Brent Frei
Brent Frei is chief marketing officer and co-founder of Smartsheet.com, an online work management software company. As a trusted provider to Cisco, Google, Groupon, Bayer, HomeAway, DHL, Colliers, and more than 60,000 other organizations in 175 countries, Smartsheet is making significant strides towards becoming the global standard for how people collaborate and manage work.
Notably, Brent was the CEO of Onyx Software Corp., a Bellevue-based customer relationship management (CRM) software company he co-founded in 1994. In his 10 years as Onyx CEO, Brent oversaw the generation of $600 million in direct revenue. During his tenure, Onyx received a consistent top 5 ranking amongst CRM vendors worldwide, and the number one ranking for customer service by independent customer satisfaction surveys. He was recognized and credited for his pioneering work in the field of CRM software and services, including in 2001, at the age of 33, the Smithsonian Institute recognized Brent as a "Pioneer in Technology." Ernst and Young named him a 1997 “Entrepreneur of the Year.” In 2001, he was the sole recipient of Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering Fletcher Award for lifetime achievement---the youngest recipient ever selected for this award.
Brent’s past roles include: executive vice president of Intellectual Ventures, programmer analyst with Microsoft Corporation, and a mechanical engineer at Motorola Corporation. Brent received his bachelor's degree in engineering from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, and his BA in engineering sciences from Dartmouth College.
Recent posts
Microsoft opened its Office suite to play with other cloud services, Box debuted on Wall Street, and Google reinvented the inbox. Not even three months into 2015, and we’ve already had... Read more »
The bigger the company, the tougher it is to innovate. There are two main pillars to this “innovation resistance” that seem common in large, profitable organizations.
1. Fear that innovative products... Read more »
We are increasingly a knowledge-based economy in the U.S., and work can be delivered digitally from anywhere. Take NightHawk Radiology in Coeur d’Alene, ID, for example—they are providing radiologists to any... Read more »
Sometimes the only way to flush out the truth on something is to state an opinion and spark a discussion. Using on-demand workers has been around for over 10 years, but... Read more »
The economy is forcing companies of all sizes to do more with less. The big winners are increasingly the small businesses and specialized sole proprietors. On one hand, they provide the... Read more »
I’m attracted to the market opportunity within large, established markets. These markets already have huge spend, they have established dominant players with an inertia resistant to major change, most of the... Read more »
