Enduring partnerships are built on trust, supported by a foundation of common values. Our shared principles have led to us welcoming Rob Bernshteyn, formerly CEO of Coupa Software and software industry veteran, as a new General Partner at ICONIQ Growth.  We are fortunate to have forged a deep partnership with Rob nearly a decade ago starting when we first invested in Coupa. During those years, we’ve had the opportunity to witness his remarkable leadership and applied experience firsthand, and to work seamlessly together as our alignment of goals and values were evident from day one.

Rob's fourteen-year tenure as CEO and Chairman at Coupa was nothing short of extraordinary. Under his leadership, Coupa emerged as a trailblazer in the software industry. Joining Coupa in its infancy, Rob played a pivotal role in rebuilding and transforming the company from a small startup into a global powerhouse with a nearly billion-dollar recurring revenue run rate, supported by thousands of employees globally. Rob demonstrated exceptional resilience and foresight, steering the company through various industry disruptions and technological advancements. He raised five rounds of private financing and led the company through a successful IPO in 2016. In 2023, Rob effectively navigated Coupa through a successful take-private transaction, further demonstrating his adept stewardship and strategic agility in managing the company's trajectory.

Beyond his impressive track record in scaling a world class company, Rob has driven a host of contributions across the enterprise software industry during his three-decade career.  He has held many key roles in both public and private companies, from executive management to marketing, sales, services, products, and programming. Prior to Coupa, he was a member of SuccessFactors’ executive management team, a leader in HCM cloud software (now part of SAP). He joined SuccessFactors when it was an early startup and directed all aspects of product marketing and management, departing a few years after its successful IPO.

Before SuccessFactors, Rob led product management at Siebel Systems, served as a management consultant at McKinsey, and was a SAP systems implementation engineer at Accenture.

Rob’s expertise is in identifying and then leading high growth technology companies into new market opportunities. Rob is technically astute, deeply product focused, intimately familiar with fundraising, go-to-market, alliances, acquisition integration, implementation, customer retention, finance, and operations. Rob has also been active in the venture space, providing support and mentorship to over two dozen companies at various stages of growth. Finally, not to be dismissed or discounted, Rob is a dedicated baseball card trader and collector.

Rob is also widely regarded for his commitment to fostering empowering work cultures, instilling values of excellence, and an obsessive focus on customer success – principles that are also foundational for us at ICONIQ Growth.  We are thrilled to embark on this new chapter of partnership with Rob.  To celebrate, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rob to delve into his remarkable journey and glean insights from his leadership experience.

How would you best characterize your leadership principles and style?

Above all, I believe that aspirational leadership is grounded in uncompromising authenticity. In order for anyone to truly commit to being led, they must know that their leader will always be completely straight with them. With that foundation in place, the work can begin.  I always felt that the work itself must be grounded in an aspirational vision and focused on measurable results that all parties fully understand and can commit to. The leader must create an environment where everyone is willing to bring their beginner’s mind and where all assumptions could be questioned, in the spirit of jointly achieving set goals. In that environment the leader must lead by example, showcase vulnerability, and be willing to re-earn their stature as the emergent (rather than just the designated) leader of the group.  In my most recent role as CEO, I committed to my own set challenge of working to earn and re-earn my title each day, which I found invigorating.

With these principles in play, the leader then finds themselves in an incredibly fortuitous and gratifying position of being able to support their team in unlocking their greatest potential. This dynamic of supporting one’s team expands to the team’s team and across the organization as it grows.  This approach of servant leadership unlocked incredible value for many of the colleagues I had the pleasure of working with in my career thus far. Jointly, we overcame incredible obstacles and discovered that where there is a will there is a way.  Together, we were able to deliver on hard-fought goals and were then able to proudly celebrate our successes. These shared experiences contributed to many of us building lifelong bonds and friendships.

What do you believe to be the most important elements for defining and developing a company culture?

