The senior appointments follow a landmark year in which Paddle launched Billing, the complete billing solution for SaaS; conducted its inaugural AI Launchpad, a 6-week programme to help ambitious AI founders accelerate growth; and celebrated the milestone of $1 billion in annual run rate in the payments that it manages for its growing customer base.

Incoming CPO Stuart Bailey is an experienced product leader in the fintech sector, adept at building and growing high-performing product teams in startups, scale-ups and large corporations. Stuart was previously CPO at Silverbird, a digital payments platform for international trade, and Currencycloud, the cloud-based platform for B2B cross-border payments that was sold to Visa in 2021. Stuart will be responsible for Paddle’s strategic product direction, ensuring Paddle continues to create products that deliver value to the thousands of software sellers using its platform.

New CFO Philip Watson brings over 12 years of experience in the enterprise software sector. Prior to Paddle, Philip worked at the private equity firm Hg Capital, where he was the Portfolio Finance & Operations Director, leading the Portfolio Finance team in operationalizing value creation for Hg’s portfolio companies. Before his time in private equity, Philip spent over 7 years at ZoomInfo, where he founded the FP&A, sales commissions, and financial technology teams and helped to grow the business to over $1.2b ARR. As CFO of Paddle, Philip will be responsible for managing the financial functions of the company as it moves into the next stages of its growth journey.

Paddle has also appointed Coline Marchal as VP of People. Coline was previously VP of People at European insure-tech Insify and Senior Director of HR, EMEA, at cloud-based reporting compliance platform Workiva. Coline brings nearly 15 years of experience in the HR function to the role, and thrives in fast-paced scale-up environments. She has been integral in the ground-up building of HR teams and speciality HR projects spanning mergers & acquisitions and company transformations. She will be responsible for expanding Paddle’s people operations and strategy in line with Paddle’s digital-first approach that empowers Paddle team members to work from anywhere, with trust and autonomy.

Jimmy Fitzgerald, CEO of Paddle, said: “Although 2023 was a challenging year for software in many ways, it was an incredibly positive one for Paddle. In August we launched one of the most significant products in our history with Paddle Billing, which paves the way for us helping tens of thousands of new software companies over the next decade. We also launched our inaugural “AI Launchpad” - a 6-week program designed to accelerate growth for SaaS founders - and saw customer wins in the games sector, a new market where we see big opportunities to support global games developers.

“We’re excited to build on this in 2024 and to continue helping our thousands of fast-growing software customers grow and thrive. I'm a strong believer in the idea that people are a fundamental part of a company’s success, and that selecting a strong team is critical. I’m therefore delighted to bring onboard Stuart as CPO and Philip as CFO with their strong track records helping ambitious businesses such as ours master their product and financial functions, as well as Coline, who will be integral in helping us to continue scaling our people and talent management strategy.”

Paddle is used by over 3,500 software companies in more than 200 markets worldwide to manage the likes of their checkout, payments, subscriptions and taxes. These new hires follow Jimmy Fitzgerald transitioning from Chief Operating Officer to CEO, former CEO and co-founder Christian Owens taking on a new role as Paddle’s Executive Chairman, and Rob Fletcher moving from Chief Customer Officer to President and Chief Operating Officer.