SurveyMonkey finds its new CEO in HP COO Bill Veghte

Veghte, who worked at Microsoft for 20 years, will take charge of the company in early August

When online survey development company SurveyMonkey started naming new people to its board of directors on Monday, as well as appointing a permanent Executive Chairman, it seemed likely that the company had finally found its new CEO to replace the late Dave Goldberg. The only question was: who?

Now we have the answer to that question: HP's Bill Veghte, who will take over the position effective on August 3rd, it has been revealed in a press release.

Veghte has been with Hewlett Packard since 2010, where he started as Executive Vice President and General Manager of HP Software, before becoming its Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer in 2012, where he was leading its Enterprise Group.

Prior to that he had spent 20 years at Microsoft, working on products that included Microsoft Office, Windows, and Server. He became Senior Vice President of Windows in 2007.

“SurveyMonkey is a special company with a wonderful opportunity in front of it,” Veghte said in a statement. “I am excited to build upon the strong foundation that Dave and the leadership team have in place. It is a great group of people with a platform today that helps millions of customers make better decisions faster and more economically. There is huge potential to grow the business and I am looking forward to helping deliver on the opportunity.”

In addition to becoming CEO, Veghte will also become a member of the company's board of directors, where he will join the two newest members: Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and David Ebersman, chief executive officer of Lyra Health, and the former CFO of Facebook.

Sandberg is also the widow of former SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, who ran the company for six years before his sudden and unexpected death while he was vacationing in Mexico in early May. Sandberg has vowed to use her position to see her late husband's vision for the company through.

“The common thread in Bill’s work is his skill in working with teams to increase the global reach of great businesses. He joins an incredibly strong and effective team at SurveyMonkey and together they will help the world use data to make better decisions," said Sandberg in a statement.

Upon Goldberg's death, SurveyMonkey had revealed that  Zander Lurie, a Senior Vice President at GoPro, and a SurveyMonkey board member since 2009, would serve as temporary Executive Chairman of the SurveyMonkey board for a period of three months. Lurie has since been named as the permanent chairman of the board.

Founded in 1999, SurveyMonkey offers services, including 10 questions, 100 responses and e-mail support, for free. It also offers tiered pricing plans, which start at $26 a month and go to $780 a year, which offer more responses and features, such as custom logos, question & answer piping, white label surveys and HIPPA-compliant features.  Its customers currently include 99% of the Fortune 500.

SurveyMonkey raised a $250 million round of equity financing in December, bringing its total funding to over $1.15 billion and valuing the company at $2 billion. SurveyMonkey investors include Tiger Global Management, T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Asset Management, Baillie Gifford, Spectrum Equity, Google Capital, and Social + Capital.

(Image source: www8.hp.com)