AI-native procurement to scale sourcing excellence

From the role of COO at CombineNet, Rich became CEO at CombineNet in 2012. Within this role he maintained responsibility for product strategy and direction, engineering, IT operations, and customer support and service delivery to CombineNet's global clients.

Rich successfully, personally led many of the largest engagements and sourcing events, including the largest global air freight sourcing event ever conducted (43 airlines, $1.5 billion).Rich later became the founder and leader in operations research at US Airways, as well as supporting Oracle as a transportation consultant.With many years of work with CPOs understanding their challenges and needs for leveraging sourcing technology to best advantage, Rich is able to advise Keelvar on how best to serve its customers across many industries.

“What excites me about Keelvar? The team. Period. These are exceptional people--engineers, professional services, sales and marketing. People who understand what procurement professionals and their companies need and are able to deliver it.”

Previously a lecturer in Artificial Intelligence in University College Cork’s Computer Science Department, Alan specialized in Optimization, Game Theory and Algorithmic Mechanism Design. Alan founded Keelvar in September 2012 when he left the University to commercialize advances in AI for procurement teams.
‍
Alan’s specialist knowledge in Optimization, Game Theory and Mechanism Design gives Keelvar an edge in terms of innovating with offerings that exceed competitors’ technical capabilities. This enables Keelvar to define an entirely new category of the solution, putting Keelvar in an ideal position to lead this new category that Keelvar has called Autonomous Sourcing.
‍
Winning the Cork Company of the Year in the small company category in Keelvar’s first year, and moving on to be awarded a Gartner Cool vendor award more recently has highlighted Keelvar’s international progress.
‍
“We are transforming a space that has a huge potential to impact the lives of everyone on the planet. Our customers manage over €90bn in spend annually using our software so we are excited about how Artificial Intelligence can transform how suppliers engage with big business for win-win outcomes.”

‍

David is a technology pioneer with nearly three decades of experience defining and communicating the strategic direction for innovative technology companies. He was the co-founding CEO of Cape Clear Software, which was started in 1999 and raised $50 million in investment capital from leading VC firms through its acquisition by Workday in 2008.At Workday, he served in various technology and product leadership roles, ultimately serving as CTO, while the company grew from its early stages into a leading global cloud ERP provider.

As Keelvar's Board Chair, David helps to direct and advise Keelvar as the company advances its product development and accelerates growth in the market.

"What attracted me to invest in Keelvar and join as Board Chair is primarily the quality and depth of its technology and team. I'm also highly impressed by the customer success they have achieved in applying very advanced techniques to create better, easier ways to optimize and automate strategic and routine sourcing processes."

Philip is Managing Director, NEA UK and is based in London. Prior to NEA, Philip was a Partner at 83North with investments in Keelvar and other companies such as Critizr, Hungry Panda, Paddle, Pelico and SellerX. He is also an angel investor in Exotec.

Previously, Philip was Senior Director of International at SSENSE, a global online luxury fashion retailer. Earlier in his career, Philip was a Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group working out of the Mexico City, New York and Montreal offices, primarily focusing on Tech and Retail.

Philip holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a MSc from Grenoble Ecole de Management.

As Chief Operating Officer, Leigh-Anne drives operational delivery, global strategic alignment and excellence in innovation across R&D and people functions in Keelvar.

Prior to Keelvar, Leigh-Anne has held executive roles in a number of high growth tech companies; including VP of Customer Growth at European fintech TrueLayer; Head of Global Operations for Payments at Whatsapp; Sales Strategy and Operations Lead for Central Europe at Facebook; and Head of Strategic Delivery at Irish fintech Realex Payments, overseeing market expansion in Europe and exit to Global Payments in 2015. Leigh-Anne graduated with BEE in Electrical and Micro-electronic Engineering and MSC in Management Information and Management Accounting from UCC.

Toby Coppel is Co-founder and Partner at Mosaic Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm focused on early stage investing across Europe with $300 million under management.

Toby has been investing and operating in internet startups since 1996. He began his investment career at Allen & Company, before starting his first investment firm. Then he joined Yahoo!’s new management team in 2001 and spent 6 years as Yahoo!’s Chief Strategy Officer, leading over $5 billion of investments and acquisitions including $1 billion into Alibaba that was sold for over $80 billion. Following that, both as an angel and alongside Richard Branson and Virgin, he made investments including Criteo, Pinterest, and Transferwise.

At Mosaic, Toby is thematically focused on blockchain, digital health, future of work, machine intelligence, marketplaces, and next-generation finance, and works closely with Mosaic's portfolio companies Auterion, Blockchain, Centrifuge, habito, Super.ai, Tray.io and Vortexa.

He is a graduate of Oxford University and Harvard University, and a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

As Chief Technology Officer, Barry leads Keelvar's Product and Engineering department, driving the technical vision and execution behind the company's product offerings.

Barry holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from University College Cork, bringing deep expertise in AI to every aspect of how Keelvar builds and delivers software for its customers. A founding team member with over 15 years of experience in software development, Barry has helped shape the technology that powers Keelvar's platform from the ground up.

"Having been part of Keelvar since the early days, it's been incredible to see how far the product and the team have come. My focus now is on scaling the organisation — building strong teams, products, and technology that keep our customers at the centre of everything we do".

Peter Fallon is a Partner at Elephant, a venture capital firm focused on the enterprise software, consumer internet and mobile markets. Peter is based in New York City and has been with the firm since its founding in 2015. Prior to Elephant, Peter was an investor at Highland Capital Partners and, before that, an investment banker focused on software M&A transactions.