I believe that a company’s culture must be rooted in a common set of core values. When jointly defined early on and then committed to by all incoming employees, they can serve as the foundational DNA of the organization. In fact, when the core values are used as the foundational elements through which decisions are made in a company, they can support the organization scaling from a few early employees to thousands of global colleagues. In my experience at Coupa, staying grounded in our values helped us navigate through incredible uncertainty including rampant attrition in the early days, challenges in securing funding, diverting meritless lawsuits that could have held us down, coming together during the years of Covid and integrating over a dozen acquisitions, and in ultimately navigating the sale of the company.

One of the key factors that attracted me to ICONIQ Growth as my next career move is the values of the organization.  I found myself strongly drawn to the core values of trust, humility, excellence, integrity, and appreciation for diversity. There is clearly something very special going on at ICONIQ Growth and I’m excited to engage and contribute.

What are some of your key learnings from leading Coupa from the time of the Great Financial Crisis, through a successful IPO, and ultimately a successful take-private years later?

My key learnings center around optimally developing our company, serving our customers, and navigating the competition.

From a company perspective, that meant clearly visualizing the kind of company I wanted to build and then holding myself accountable to its manifestation despite any and all challenges along the way.  That required developing the depth of my own personal courage and having the conviction to gather like-minded colleagues to join me on the journey of company building. With that courage and conviction, no challenge appeared insurmountable, regardless of the changing context. Together we were able to grow and evolve the organization toward its full potential.

From a customer perspective, our energies were spent on ensuring customer success as the top priority. In fact, focusing on customer satisfaction was never good enough for us. Our belief was that customers should never be satisfied. Our job was to make sure that they were measurably successful, and we were more than willing to go as deep and wide as required to ensure that success. We were serving the companies that were paying us, and even if our champions left, we wanted to be sure that we were irreplaceable due to the measurable value we were delivering.

Finally, from a competitive perspective we understood that we were navigating within a complex ecosystem of enterprise software incumbents and upstarts. We focused on developing initial product/market fit and then dynamically evolved our offerings with a focus on clear differentiated value and competitive defensibility. We stayed agile and actively evolved our pricing and positioning, as we thoughtfully expanded into key segments, industries, and markets globally. We stayed humble and built our business on the shoulders of the players that came before us and made sure to offer interoperability to all key systems within our customer’s environments.  In that way, our competitors also became our partners in terms of driving value for our customers.

I feel so incredibly fortunate to have had this full experience with my colleagues.  In fact, we attempted to document some of our learnings and predictions as they were happening. I’m proud to share that many of the predictions in Value-as-a-Service played out, while some of the foundational principles in Smarter Together are unfolding as we speak.

Why did you decide to join ICONIQ Growth as your next move?

My rationale centers around ICONIQ Growth’s company culture and approach, along with my sense for personal fit.

Since meeting you, Matt, and your colleagues at ICONIQ Growth when you invested in Coupa nearly a decade ago, I have always been impressed by the company you were building.  I could feel the entrepreneurial spirit and could sense the grounding that came with in your company values.  Moreover, a mutual respect had developed thereby increasing the likelihood for strong and constructive future camaraderie.

Upon investing in Coupa, your team was consistently trying to help mine by opening doors to new sales opportunities and networks that were otherwise difficult for my team and I to reach.  But, more broadly I could tell that you were deeply committed to being a true partner with the companies that you invest in.  I was delighted to learn that nearly a decade later you’ve taken that commitment to a whole new level with an internal organization committed to this cause.  ICONIQ Growth’s hands-on approach of facilitating high-impact introductions, including customer leads, strategic partnerships, potential investors, and board member candidates must be invaluable to companies.  I found myself further drawn to a company that is committed to offering this type of value and at that level of scale.  I felt that I could contribute here.

Finally, after having explored a host of potential opportunities, joining ICONIQ Growth simply feels like the right next move for me.  I’m also excited about engaging in the world of venture capital at this turbulent, yet highly promising time.  The opportunity for continued innovation and company building lies ahead and I look forward to partnering with inspired entrepreneurs and playing a role in helping them and their teams realize their dreams.