Vancouver-based Unbounce has added three seasoned executives and tech leaders to its team in marketing, product, and engineering roles.
Pete Housley, Darby Sieben, and Saba El-Hilo are joining Unbounce as chief marketing officer (CMO), chief product officer (CPO), and VP of engineering, respectively. According to Unbounce, these additions are designed to support the company’s “next phase of growth” after it has seen increased adoption of its conversion intelligence tools in recent months.
“Unbounce is at a critical stage in our evolution as a company.”
-Felicia Bochicchio, Unbounce
Housley brings over 20 years of C-Suite level experience at a variety of consumer brands to Unbounce, including Indochino, Milestones, Lavalife, and Hudson’s Bay. Meanwhile, Sieben comes to Unbounce after spending the last four years at RBC Ventures and Toronto-based, RBC-powered cashback application Ampli, while El-Hilo most recently worked as head of data platform at Washington location data firm Mapbox.
“These new leaders intimately understand how to build successful SaaS businesses and teams,” said Unbounce CEO Felicia Bochicchio. “Their combined talent and proven experience scaling marketing, partnerships, [mergers and acquisitions], and engineering at key stages of company growth, will work to cement Unbounce as the leading conversion intelligence platform for marketers.”
Founded in 2009, Unbounce aims to help companies save time and accelerate growth with its conversion intelligence platform. Backed by Denver-based private equity firm Crest Rock Partners, which acquired a controlling stake in Unbounce as part of the latter’s first, $52 million financing in mid-2020, Unbounce uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help marketers boost their sales and conversions.
With its 250-person team, Unbounce currently serves over 140,000 businesses across more than 120 countries—up from the more than 100,000 customers in 100-plus countries Unbounce catered to at the beginning of this year. According to Unbounce, demand for the startup’s tools has been on the rise: Smart Copy, Unbounce’s AI-powered copy creation tool, has seen its user base grow 30 percent since the beginning of this year.
RELATED: Unbounce acquires US-based marketing tech startup LeadsRx
“Unbounce is at a critical stage in our evolution as a company,” Bochicchio told BetaKit. “For the past two years, our conversion intelligence strategy has been focused on helping more marketers leverage the power of AI/ML to accelerate their conversions and business growth. Today, we’re happy to be delivering on that vision through both rapid product innovation and our acquisitions … [and] we’re excited to bring on executives with a track record of success to help us scale and accelerate our growth.”
In early 2022, Unbounce acquired United States-based LeadsRx to bring marketing analytics tech to its SMB customers. The deal marked the firm’s third acquisition to date.
These three hires are the latest in a series of leadership team changes Unbounce has made over the past year. Former Unbounce CRO Felicia Bochicchio took over as CEO in October 2021, replacing co-founder and longtime CEO Rick Perreault, who moved to executive chair to focus on staying healthy after a battle with cancer.
RELATED: Felicia Bochicchio named CEO of Unbounce; Rick Perreault becomes board chair
Unbounce’s latest leadership hires bring the size of the company’s C-Suite to six, and follow its addition of Greg Dos Santos as CFO last July and Lynn Ferrari as VP of culture and people in January.
After spending the last couple of years “with an intense focus” on research and development, Bochicchio said Unbounce is now ready to scale its media and marketing efforts. Housley will play an important role on this front, serving in the newly-created position of CMO.
“I have been a big fan and a customer of Unbounce for the last seven years and always saw Unbounce as a market leader and a ‘darling,’ in the martech space,” Housley told BetaKit, adding that he was drawn to the company’s conversion intelligence strategy and intellectual property. “I have been part of some big brand transformations at both Indochino and Lavalife and Unbounce is a brand everyone should want to be a part of.”
Sieben, who has been appointed to the newly created role of CPO, will lead Unbounce’s product vision, strategy, and roadmap. He brings over 25 years of experience in product development and innovation, M&A, and partnerships at Yellow Pages, Meditative, and RBC Ventures, and will help Unbounce tackle growth opportunities that include a reseller program and future acquisitions.
Meanwhile, El-Hilo is set to head up Unbounce’s engineering and data teams. At Mapbox, she built and led a team responsible for producing data products from a user base of over 500 million monthly active users. Prior to that, El-Hilo spent time at MDA, Etsy, and Hootsuite, among other companies. El-Hilo replaces Joanne Bolt, who previously served as Unbounce’s VP of engineering operations, and has now become the startup’s VP of product operations.
Bochicchio described 2022 as a pivotal year for Unbounce as the startup continues to build out a new category of marketing. Part of the company’s focus is on building AI-powered solutions accessible to small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Feature image of Darby Sieben and Saba El-Hilo, courtesy Unbounce.
