Longtime SaaS executive and investment analyst comes to the company from Salesforce

Contentful, the leading content platform for digital business, today announced Carla Cooper as the company’s new CFO.

Cooper joins Contentful from Salesforce, where she was Vice President, Finance & Strategy. She previously served in a similar role at integration and API platform MuleSoft, leading investor relations and planning before the company’s 2017 IPO; Cooper moved to the Salesforce leadership team following its purchase of MuleSoft in 2018.

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Her strong corporate experience includes finance and investor relations roles at Eventbrite as well as Responsys, which she helped lead through an IPO and subsequent acquisition by Oracle. Cooper also has deep roots as an investment analyst, having spent nearly 20 years at Prudential Investment Corporation and Robert. W. Baird & Co. At Baird, she covered technology companies, with leading publications such as The Wall Street Journal seeking her input.

“It’s an exciting time in the growth journey of Contentful, and I am delighted to be a part of this executive leadership team,” said Cooper, who also serves on the advisory board of Gappify, a provider of SaaS solutions for corporate accounting teams. “I tend to look at companies through the lens of an investor, and actually joining a company — devoting your own time and energy to it — is perhaps the biggest investment one can make. I’m making that investment in Contentful because I believe in its mission, and I see the company has immense potential.”

In June 2020, Contentful announced $80 million in Series E funding. The company’s investors include Benchmark, Balderton, General Catalyst, Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and others.

“Contentful is a high-growth, global company. We need sophisticated leaders who can help us continue to scale,” said CEO Steve Sloan. “We are thrilled to have Carla on board. Her knowledge and perspective will be invaluable as we embark on the next leg of our journey.”

A company on the move
Cooper is the latest high-profile leader hired by Sloan, who became CEO of Contentful in 2019. More than a quarter of the company’s technical roles are filled by women — a directive set by the executive leadership team — outpacing much of the tech industry, and Contentful has been adding female voices to its leadership as well.

Last year, the company brought on Margo Smith as Chief Legal Officer and Bridget Perry as Chief Marketing Officer. In addition, Contentful recently named Christine Heckart, CEO of the data-analytics platform Scalyr, to its board. Laurence Trifon was another key 2020 hire, joining as Senior VP of Customer Experience.

Contentful’s diverse workforce of 500 employees (from 72 different countries) is slated to continue to grow quickly over the next year. Founded in Berlin, the company also has hubs in San Francisco and Denver.

Helping companies build digital better, faster
The pandemic accelerated the already-strong trend of companies taking a digital-first approach to connecting with customers — now, for many, digital-first has essentially become digital-only. And when we emerge in the post-COVID era, customers will have even greater expectations for digital experiences.

Contentful helps companies deliver these experiences by giving them the tools for “digital builders” to create compelling and differentiated experiences for their customers. This enables companies to evolve and win in the digital-first era.

The Contentful platform continues to evolve and grow, as evidenced by the introduction of Compose + Launch in mid-March 2021. The new apps allow content authors, editors and planners to deliver and adapt content independently — transforming a labor-intensive, manual process into one that is more automated.

The future of working — for customers and Contentful
Contentful is effective at helping its customers navigate a digital-first world in part because the company takes a digital-first approach to its own business. With no true “headquarters,” only hubs in three cities, even before the pandemic Contentful employees were extremely adept at working as a unified team remotely (and across time zones).

“We were very well-equipped when COVID hit, and now, we are continuing to reimagine the future of working,” said Contentful Senior Vice President, People, Vanessa MacIlwaine. “We understand the value of seeing each other face-to-face, but we also know that when we return to in-person work, it won’t be the same as it was before. We’re prepared for that, and our people are, too. We are always looking for ways to help our customers innovate and do things differently — and we do that for our own organization as well.”

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