Docker today announced that it has hired former Twitter CFO and Zynga treasurer Mike Gupta as its new CFO. Last July, Gupta moved to the role of senior vice president (SVP) in charge of strategic investments are serving as the company’s CFO since December 2012. Before that, he briefly served as Twitter’s VP of corporate finance and spent about a year and a half at Zynga, as well as eight years in various roles at Yahoo.
Docker’s new CFO Mike Gupta
Docker’s current CFO Eric Bardin will become Docker’s SVP of finance and business operations. The company says that he will “focus on financial planning and analysis (FP&A), expanding Docker’s corporate infrastructure, both domestically and overseas, and mergers and acquisitions.”
Docker, which single-handedly kicked off the current hype around containers a few years ago, is going through a major growth phase right now. It has now raised $162 million and is valued at about $1 billion. It’s no surprise then that the company is putting a new CFO in place who has extensive experience at large fast-growing companies — experience Bardin simply didn’t have. While it’s probably still too early to talk about a Docker IPO, it’s no secret that most high-growth companies that hire a new CFO at this stage do so in order to either get the company ready for an IPO or a sale.
In its announcement today, Docker notes that it hired Gupta because of his “long history of scaling high-growth companies” that “will serve Docker as it ascends into the next phase of its rapid development.”
“Mike’s previous success leading financial teams in high growth, industry-leading companies will be invaluable as we evolve our commercial business and continue to expand the Docker project,” Docker CEO Ben Golub said in a canned statement today. “Mike is an excellent addition to the executive team, adding the strategic financial oversight and strong operational support needed to support our long-term business objectives.”