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Opower Welcomes Marcus Ryu and Deep Nishar as Board Members
[September 16, 2013]

Opower Welcomes Marcus Ryu and Deep Nishar as Board Members


(Marketwire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ARLINGTON, VA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/16/13 -- Opower, the global leader in customer engagement solutions for the utility industry, today announced that Marcus Ryu, CEO of Guidewire and Deep Nishar, SVP Products and User Experience at LinkedIn Corporation, are joining the company's Board of Directors. Mr. Ryu and Mr. Nishar are widely recognized as leaders in the technology industry, and their unique perspectives will help to shape Opower's growth in the coming years.



As CEO of Guidewire, Mr. Ryu is responsible for the daily operations and strategic direction of the company. Since co-founding Guidewire in 2001, Mr. Ryu also served as both Vice President of Products and Vice President of Strategy where he was instrumental in securing key customer relationships, establishing the company's distinctive value proposition for the market and defining Guidewire's product strategy.

Similar to Mr. Ryu, Mr. Nishar has transformed LinkedIn's product strategy by using big data analytics to develop innovative products such as LinkedIn Influencers and Endorsements. His insight will be invaluable to expanding Opower's utility customer engagement software platform. Since becoming SVP, Mr. Nishar has reinvented LinkedIn's products from a singular "point solution" product to a broader and richer platform with a robust set of targeting tools that drove nearly $1 billion in revenue last year.


"Marcus successfully established Guidewire within an industry that was demanding more sophisticated technology solutions," said Dan Yates, co-founder and CEO of Opower. "In the process he built an incredibly strong and positive company culture. And Deep has a phenomenal record for building revolutionary products that are responsive to customer needs and unambiguously world-class. LinkedIn's products and platform have blossomed under his leadership. We're excited to learn from them both as we scale our business to the next level without losing sight of the things that make us great today." "Marcus is a successful founder-CEO with experience building a software company to scale by focusing on serving the unique needs of a large vertical market," said Jon Sakoda, Partner at New Enterprise Associates and Opower board member. "Deep is one of the greatest product minds in technology today, having pioneered the use of social networking and big data to create entirely new categories in software-as-a-service (SaaS). As board members, Marcus and Deep will each provide valuable counsel as the company grows rapidly and executes against the largely untapped SaaS opportunity in the global energy industry." "The Opower team has built a disruptive, high growth SaaS leader by addressing critical needs of a major global industry underserved by technology incumbents," said Mr. Ryu. "Similar to what Guidewire saw in property-casualty insurance, Opower identified a major opportunity to serve an industry of great economic and social importance -- and in the process to build a business culture of enduring value." "Opower harnesses big data from utilities to deliver products that truly shape how consumers and business managers think about their energy use," said Mr. Nishar. "They are revolutionizing both the energy customer experience and the way in which utilities motivate their end-users to save energy and reduce peak usage. I'm excited to help Opower build on that success." About Opower Working with 85 utility partners and serving more than 18 million consumers across seven countries, Opower is the world's leading provider of customer engagement solutions for the utility industry. By providing the tools, information and incentives consumers need to make smarter decisions about their energy use, Opower's engagement platform and solution suite, Opower 4, enables utilities to involve their customers in programs that support energy efficiency goals, smart grid and new rate structures, brand loyalty and lowering the cost of service. Proven to drive behavioral change at scale, Opower has helped its utility partners achieve more than 2.7 TWhs in energy savings, and drives significant increases in customer program participation and overall customer satisfaction. Founded in 2007 and privately held, Opower is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with offices in San Francisco, London and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.opower.com and follow us on Twitter at@Opower.

Contact Margot Littlehale Email Contact Source: Opower

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