“His knowledge and leadership are needed to drive the next phase of Provar’s growth,” Geraint Waters, CEO

Homecomings are unique, and Provar is excited to welcome Richard Clark to the executive team as the company’s first Chief Product Officer. Richard contributed a great deal during his first four years at Provar. After exploring several different paths professionally and personally, he is excited about the future of the Provar product and the company.

Richard’s time with Provar started in 2013 when he met our Co-Founder and CEO, Geraint Waters. Having been in the Salesforce ecosystem since 2007, Richard consulted on early product development, advocating using metadata to make Salesforce testing more robust. A believer in Provar, Richard was an early adopter (he was one of the first beta users) and then became a customer. Richard became an official member of the Provar team in 2017 when he accepted the role of Head of Salesforce Engineering, where his primary focus was on expanding the compatibility of Provar across Salesforce Classic and Lightning user experiences. After about six months, Provar was in full start-up mode, and his role was elevated to Chief Technical Officer. 

It was a time of all hands on deck, with Richard bringing his expertise to multiple business areas, including strengthening Provar’s relationship with Salesforce, conducting product demos, automating trial product provisioning, and continuously building the product roadmap over the next three years. 

Working at a tech start-up is not for the faint of heart, a reality that is only amplified by doing so during a pandemic. Having helped Provar achieve its Series A investment round and being named Chief Innovation Officer in 2021, Richard decided to step back and focus on recharging.

Sometimes, stepping away from a cherished role offers the perspective to see things more clearly. Richard’s perspective came when he joined a company following a ‘move fast and break things’ approach to IT delivery. 

“It jarred me,” recalls Richard. “I knew we should prevent this. Not only did we incur a loss of revenue while systems were down, but we also gathered teams together at 1 a.m. to fix something that could have been prevented before release, potentially saving up to 100 times the cost to rectify.” 

Richard’s growth journey also showed him that the stress associated with this fast-paced put it out there and fix it later mentality was not a sustainable model for teams in the long term.

Provar had felt like a family to Richard, so he felt right at home and welcomed when he began consulting with Provar again in February of 2022, working on automating product license management. In the time he was away, Provar had grown, and a capable team with diverse skills in Salesforce testing and marketing had been put in place. That consulting engagement reignited a passion for the product and the team, leading to today’s news that Richard is again a part of the executive team as Chief Product Officer.  

Richard said he’s returned to accelerate the development of powerful new product features and deliver new platforms for Provar customers. “I see a great opportunity to offer our customers expanded capabilities through machine learning (AI) in the future, broadening our reach and growing our customer base. I’m excited about the shifts I see in the market around testing for low code/no code environments as well as more heavily coded environments that get developers involved in testing. There is a lot of growth ahead for Provar, and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.”

“I’m very pleased to welcome Richard back to Provar,” Geraint Waters, Provar CEO, said. “He was a driving force in developing the company and the product from the beginning. Richard is passionate about Product Development, customer experience, and all things Salesforce. His knowledge and leadership are needed to drive the next phase in Provar’s growth as we launch new products and innovations.”

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Cristin Connelly Zegers
Cathey.co for Provar
cristin@cathey.co