What we do matters

Dan Woods is the founder and CEO of Socotra, the first modern, cloud-based platform for technology-driven insurers. Before Socotra, Dan did IT investing and portfolio management for Formation 8 Partners (now 8VC), where he specialized in data platforms and smart enterprise software. Prior to that, Dan’s depth of enterprise experience was honed over his six years with Palantir. There, Dan was an early member of the core engineering team and later transitioned to run Palantir’s partnerships, plus several deployments. He holds a MS in Computer Science from Stanford.

Ekine Akuiyibo is the Vice President of Business Development and Deployments at Socotra, where he oversees field engineering, product delivery, partnerships, training, and support. Prior to Socotra, Ekine spent 15 years in enterprise software development, sales, and services at Sun Microsystems, BAE Systems, and Oracle. Most recently, Ekine worked on large scale ML problems at Oracle. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.

Heidi Friedrikson is the Director of Operations at Socotra, where she oversees finance, human resources, operations, and recruiting. Heidi has honed her finance and business management skills across various startups and Fortune 500 companies. She has thrived on the unique challenges that each company presented, including taking two companies from inception to successful acquisition. Before Socotra, Heidi worked on operations at Addepar, SkyFire, and Cisco Systems.

Matt Hamilton is Socotra’s Director of Product and is responsible for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing the next wave of product capabilities for Socotra. Matt comes to Socotra from Guidewire, where he spent ten years building and leading the company’s product teams and has experience across the insurance policy lifecycle, including underwriting, policy management, claims, billing, and analytics. He has a BA in computer science from UCSD and an MBA from Stanford.

Ken Holmes is Socotra's Vice President of Sales. Ken is responsible for new customer acquisition as well as existing customer growth and renewal. Prior to Socotra, Ken led all North American sales at Tubular Labs, the leader in social video measurement, and prior to that led international sales at NetBase, the leading social listening solution. He holds a B.A. from the University of San Francisco.

Harsh Shah is Socotra’s Head of Marketing. Harsh is responsible for overseeing marketing strategy, including brand awareness, market positioning, customer acquisition, and growth efforts. Prior to this role, Harsh led relationships with some of Socotra’s largest customers and partners and was directly involved with many of the company’s early go-to-market efforts. Before Socotra, Harsh managed partnerships and marketing for mobile products at Google and AdMob. He holds a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Richard Vistnes is Socotra’s Vice President of Engineering, where he leads a large team of engineers and developers who are building, designing and refining the company’s technology solutions and next-generation products. Prior to Socotra, Richard held senior engineering leadership roles at both startups and large companies, including Salesforce and Sentient Technologies. Richard holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.