Godard Abel

Godard Abel is the co-founder and CEO of G2. Godard is a proven B2B entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of G2.com, the leading review platform and marketplace for B2B software and services. To scale G2,Godard has raised over $100M in capital from IVP, Accel, Emergence Capital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Hyde Park and Chicago Ventures. Godard is also the lead investor and executive Chairman for Threekit, a powerful 3D product visualization platform that powers immersive eCommerce for leading B2C and B2B brands. Godard previously built cloud CPQ leaders BigMachines (acquired by Oracle for $400M+ in 2013) and Steelbrick (acquired by Salesforce for $360M+ in 2016). Godard was the lead investor and CEO of SteelBrick for which he raised $78M from Emergence, Shasta, IVP and Salesforce Ventures while rapidly scaling the business leading to its acquisition by Salesforce in 2016 for over $360 million in CRM shares after less than 2 years. For his first venture, Godard founded and led BigMachines, a leading SaaS CPQ company, which as CEO grew profitably from scratch to over 300 people leading to its growth recapitalization by Vista and JMI Equity in 2011 and its subsequent acquisition by Oracle in 2013 for over $400M. Godard started building enterprise software startups at Alyanza in 1998 as he helped the founder scale and sell Alyanza to Niku in 1999 after which he became GM for iNiku.com, which was key part of Niku's successful IPO in March 2000 and subsequent sale to CA in 2006. Godard began his career as a McKinsey Consultant in the US and Germany from 1994 to 1997 and also worked as a Summer Associate at Morgan Stanley in London in investment banking in 1998. Godard also earned an MBA from Stanford GSB in 1999. Godard holds a BS and MS in Engineering from MIT where his UROP and MS thesis focused on the development of numerical simulation software for 3D molten metal printing.