Lighter Capital Leadership

I recently retired as Chief Risk Officer from Silicon Valley Bank. During my career at SVB I ran the California lending division for the Bank, was the interim CFO twice, and oversaw the initial overseas expansion (UK, China, Israel, India). At various points I had IT, Operations, Legal, Marketing, Project Management, and International Services reporting to me.

As Chief Risk Officer I had Credit, EWRM, Portfolio Analytics, Credit Review, Compliance, Regulatory Relations, and Cyber/Physical security.

During my tenure at Silicon Valley Bank, the Bank grew organically from $900 million in assets and less than $50 million in equity market capitalization to over $44 billion in assets and over $10 billion in market capitalization.

Melissa Widner is the CEO of Lighter Capital, the pioneer and leading provider of revenue based financing to SAAS companies. She has a deep understanding of the entrepreneur's journey and the importance of growth capital.

Previously she was the Managing Director of NAB Ventures, the venture capital arm of National Australia Bank, where she invested in and served as a director for several global fintech companies, including Lighter Capital.

As CEO she led two companies to successful acquisitions that provided over a 10X return to investors. She co-founded and was the CEO of Silicon Valley enterprise software company, 7Software (acquired by Concur Technologies NASDAQ: CNQR, acquired by SAP).

Melissa served as a general partner at SeaPoint ventures, a US based venture capital firm focused on mobile technologies and SaaS enterprise software solutions. She is an active angel investor who served on the board of US based Alliance of Angels, one of the longest running and most active angel groups in the world. She was a lecturer in the subjects of Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship at University of Washington’s MBA program.

In 2009, Melissa relocated to Sydney with her Australian husband. She is the co-founder and chair of Heads Over Heels, an organization that works with women entrepreneurs leading high growth companies. She served on the boards of AIC (The Australian Investment Council--formerly AVCAL), and currently serves on the board of the Shore Foundation and Heads Over Heels.

She is the proud mother of four boys..

My passion is solving business problems and creating business opportunities using modern technology. I love building and leading teams of excited, dedicated engineers to create excellent products and services that make a difference to customers.I am:An experienced problem-solver adept at selecting (or inventing, if necessary) and applying the optimal technology to resolve business problems.An excellent verbal and written communicator, with extensive and diverse experience ranging from technical architecture talks to business overviews for Congressional committees, and from internal technical white papers to marketing documents. Published works include the second chapter of the "Bad Data Handbook" (O'Reilly, published in November of 2012).A confident, credible, and persuasive cross-functional leader, experienced in guiding technology teams into partnerships with business units. Adept at stitching together teams across organizational and geographic boundaries.Long-time extensive user of cloud platforms (focused on Amazon Web Services. Experienced at Python (including pandas, nltk, etc), Javascript, Perl, PHP, C#, C, and Java programming, with special interests in data analysis, modular software architecture, and database-driven web-based user interfaces. Database design and architecture, with hands-on experience with MS SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Netezza, and Oracle, as well as "NoSQL" systems including MongoDB, Redis, and Memcached. Extensive experience designing and implementing solutions using Elasticsearch. High-availability website design, architecture, implementation, and operation. Experience using Hadoop, Pig, JSON, XML, XSLT, CSS, HTML, AJAX, and a plethora of other techologies to solve business problems.

Highly strategic and pragmatic leader with a proven track record of building and leading global marketing, digital, go-to-market and e-commerce for some of the world’s most successful B2C and B2B brands: Symantec, SAP, Yahoo!, Disney Store, and Epson. I’ve built a solid reputation for rapidly developing and executing on transformative marketing and digital strategies to establish and defend market leadership and drive growth in highly competitive markets. I am skilled at bringing to life a company’s strategic vision, unique value prop, and competitive differentiation while driving sales and maximizing ROI.

My core strengths include a “customer-first” focus while influencing across boundaries as well as building global teams that promote high performance, a culture of transparency, bias for action, collaboration, and accountability.

Experienced in B2B (Enterprise & SMB) and B2C in a variety of industries: SaaS, cloud-based services, software, FinTech, cybersecurity, web technologies, hardware, eCommerce, and retail.

Expertise:

Go-to-Market Strategy & Planning

Marketing Strategy

Product Marketing

Messaging & Positioning

Brand Strategy & Management

P&L Responsibility for WW Digital / E-Commerce Sales

All Things Digital

Digital Transformation

Paid Performance / Social

Online Sales / eCommerce

Integrated Marketing / ABM

Demand Generation

Public Relations / Analyst Relations

Events Management

Content Strategy & Marketing

Thought Leadership

Partner / Channel Strategy

Execution-oriented finance executive with 15 years of diverse experience across the financial technology, alternative lending, SaaS and impact investing sectors. Track record of driving financial performance and company impact through data driven decisions, cross-functional collaboration and effective team building.

I recently retired as Chief Risk Officer from Silicon Valley Bank. During my career at SVB I ran the California lending division for the Bank, was the interim CFO twice, and oversaw the initial overseas expansion (UK, China, Israel, India). At various points I had IT, Operations, Legal, Marketing, Project Management, and International Services reporting to me.

As Chief Risk Officer I had Credit, EWRM, Portfolio Analytics, Credit Review, Compliance, Regulatory Relations, and Cyber/Physical security.

During my tenure at Silicon Valley Bank, the Bank grew organically from $900 million in assets and less than $50 million in equity market capitalization to over $44 billion in assets and over $10 billion in market capitalization.

Melissa Widner is the CEO of Lighter Capital, the pioneer and leading provider of revenue based financing to SAAS companies. She has a deep understanding of the entrepreneur's journey and the importance of growth capital.

Previously she was the Managing Director of NAB Ventures, the venture capital arm of National Australia Bank, where she invested in and served as a director for several global fintech companies, including Lighter Capital.

As CEO she led two companies to successful acquisitions that provided over a 10X return to investors. She co-founded and was the CEO of Silicon Valley enterprise software company, 7Software (acquired by Concur Technologies NASDAQ: CNQR, acquired by SAP).

Melissa served as a general partner at SeaPoint ventures, a US based venture capital firm focused on mobile technologies and SaaS enterprise software solutions. She is an active angel investor who served on the board of US based Alliance of Angels, one of the longest running and most active angel groups in the world. She was a lecturer in the subjects of Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship at University of Washington’s MBA program.

In 2009, Melissa relocated to Sydney with her Australian husband. She is the co-founder and chair of Heads Over Heels, an organization that works with women entrepreneurs leading high growth companies. She served on the boards of AIC (The Australian Investment Council--formerly AVCAL), and currently serves on the board of the Shore Foundation and Heads Over Heels.

She is the proud mother of four boys..