Former Venmo CEO and Former Twilio CMO join to scale Attentive into next phase of growth

Attentive, the conversational commerce platform, today announced two additions to the executive team. E-commerce expert Amit Jhawar joins as President, and B2B marketing veteran Sara Varni joins as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer.

“Sara and Amit join us at a critical time in Attentive’s journey as the company enters into our next growth stage to power the adoption of conversational commerce,” said Brian Long, CEO and co-founder at Attentive. “They are both much-admired leaders with proven track records of building high-performing teams and global brands, making them natural additions to the leadership team. I’m thrilled Amit will run the backbone of the company to ensure streamlined operations and Sara will define the next era of marketing for brands.”

Jhawar's experience in leading hyper growth businesses will help streamline operations and increase collaboration across teams. As president, he will oversee the Legal and People teams, in addition to the Strategy and Operations, Program Management, Privy, and M&A teams.

Jhawar joins Attentive most recently from Accel, where he worked as a Venture Partner. Prior to Accel, he was CEO of the peer-to-peer payment app, Venmo, where he presided over its exponential revenue and user growth. He took the top job at Venmo after serving as the COO and CFO of payments processor, Braintree, for six years. Amit joined Braintree in their first 30 employees and led the acquisition of Venmo—and eventual sale of both companies to PayPal. Amit has deep experience in private equity and consulting with prior roles at KKR, Bain Capital, and McKinsey.

Varni’s expertise in scaling marketing teams in a fast-growth environment and driving demand for expanding markets and product lines will support Attentive’s vision to reinvent business-to-consumer communication and commerce in the mobile age. As CMO, Varni will lead Strategic Global Marketing and Communications, including brand marketing, growth and performance, partnership marketing, and product marketing to further build the Attentive brand and drive the company’s international expansion.

Varni comes from nearly 15 years in the marketing and e-commerce industry, most recently from Twilio, where she spent the last four years as CMO, responsible for growing the community of developers and bringing the company into the enterprise market. Previously, she led go-to-market strategy and positioning at Salesforce for over 10 years in various roles, including SVP of Product Marketing for its leading sales platform, Sales Cloud.

About Attentive

Attentive® is a conversational commerce platform, driving billions of dollars in revenue for businesses by creating thoughtful mobile messaging experiences. Using real-time behavioral data, Attentive makes it possible for businesses to automatically send engaging text messages to each subscriber. Over 4,000 leading brands like CB2, Pura Vida, Rebecca Minkoff, Steve Madden, and more rely on Attentive and see strong performance.

To date, Attentive has raised $863 million in funding and is backed by Coatue, Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia, IVP, and other leading venture firms. To learn more about Attentive or to request a demo, visit attentivemobile.com.

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