Podium, a communication and payments platform for local businesses, announced today that it has hired Loren Padelford in a newly created role as chief operating officer to oversee all aspects of the go-to-market strategy and operations across Podium’s business. In this role, Loren will be responsible for building out and scaling the marketing, sales, business development, customer success and international efforts for Podium.
“Local businesses are the backbone of the global economy and their impact at the local level is felt even more deeply as direct sources of job and wealth creation, as well as community investment and growth. It has never been more clear to us that when local businesses thrive, we all thrive,” said Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium.
“It’s why I’m so thrilled to have someone with Loren’s incredible background and leadership joining Podium in this next phase of our growth. He has built a track record of building and scaling successful teams and businesses while never losing sight of creating value for the customers we get to serve every day.”
Loren comes to Podium having served most recently as the vice president and general manager of revenue at Shopify where he led the organization responsible for bringing Shopify’s services and products to more than 2 million merchants in over 175 countries and generating over $4 billion in annual revenue.
Prior to this role, Loren helped create and lead Shopify Plus, the leading commerce solution for high-growth, high-volume businesses such as Allbirds, Gymshark, Fashion Nova, Staples Canada, Heinz to Home, and thousands more. Prior to Shopify, Loren held senior leadership positions across sales and marketing at software firms in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.
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“I’m very excited to join Podium and get to work with this amazing team helping local businesses win. Economies are built on healthy local business communities, and Podium is helping those businesses create world-class customer experiences every day. Podium has a huge opportunity to have an impact at a global scale, and that is rare,” Loren Padelford, chief operating officer at Podium.
Podium serves more than 100,000 local businesses in the United States, Canada and Australia today. Even as many local businesses struggled to keep their businesses open during the pandemic, Podium saw a 64% increase in the number of local business locations it serves since last year.
The company has also continued to drive new innovation and momentum in 2021, fueled by the debut of a full payments offering with the launch of card readers and a new campaigns marketing solution earlier this year. With the combination of the card reader and SMS payments products, Podium is on pace to process $1 billion dollars in payment transactions for local businesses this year.
Loren’s hire comes on the heels of several key hires that have been made across the organization as the team stages for further growth and expansion, including:
- Steve Holm, vice president of product design
- Jess Weimer, senior vice president of revenue marketing
- Sam Johnson, executive creative director
- Sam Isaacs, vice president of velocity sales
- Jessica Hannes, vice president of support
- Julie Inouye, senior vice president of communication
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