Shaffer brings to Volition a strong track record working with founders and successfully scaling enterprise B2B SaaS companies to acquisition.
Volition Capital announced today that Steve Shaffer joined its leading technology and consumer growth equity firm as its first Operating Partner. Shaffer has more than 20 years of chief executive, finance, and operations experience in the B2B technology and software industry, where he successfully led and scaled several businesses to exit.
As an operating partner, Shaffer will leverage his direct decades-long business experience and history-building relationships with founders to advise on long-term strategy, value creation, and financial and operational improvements for the firm’s existing and future portfolio companies.
Most recently, Shaffer played a key executive role as the CRO and CFO at the B2B commerce automation platform TradeCentric by working with founders through a successful recap transaction. Previously, he served as CEO of Insite Software, a provider of a B2B e-commerce platform for manufacturers and distributors. Insite is a former Volition Capital portfolio company and as CEO, Shaffer led and scaled the business to an acquisition by Episerver in 2019.
“Steve’s incredibly diverse business experience will be a major asset to Volition and our portfolio companies,” said Managing Partner Roger Hurwitz. “As a former CEO and CFO, he brings a strong perspective to helping growth-stage companies strengthen their financials. From his tenure as head of Insite’s GTM team, Steve also brings deep experience in developing targeted and repeatable sales models. Most importantly, he understands the DNA and mindset of founders, which is key to our investment thesis and approach.”
In addition to his experience at TradeCentric and Insite, Shaffer served as COO & CFO for Jobs2web, then General Manager for the business unit after the company was acquired by SuccessFactors (SAP). He managed efforts across sales, marketing, product, and operations teams during integration into the HCM practice of SuccessFactors and provided leadership and strategy for other SAP Cloud solutions.
“I’m fortunate to have been involved with so many successful tech companies throughout my career. I wanted to take advantage of my hands-on experience and operator mindset to work with a portfolio of multiple innovative companies at once,” said Steve Shaffer. “Joining Volition as a growth-equity firm that invests in similar-stage companies that I’ve worked with made sense, and I’m inspired by the opportunity. Having partnered with Volition as the investor in Insite during my time there as CEO, I know this is a tremendously committed team. Coming aboard, I’m motivated to learn and contribute to the hard and important work of helping founders efficiently scale great tech businesses.”
About Volition Capital
Volition Capital is a Boston-based growth equity firm that principally invests in high-growth, founder-owned companies across the software, Internet, and consumer sectors. Founded in 2010, Volition has over $1.7 billion in assets under management and has invested in and/or provided sub-advisory advice to more than 40 companies in the United States and Canada. The firm selectively partners with founders to help them achieve their fullest aspirations for their businesses. For more information, visit http://www.volitioncapital.com or follow us on Twitter @volitioncapital.
