Former Oracle VP Chuck Linn Joins OpenView Labs

OpenView Venture Partners today announced that Chuck Linn, professional services expert, will join the firm as a Senior Advisor.

Chuck will join the firm as a member of OpenView Labs, the strategic and operational consulting group for its portfolio companies. This essential addition will help propel OpenView’s capability for building and supporting professional service initiatives. Chuck will primarily work as a consultant, coaching OpenView’s companies on best practices for professional services. He will also provide advice and support to the investment team when evaluating new companies.

“The OpenView Labs team is happy to welcome Chuck Linn as our Senior Advisor for the Labs team. Chuck’s experience and track record are impressive. I know that Chuck will provide immense value to our portfolio in the area of professional services,” said Brian Zimmerman, Managing Director of OpenView Labs.

Chuck is a results-oriented executive with over 30 years of combined experience spanning technology-enabled business solutions, change and organizational management including P&L management ($10 to $250+ Million), Sales management ($10 to $250+ Million bookings) and practice & initiative leadership. He currently is the President of C.J. Linn Enterprises, where he provides executive-level consulting and assistance to high technology and small businesses. He has acted as an interim COO and Professional Services Leaders for several expansion stage software companies. Prior to C.J. Linn Enterprises, Chuck was Vice President of Enterprise Services, Oracle Practice at Hewlett-Packard Company. Chuck has spent over 10 years of his career working as a Group Vice President for Oracle Corporation. While at Oracle, Chuck re-structured the business to focus on implementation of Oracle applications and re-crafted go to market/sales strategies around six sales channels to build strong License and partner relationships in addition to increasing margins from negative to the high 20s%.

“There are several key objectives of the professional services organizations within an expansion stage software companies – building strong customer references for the product; protecting the product and becoming a software enabler; striving to productize your solutions into the product; and building repeatable engagements. I am looking forward to continuing to work with OpenView portfolio companies and building best practices around services,” said Chuck Linn.

About OpenView Venture Partners
OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion stage venture capital fund with a focus on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, who collectively bring several decades of technology and management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies with quickly ramping up Product, Go-To-Market, and Organizational and Operational functions to best practice levels. The firm was founded in 2006 and has a total capital under management of approximately $240 million. OpenView Venture Partners is based in Boston and invests on a worldwide basis.

About OpenView Labs
OpenView Labs is the strategic and operational consulting arm of OpenView Venture Partners, a global Venture Capital fund that invests in expansion stage technology companies. The Labs was formed to assist the management of OpenView portfolio companies build great companies by gathering, creating, storing, and disseminating best practices across all functional areas. The dedicated full-time teams, Senior Advisors, and network at OpenView Labs spend the bulk of their time working on behalf of the OpenView Venture Partner’s Portfolio companies. This work includes incubating methodologies, testing approaches, performing research projects, developing and implementing forums and workshops, gathering the best network and ideas for building great companies, and coaching the management of the portfolio companies.