Autotask Names Ex-HubSpot Executive as CFO

Professional services automation (PSA) platform provider Autotask has appointed Elmer Lai as its chief financial officer, effective Jan. 16. Lai brings more than 20 years of financial and accounting management expertise in the technology sector to his role at Autotask.

He previously served as vice president and chief accounting officer at HubSpot, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketing and sales platform company, and also has held senior financial management positions at Sonus Networks (SONS), Airvana (AIRV) and Razorfish/i-Cube (RAZF). All of these are publicly held companies.

Lai said he sees many similarities between HubSpot and Autotask.

“I’ve seen this playbook before, where a company is trying to grow quickly to scale,” he told MSPmentor. “Autotask is trying to grow internationally too, and I’m here to ensure that our resources are managed well and we hit our goals.”

And while Lai helped HubSpot launch a $100 million initial public offering (IPO) last October, he said there are no IPO plans for Autotask.

Lai said that Autotask, which was acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners last summer, is currently focused on finding ways to manage its growth.

Lai is replacing Vince Zumbo, who served as Autotask’s CFO for the past four years (coincidentally, Autotask has tripled in growth over the past four years, according to Lai). Autotask said Zumbo would remain with the company through the end of the month to help facilitate a seamless transition.

Mark Cattini, Autotask’s CEO, said he believes that Lai is a “perfect fit” for what the company is trying to accomplish going forward.

“Elmer will play a key role in helping Autotask to continue to expand our operations around the world as well as evolve our technology offerings to better serve our customers and their clients,” he said in a prepared statement.

Autotask last month officially entered the remote monitoring and management (RMM) space, launching Autotask Endpoint Management (AEM) for managed service providers (MSPs). The platform represented Autotask’s first venture into the RMM market after its acquisition of SaaS-based RMM platform provider CentraStage last September.

Cattini previously said Autotask wants to “rethink what RMM and PSA can be,” which the company plans to showcase in future releases as well.

“You’ll see pretty soon some new integrated releases, and early in the new year, you’ll see some really innovative ways of thinking about what these two technologies can be,” Cattini told MSPmentor last September. “RMM and PSA provide so much value to our customers. Thousands of our customers are already using RMM solutions, so the proof is in the pudding. Now, we’re giving our customers another RMM choice.”

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