Leaf, creator of the LeafPresenterTM, a tablet specifically designed for commerce, today announced key executive hires and its expansion into a new office to fuel further growth of its platform that is redefining the way brick and mortar merchants operate.
On the heels of raising $20 million in October 2013, its first round of institutional funding from Heartland Payment Systems (NYSE:HPY), Leaf is bolstering its team with the addition of Chief Operating Officer, Sarah McCrary; Vice President of Finance, Chad Kelly; and Vice President of Engineering, Dan Smith. In addition, the company moved to a new 15,000 square foot office in the technology hotbed of Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass. to support the rapid expansion of its team and the development and sales of its commerce platform for small business.
Leaf's office move follows a year of exponential growth in which the company expanded its team to more than 50 employees. With plans to double in size in 2014, and dozens of job openings for software engineers, product managers, relationship managers and many other positions, the new office and executive hires will support that growth.
As COO, Sarah McCrary brings a wealth of payment technology experience and will drive channel development, customer experience, product integration and contribute to the development of Leaf's innovative platform. Prior to Leaf, McCrary held a variety of IT project and product development leadership roles at Heartland Payment Systems. She most recently served as Strategic Planning Director, a role in which she collaborated with the company's senior executives and partners on strategic initiatives, and was a co-inventor of Heartland's E3™ end-to-end encryption technology.
"For a two-year old company, Leaf has an impressive track record of growth and customer adoption," said McCrary. "The team's done an excellent job developing its vision and product roadmap toward an open and easy-to-use platform that will become the business owner's best friend, and has really put the company in a unique position to challenge the way business operators think about the tools they use to run their business. It's an exciting time to join the team to help bring the company to the next level."
Chad Kelly, Leaf's new VP of Finance, is a CPA with more than eighteen years of experience in senior level finance and operations positions within the software industry and has played a lead role in two successful sell-side acquisitions. Prior to Leaf, Kelly was Director of Finance and Corporate Controller for Verivo Software, Inc. (formerly Pyxis Mobile, Inc.) where he led the finance, accounting, and sales operations functions. Before that, he was Worldwide Corporate Controller for Virtify, and held finance positions at a number of other technology companies including Gomez, Investment Technology Group and Pegasystems.
Leaf's new VP of Engineering, Dan Smith, is an experienced entrepreneur with a history building large-scale teams and technology across mobile media, consumer marketing, local search and location-based commerce. Prior to joining Leaf, Smith was President and CTO of Locally Co., which focused on building stronger local economies through consumer web and mobile commerce technology. He was CEO of go2.com, a mobile, location-based technology platform, connecting consumers with local events, venues and merchants. Smith holds patents in mobile technology, holds degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and earned his MBA as a Fellow at MIT Sloan.
"Leaf is on a quest to revolutionize the task of running and growing a business for merchants that are frustrated by today's tools and need better options to compete on the main stage with larger players," said Aron Schwarzkopf, CEO and founder of Leaf. "We're well on our way to achieving that vision - which has been validated by our recent growth and success - and now that we're in a bigger, better office, and have added a number of talented individuals to our management team, we'll be able to help small businesses even faster."