Markforged appointed industry veteran Ken Clayton will join the company as senior vice-president, global sales. Clayton will be responsible for setting the company’s global sales strategy and driving a channel-first go-to-market approach across North and South America, EMEA and APAC. Clayton will be based in Markforged’s Watertown headquarters and report directly to Markforged CEO Shai Terem.
Clayton’s appointment comes after Markforged announced that it would publicly list through a SPAC merger, which will expose Markforged to the full intensity of the American capital market.
Clayton brings extensive industry experience to Markforged, including 20 years with Dassault Systems’
Solidworks, a leading provider of 3D CAD design and product data management software. At Solidworks, he held leadership roles as the VP of North America, VP of the Americas and SVP Worldwide Sales and delivered double-digit growth in each of those years, achieving $1 billion in bookings in 2019. Most recently, Clayton served as the CEO of GoEngineer, the number-one Stratasys partner in North America and a leading Solidworks reseller for total sales, as well as the number one reseller of cloud products.
“Over my career, I’ve seen firsthand how the right tools and technology can make a major impact for engineers and manufacturers,” said Clayton. “The manufacturing supply chain has never been more important, or more fragile, and Markforged’s Digital Forge is the right tool to make it more resilient. The need for this technology, coupled with Markforged’s own exciting corporate trajectory, made joining Markforged an opportunity I couldn’t turn down, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
“Markforged is reinventing manufacturing today so that our customers can build anything they imagine tomorrow,” said Terem. “We have 10,000 happy customers today, and we intend to grow that number to 100,000 over the next five years. Ken will be instrumental in helping us achieve that goal, and we know he’s the right person for the job. We’re looking forward to seeing what we achieve together.”
