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TECHNOLOGY<br />
FAST TECH 25<br />
Big Pharma’s Friend<br />
Peter Gassner rebooted Veeva Systems, and his gambit has created<br />
the ultimate pharmaceutical tool.<br />
BY ALEX KONRAD<br />
In the summer of 2010, when his startup,<br />
Veeva Systems, was just three years old, CEO<br />
Peter Gassner summoned his team to deliver<br />
a surprising message: It was time to think<br />
about a second act. Veeva was on a roll. It had become<br />
indispensable to Big Pharma companies,<br />
who were embracing at a fast clip its software<br />
for tracking sales and customers. But to build<br />
a lasting business, Gassner believed, Veeva had<br />
to think bigger. “Batten down the hatches here,”<br />
Gassner recalls saying. “We’re in for six years of a<br />
hard slog.”<br />
The gambit has more than paid off. Bolstered<br />
by that second act—an entirely new product<br />
called Veeva Vault that helps the likes of AbbVie<br />
and Merck manage the process of drug development<br />
and clinical trials—Veeva has seen its sales<br />
grow an average of 37% over the past three years<br />
to $544 million in the most recent fiscal year. No<br />
enterprise software company other than Salesforce<br />
has topped the $500 million sales mark faster<br />
than Veeva, which ranks No. 8 on <strong>Forbes</strong>’ Fast<br />
Tech 25 list of America’s fastest-growing public<br />
tech companies.<br />
Today, Veeva counts many of the biggest<br />
names in the drug industry among its more than<br />
500 customers, including Abbott, Bayer, Gilead,<br />
Novartis and Pfizer. Some 60% of the world’s<br />
pharma sales reps use Veeva to track buyers and<br />
prospects and to coordinate between sales teams<br />
globally. Many of them also use Vault, which<br />
now accounts for nearly a third of Veeva’s revenue.<br />
“We’re a little bit of an unknown story,” says<br />
Gass ner, a wiry 52-year-old who is fond of plain<br />
dark suits. “But in financial returns, we are quite<br />
surprising.”<br />
The success of Vault capped a ten-year journey<br />
for Gassner, who grew up in Portland, Oregon.<br />
After learning to code in college, he rose through<br />
the ranks at IBM and PeopleSoft before joining<br />
Salesforce in 2003, when it was just 200 people.<br />
Four years later, Gassner saw a big opportunity to<br />
build software focused on a single sector on top<br />
Veeva CEO Peter<br />
Gassner hopes<br />
to expand his<br />
software business<br />
beyond its core<br />
pharma clients<br />
to chemical,<br />
cosmetics and<br />
manufacturing<br />
customers.<br />
CODY PICKENS FOR FORBES<br />
46 | FORBES JUNE <strong>13</strong>, <strong>2017</strong>
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