Zachary A. Nelson (born 1961) is an American technology executive and investor best known for serving as president and chief executive officer of NetSuite, Inc. prior to its acquisition by Oracle Corp. for $9.3 billion in 2016.
Early Life and Education
Nelson was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1961, one of ten children. He holds a B.S. in biological sciences and an M.A. in anthropology from Stanford University.
Career
Early Career
Nelson held executive positions in marketing, sales, product development, and business strategy at Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and McAfee/Network Associates. Early in his career, he created the "Powered by Motorola" ingredient brand for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor while at Cunningham Communication. At Sun, he drove marketing for the first version of the Solaris operating system. At Oracle, he became the youngest Vice President of Marketing in the company's history at age 31. At McAfee, he helped lead the $1.4 billion acquisition of Network General and later, as CEO of subsidiary myCIO, created the first business-to-business security application services provider.
NetSuite
Nelson served as CEO of NetSuite from 2002, leading the company through its IPO in December 2007. Under his leadership, NetSuite grew from $1 million in annual sales to $1 billion in revenue by 2017, with approximately 24,000 customers. Key product releases included NetSuite OneWorld (2008) and NetSuite SuiteCommerce (2012). He also spearheaded acquisitions of Bronto Software (2015), TribeHR (2014), and OrderMotion, Retail Anywhere, and Venda (2013). NetSuite was acquired by Oracle on November 7, 2016, for $9.3 billion.
Post-NetSuite
Nelson is an active investor in technology, media, entertainment, and hospitality sectors. He was a seed investor in Curbed.com (acquired by Vox Media). He serves on the boards of PagerDuty, Freshworks, and Snyk. He also holds an ownership stake in Dumbarnie Links golf course in Scotland.
Honors
- Named to CRN's 25 Most Influential of 2014 list
- Business Insider's 50 Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech (2013)
- Fortune magazine's 2012 Businessperson of the Year list
- NetSuite named to Forbes Most Innovative Growth Companies (2014) and America's 100 Most Trustworthy Companies (2013)