Valentina serves as Keelvar’s Chief Growth Officer, where she aligns our commercial trajectory with our identity as an AI-native platform and organization.

Having previously led the Engineering and Product departments as CTO, she now spearheads the market adoption of our next-generation agentic capabilities, ensuring that autonomous innovation remains at the heart of our growth strategy.Based in Spain and holding an MSc in Engineering, Valentina’s career has been defined by a customer-centric mindset developed during her tenure as VP of Customer Success. She is committed to delivering value by helping both new and existing users navigate the shift toward AI-driven automation and negotiation.

As VP of Finance, David is responsible for all finance, accounting and tax matters at Keelvar, whilst also creating a strong foundation to allow for its continued growth. Prior to joining the company, David held a number of financial positions in Trinity Biotech plc and CoreHR, and had significant involvement in the successful sale of the latter to the Access Group in April 2020.

David graduated from University College Cork with a BSc in Accounting and an MBS in Corporate Finance before training as a chartered accountant with KPMG.

“Keelvar’s growth potential and ability to add significant value to its customers through innovative technology is incredibly exciting. One of the biggest strengths of the company is the talented people that work here, who continuously excel in helping Keelvar move forward.”

‍

As VP of Product, Tara is responsible for driving the product strategy, road-mapping, and execution across all Keelvar products. Tara leads Keelvar's product and design teams, ensuring that all product initiatives support Keelvar's ongoing growth.

Tara has over 10 of experience working in product management across start-ups and global enterprises. Prior to joining Keelvar Tara worked as a Senior Director of Product at Thrive Global and previously held roles in Walmart and Dropbox. She a broad range of experience from 0-1 product development, to designing B2B SaaS applications for Fortune 500 customers, and building bidding & pricing features for dynamic marketplaces.

Tara holds a BA in Economics, Politics, and Law from Dublin City University as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Data Analytics from University College Dublin.

Dylan Alperin is the Chief Customer Officer responsible for all our our industry leading customer functions including: Solution Consulting, Business Value Consulting, Professional Services, and Customer Success. Dylan is a 15 year supply chain industry expert with experience working for and advising over 50% of the Gartner Top 5 Supply Chain companies and who has been featured in reporting from CNBC, Bloomberg, Business Insider and others. He currently leads the global professional services team for Keelvar to utilize AI-based Sourcing Optimization and Automation with some of the most prestigious and advanced companies in the world.

Prior to Keelvar, Dylan split his time between roles in industry and consulting where he worked in manufacturing, led supply chain network design projects, and managed global procurement teams responsible for over $1billion in spend.

Toby has spent 20 years leading international sales teams within Strategic Sourcing. His functional areas of expertise include Sales & Business Development, Operations/Cost Efficiency and Procurement Innovation. With Toby’s intricate knowledge of the global market and solutions, Keelvar can truly meet the needs of customers’ sourcing processes.

An experienced, international business professional, Toby has an outstanding track record of growing and developing IT/ Software companies in Europe; he has led 3 US companies from almost 0% European revenue to on average 30%+ of global total revenue.

“What excites me most about Keelvar is the long term vision and strategy to add value to so many companies.  It’s a pleasure working with so many top professionals, great technology and a growing market.”

‍

As Head of People Operations, Michelle is responsible for developing and driving our People strategy, and continuing to make Keelvar a great place to work for everyone.

John Paul graduated from the University of Limerick with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and has worked in a variety of industries as a software development manager and developer.

20 years of working in collaborative software development in web and enterprise level SaaS software, with a number of organizations and wide ranging teams, is reflected in how JP works and how he leads his team. Regularly speaking to and listening to customers and understanding their needs further drives JP’s success in his work.

JP is a member of the founding core team that built Keelvar, and so guided Keelvar to the processing of its first billion in optimized spend in its early start-up days. JP continues to lead the product development team responsible for the regular addition of both new products and features at Keelvar.

"Aside from the technology - Keelvar’s Irish roots and spirit certainly add to Keelvar as a company. 16 of the 20 top global tech companies house operations in Ireland, making it an inspirational place to work, learn and progress every day.”

As Chief Architect, David is responsible for Keelvar's technical strategy, and ensuring the company's product infrastructure continues to evolve to meet the needs of a rapidly scaling business. David graduated from University College Cork with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and is an alumni of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics (previously Cork Constraint Computation Centre), where his postgraduate research topics included the Boolean satisfiability problem, static analysis techniques, solver heuristics, and machine learning models.

David joined the founding team at Keelvar in 2013, working as a Principle Software Engineer during the development of Sourcing Optimiser and Sourcing Automation, before leading the Platform Engineering team as the company continued to grow and scale it's infrastructure.

"Working with exceptional colleagues, solving challenging real world problems together, and learning something new every day are just some of the things that make Keelvar such a special place to be. As we grow, we'll continue to foster an environment that places high value on collaboration, learning, teaching, and the deep understanding of our customers' problems that allows us to build truly innovative products."

‍

As VP of Customer Success, Martin's focus is to help customers transform sourcing and improve procurement at scale. With 13 years experience in procurement, Martin has vast experience in cost reduction programs utilizing optimization across multiple categories and has worked on several projects around digital transformation and implementing new tools and methods for improving the role of procurement.

Martin has a Bachelor in Communication from Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich and an MBA in Innovation and Business Creation from the Technical University of Munich.

‍