Omniture CEO Josh James Discusses Impact of Working With Greg Butterfield of SageCreek Partners

Josh James, CEO of Omniture, introduced Greg Butterfield at the October 2009 Utah Technology Council Hall of Fame as part of Greg’s induction into the Hall of Fame.   Here is the text of the remarks that Josh presented.

UTC Hall of Fame 2009, Greg Butterfield Induction

Introduction by Josh James, Omniture CEO

I’m here to talk about Greg Butterfield. I’ve known Greg for several years. I met him at an iHop, of all places. Greg is one of the few people I’ve known who has built multiple successful technology companies. A lot of people have one great hit. And you’ve got to wonder how much of that was luck, how much of that was due to being at the right place at the right time. But Greg has been successful in many places. He’s done something that’s near and dear to my heart in that he’s run sales at a number of places. As a lot of us who are CEOs and executives at a number of companies know there are a lot of mistakes you can make when you’ve got a lot of sales coming in.

Whether it was WordPerfect or Novell or Legato and Vinca and later on at Altiris, one of the things all of those companies did very well was sell a lot of products, and that’s what Greg was responsible for: sales. That’s where my hat goes off to Greg. Greg has been in so many different places with so many market forces and so many competitors. Yet he really understands the right buttons to push; who are the right people to get on board, and what is the right profile that an organization needs to have to succeed and excel in all of the various marketplaces that he’s been in.

Then in about 2000, Greg decided to jump over and be CEO, and he did that at Altiris. This was a small little company. And this is another thing that I admire about Greg. I’ve invested in a number of start-ups. For the life of me, I can’t decide which ones are going to do well and which ones are not going to do well. I always admire employees who pick really well and are able to understand and decide which ones to be involved in. Where should I go and work, and where should I not go and work? I still have a hard time figuring that out.  Greg has figured it out multiple times. When you figure it out – you realize that a $3M revenue business is not a big business. There are a few things there that are good signs and there are a lot of things there that are broken, as we all know who have been in companies that size. Yet he was able to go there and pick Altiris up and drive it forward. Over the course of about eight years he took Altiris from $3M to about $250M in sales. Absolutely phenomenal. And this was over a period of time that all of us who are in tech will remember was a pretty terrible time, starting in about 2000, which was when Greg joined, and after the next several he years took the company public in 2002. Nobody was going public in 2002. Altiris was one of those companies and Overstock was another one who went public right after Altiris during that time. So here we are in Utah. Nobody is going public and we’ve got these two companies going public in our state. As a lot of you will remember, this was also after we had a lot of the financial markets melting down. Sarbannes-Oxley was just getting started.

Josh James

Greg will be the first to tell you that his family supported him through this, everyone at Altiris supported him, and they were able to fight through that and build a phenomenal company. I think that was because Greg had seen the story many times before. He’d seen the movie. The more you think about it and the more you do it, the slower the pictures are starting to look. I was amazed at how fast they were growing. And I was amazed by the fact he was able to take that company, and was able to run that company, and was one of the very few executives who was successful during that time.

For myself, that was how I got to know Greg. We were running one of those little $3M companies, and I called Greg up one day. I think this is actually in conjunction with our theme for today, and our theme is leadership. I called him up and said “Greg, I’m Josh James, you don’t know who I am, but I’d like to learn some of the things you’re doing over there.” He was more than willing to sit down with us, learn about what we were doing, and he was willing to share his experiences. He didn’t ask for a thing. And his suggestions made a big difference. I asked him where he wanted to meet us. I’m not a big breakfast guy, but he suggested breakfast, and I said, “Okay, I’ll get up.” And he said “How about iHop?” And I said, “Great, I love iHop, chocolate chip pancakes, let’s do it.”

We met at iHop and we had a great time and we talked a lot about our business. He gave us some pointers. And he said “Anybody you want to talk to over at Altiris, let me know. You want your marketers to talk to my marketers, let me know. If you’d like your head of sales to talk to my head of sales, let us know and I’ll facilitate all of that.” And he did. In one instance we sent our head of marketing down to one of the trade shows they were running and he likes to give me a bad time about it because I made him pay to come to my trade shows, but he let us in there for free. But his marketers gave our marketers some tips on things we didn’t know at the time. I always really appreciated that. I think it’s the sign of a great leader. They’re not trying to hoard everything for themselves; they’re trying to help out the state. He also helped out the state by helping to run UTC, with all due credit to Rich and his team. Greg helped out UTC by serving as Chairman for a couple of years.

And as you know it’s very difficult to carve out time from your business, let alone from your family, and he did that for a few years to help out our technology and life sciences industries through UTC. So I think that’s another great example of leadership.

After I met with Greg and met with him a few more times over breakfast, I asked him if he would serve on our board and I was very fortunate that he was willing to join our board. As I mentioned, his sales function was always something that I’d always admired. At Omniture one of our secrets was being good at sales. I felt really fortunate that there was a CEO in our state who had gone public recently but had been public in the Sarbannes-Oxley environment, and there’d only been a handful of people in the country who’d done that. And he happened to be just a few minutes down the road. On top of that, Greg’s a real down to earth guy. I’d see him at iHop, but the other place was Del Taco. If you go to Del Taco, the chances are you’ve probably seen Greg.

When Greg joined our board he did all the things we were asking. He told us all of the things we were doing wrong, and he was more than happy to point out the things he thought we could improve on and he was always emphasizing sales, sales, sales. He said “Work on your channel partners,” and we had no channel at the time. So I always appreciated the service he was providing us during that time.

One of the things I remember during the time Greg was selling Altiris to Symantec was that Symantec saw and recognized the great leadership Greg provided and they offered him some big jobs. He evaluated those jobs, and I think another sign of a great leader is the ability to prioritize. There are always a million things pulling you. Greg prioritized, and he said, “You know what? Right now I need to spend more time with my family.” I think the kind of positions being offered by Symantec would have been very alluring to a lot of people. To be able to say “I need to take care of my family right now”—I’ve always respected that.

One last thing – I was impressed watching Greg go through that transaction with Symantec and seeing him make sure that his people were taken care of. He made sure the executives were getting what they needed and wanted to get paid. Greg was always making sure that his people were getting taken care of. That was something he spent a lot of time on and negotiated very well on behalf of his people. That was something that I admired and respected and was something I tried to stay true to as well.

Greg has been a great leader for this state. He’s one of the few people who has been able to do this time and time again. And he’s been able to show us how to prioritize not just business, but how to prioritize business with life and family. So here’s to you, Greg Butterfield, and congratulations.