Our Team

Jim Franklin

Jim Franklin

Chief Executive Officer

Jim Franklin is the CEO of SendGrid, Inc., a Foundry-backed infrastructure applications company. Prior to his tenure with SendGrid, Jim was the Vice President of Enterprise Performance Management and the General Manager of the Crystal Ball Global Business Unit of Oracle Corporation. The Crystal Ball Global Business Unit was formed in 2007 as a part of the acquisition of Hyperion Solutions. At Hyperion, Jim served as VP and General Manager. Jim had held the roles of Decisioneering's CEO, CFO and VP of Sales prior to Decisioneering's acquisition by Hyperion. Decisioneering was the maker of the Crystal Ball brand of software. Mr. Franklin was also the founder of webfamilies.com and the CFO of Vericept Corporation. Jim serves on the board of aWhere, Inc., Denver Software Club and Querio. Jim has also been a mentor for Techstars and the Founder Institute.

Chad Varra

Chad Varra

Chief Financial Officer

Chad Varra brings over 20 years of finance and operations experience for both publicly traded and privately held high technology companies. Chad most recently served as the Vice President of Finance and Accounting for Rally Software Development Corp, the leader in Agile application lifecycle management. During his 6 years at Rally, Chad held key roles as an executive in accounting, finance, mergers and acquisitions, planning, contract negotiations, legal and human resources. From 2000-2004 Chad served as Corporate Controller for ChannelPoint, Inc., a provider of ecommerce software solutions and applications. From 1995 – 2000, Chad served as a Manager of External Financial Reporting at Storage Technology Corporation, a publicly traded provider of information storage and management solutions. Prior to that, Chad served as an experienced audit and business advisor with Arthur Andersen LLP, an international public accounting firm.

Isaac Saldana

Isaac Saldana

Co-founder, President

Isaac Saldana received a double major in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the University of California Riverside. In 2006 Isaac co-founded themebid.com, a bidding site for services, where he took the role of CTO. In 2007, he co-founded notpaul.com, a site where events were generated by fans. In 2009, Isaac co-founded SendGrid, a cloud based email service helping companies increase their email deliverability. Isaac is the president of SendGrid where he is responsible for the product vision.

Tim Jenkins

Tim Jenkins

Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer

Tim Jenkins graduated with a BS in Computer Science from the University of California, Riverside in 1998. He worked there as a Systems Administrator until moving on to Spinway in 2000. He later worked for Array Networks, developing high performance load balancers, and Advatech Pacific, developing launch vehicle design software and managing the engineering team. In 2009 he co-founded SendGrid, where he serves as Chief Technical Officer.

Jose Lopez

Jose Lopez

Co-founder, Web Architect

Jose Lopez graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California, Riverside in 2006. At UC Riverside, Jose met Isaac Saldana and together they ignited their passion for startup culture by working together to develop companies such as thembid.com, frontpagebids.com, logobids.com. In 2009, he co-founded sendgrid.com where he currently serves as web architect.

Robert Phillips

Robert Phillips

Vice President of Marketing

Robert Phillips has spent nearly 20 years managing marketing for a variety of premium products and services. Most recently Robert led marketing for Memeo, a worldwide leader in backup, online storage and synchronization services for consumers and small businesses. Prior to that, Robert led member acquisition for PeoplePC (acquired by Earthlink) and managed the company's global expansion team in Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific in support of deals with the Ford Motor Company and Delta Airlines. He also worked at online DVD rental company Netflix where he helped build the company's fast growing member base. Robert began his career at Ogilvy and Mather and DDB Worldwide advertising working with brands such as American Airlines, GTE (now Verizon), Embassy Suites Hotels and Level 3 Communications.

Denise Hulce

Denise Hulce

Vice President of Sales & Business Development

Experienced in the world of startups and email, Denise leads the sales and business development teams at SendGrid. She has provided executive leadership in multiple roles at various organizations, most recently as the Senior Director of North American Sales and Marketing and Worldwide OEM at 3Dconnexion, a subsidiary of Logitech. Prior to that, Denise was the Director of International Operations @Last Software, where she played a foundational role in the growth of the business—both domestically and internationally — which culminated in a successful acquisition by Google.

Joe Scharf

Joe Scharf

Director of Support & Operations

Joe Scharf directs the support and deliverability teams at SendGrid and serves as the SendGrid postmaster. Joe is serious about abuse monitoring and prevention, is the liaison to many ISPs, and regularly attends Messaging and Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) meetings. Past experience includes working with TechStars and being a "rocket scientist" at Ball Aerospace.

Michael Tognetti

Michael Tognetti

General Counsel, Vice President

Michael Tognetti is SendGrid's General Counsel and Vice President. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering from Notre Dame and a law degree from Harvard Law School. Michael has always worked for high technology companies, starting with his clients at law firms Cooley Godward and Holme Roberts and Owen, to working as in house counsel at Vericept and Decisioneering, the original makers of Crystal Ball software. After Decisioneering was acquired by Hyperion, who was subsequently acquired by Oracle, Michael spent time working with the Crystal Ball global business unit created within Oracle. A Montana native, he enjoys golf, and anything less than 50 rounds a year is failure.