Business Intelligence Group Names GoodData CEO Roman Stanek 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year

SAN FRANCISCO – Oct. 8, 2013 – GoodData®, the leader in cloud business intelligence, today announced CEO Roman Stanek as the recipient of the 2013 Business Intelligence Group’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. The honor recognizes Roman’s vision and leadership during his 20-year entrepreneurial career, with a focus on his achievements as founder of GoodData. Since its inception in 2007, the company has experienced unprecedented momentum in the business intelligence market, including $75.5 million in total funding, 275 employees and more than 20,000 active companies using its platform.

“Roman Stanek personifies the word ‘entrepreneur.’ Throughout his career, he has relied on instinct and his forward-looking vision to start and grow several successful companies,” said Dawn Fordyce, managing director for the Business Intelligence Group. “At GoodData, Roman continues his role as entrepreneurial leader, where he has met growing market demand for simple, powerful cloud-based business intelligence apps.”

Roman Stanek has founded five companies, the first of which he started in his native Czechoslovakia almost 20 years ago. After a successful exit, Roman co-founded NetBeans in 1997, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems two years later. He then founded Systinet, the leader in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Governance, which was acquired by Mercury Interactive/Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $105 million.

Roman founded GoodData in 2007 with the vision to change the way the world experiences business intelligence. In April 2009, he raised $7 million in capital led by General Catalyst Partners. Today, the company has raised an additional $68.5 million in venture funding and has more than 20,000 companies actively using GoodData around the world.

“My entrepreneurial journey has been an enjoyable one and that has helped me recognize my strengths and how to apply them to building companies. I have sharpened my ability to see where technology will be in coming years, and to act upon that vision. Most importantly, I have learned to keep moving forward,” said Stanek. “I am so grateful to receive the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award from the Business Intelligence Group. This honor validates my personal philosophy when it comes to work: Always fight to eliminate those barriers that stand in the way of success.”

The Business Intelligence Group’s 2013 BIG Awards for Business program, which attracted a record number of nominations this year, specializes in recognizing “top performing companies” and leaders with a proprietary judging process scored by experienced and recognizable leaders and executives from across the globe. The Business Intelligence Group’s industry awards programs are unique in that they provide organizations with insight into the judging process, the judges and their organizational performances. Carefully vetted judges, who are experts in their own industries, score nominations using a proprietary process that includes measurements across multiple variables.