.

“Akeneo is on the cusp of redefining the way buyers discover and experience products,” said Harris. “I’m thrilled to be joining the organization at a time of mega growth, and look forward to helping drive the adoption of Akeneo’s world-class PIM technology for any business with a product catalog to sell.”

Harris brings with him more than 20 years of sales leadership experience from leading enterprise technology providers. Before joining Akeneo, Harris was Regional Vice President of Sales at Zendesk, where he scaled the organization’s enterprise sales strategy. Under Harris’ leadership, Zendesk eclipsed $1B revenue target in 2022, while accelerating revenue growth at a significant scale with improving operating leverage by doubling the number of large customers ($250K+ ARR) in the Enterprise customer segment. While at Zendesk, their year-over-year growth was consistently over 30% and investor market performance was over 100%, significantly outpacing market peers. 

“Steve has shown time and time again that he has the leadership skills and industry experience to drive development for both high-growth businesses and technology giants,” said Fred de Gombert, Co-Founder and CEO of Akeneo. “As Akeneo continues its aggressive growth plans, Steve’s deep knowledge of commerce businesses’ needs will be instrumental to our team’s success.”

This year has proven to be one of significant milestones and rapid expansion for Akeneo. In addition to their perfectly timed Series D funding, allowing the company to build and announce its category-changing Product Cloud, and its new Boston office in the historical seaport area, it also brought its annual Akeneo Unlock signature PXM event to North America. 

Looking ahead to 2023, Akeneo plans to use its newly established office as a headquarters for its aggressive business and product growth plans. This upward momentum will help Akeneo continue to develop solutions that create product experiences that turn browsers into buyers.