Mike Defisser

Mike brings over 25 years of executive experience in leading global technology sales, channels, marketing, consulting and operations. Recognized for his entrepreneurial and dynamic leadership, Mike has an unbroken track record of exceeding revenue goals and driving double-digit growth while instilling a purpose to achieve throughout the entire organization.

Mike founded FireOneCXO Partners because he knows what great leaders can do and wanted to provide a service that would contribute to making companies stronger by transforming their people and organizations through great leadership. He also has a strong desire to contribute to the successful careers of others.

Mike has deep knowledge of how to hire talent, build and grow software and technology companies, spanning early-stage and privately held businesses and more mature public corporations. As Head of Sales, Mike has contributed to multiple company exits, including a successful IPO, several private equity exits, and hyper-growth of a Nasdaq traded company.

Prior to FirebrickCXO, he served as CRO at Optanix and successfully grew their revenue and transformed and diversified routes to market. Mike led a significant portion of BMC Software’s U.S. field organization. Mike was critical to the transformation of culture and selling velocity after the private equity buyout by Bain Capital.

At Parasoft, Mike reported to the CEO as SVP of Worldwide Sales. Mike led a global field organization transformation that helped position Parasoft as a leader in service virtualization and development tools.

While at VMware, Mike was Vice President of the Western U.S. He was responsible for half of the U.S field operations pre-IPO. He developed and built out the original sales organization and was a key leader in VMware’s successful IPO, as well as post-IPO growth. Prior to VMware, Mike was a senior leader at VERITAS. VERITAS was one of the fastest growing technology companies on the NASDAQ. He drove profitable growth before and after the merger with Symantec.

Mike was Vice President of World-Wide Sales for CoCreate, a Hewlett-Packard Subsidiary – and was one of the youngest Vice Presidents at HP. He led a successful employee buyout of CoCreate from Hewlett-Packard. All the employees participated in a successful sale to Parametric Technology. Prior to CoCreate, Mike held various sales leadership positions at HP, and was instrumental in establishing the initial HP Software sales organization.

Mike has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and attended graduate school for Computer Engineering. Prior to his sales career, he was an engineer and software developer at Hughes Aircraft.