“His knowledge and leadership are needed to drive the next phase of Provar’s growth,” Geraint Waters, CEO

Homecomings are unique, and Provar is excited to welcome Richard Clark to the executive team as the company’s first Chief Product Officer. Richard contributed a great deal during his first four years at Provar. After exploring several different paths professionally and personally, he is excited about the future of the Provar product and the company.

Richard’s time with Provar started in 2013 when he met our Co-Founder and CEO, Geraint Waters. Richard has been in the Salesforce ecosystem since 2007. He consulted on early product development, advocating for using metadata to enhance Salesforce testing. As a strong believer in Provar, Richard was one of the first beta users and later became a customer. In 2017, he officially joined the Provar team as Head of Salesforce Engineering. His primary focus was on expanding Provar’s compatibility across both Salesforce Classic and Lightning user experiences. After about six months, Provar entered full start-up mode, and they elevated his role to Chief Technical Officer.

It was a time of all hands on deck, with Richard bringing his expertise to multiple business areas, including strengthening Provar’s relationship with Salesforce, conducting product demos, automating trial product provisioning, and continuously building the product roadmap over the next three years. 

Working at a tech start-up is not for the faint of heart, a reality that is only amplified by doing so during a pandemic. Richard helped Provar achieve its Series A investment round and was named Chief Innovation Officer in 2021. He then decided to step back and focus on recharging.

Sometimes, stepping away from a cherished role offers a perspective that allows one to see things more clearly. Richard’s perspective came when he joined a company that took a ‘move fast and break things’ approach to IT delivery. 

“It jarred me,” recalls Richard. “I knew we should prevent this. Not only did we incur a loss of revenue while systems were down, but we also gathered teams together at 1 a.m. to fix something that could have been prevented before release, potentially saving up to 100 times the cost to rectify.” 

Richard’s growth journey also showed him that the stress associated with this fast-paced put it out there and fix it later mentality was not a sustainable model for teams in the long term.

Richard felt right at home when he began consulting with Provar again in February 2022. Provar had always felt like family to him. He worked on automating product license management. During his time away, Provar had grown. A skilled and diverse team in Salesforce testing and marketing had been established. This consulting engagement reignited his passion for the product and the team. Today, Richard is once again part of the executive team as Chief Product Officer.

Richard stated that he has returned to accelerate the development of powerful new product features and deliver new platforms for Provar customers. “I see a great opportunity to offer our customers expanded capabilities through machine learning (AI) in the future, broadening our reach and growing our customer base. I’m excited to see the market shifting toward testing in both low-code/no-code environments and more heavily coded environments that involve developers in testing. There is a lot of growth ahead for Provar, and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.”

“I’m very pleased to welcome Richard back to Provar,” Geraint Waters, Provar CEO, said. “He was a driving force in developing the company and the product from the beginning. Richard is passionate about Product Development, customer experience, and all things Salesforce. We need his knowledge and leadership to drive the next phase of Provar’s growth as we launch new products and innovations.”

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Cristin Connelly Zegers
Cathey.co for Provar
cristin@cathey.co