Matt Calkins | |
|---|---|
 Matt Calkins Appian World 2024 keynote speaker | |
| Title | Founder, CEO, Chairman and President of Appian Corporation Board game creator |
| Board member of | Appian Corporation, Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), Sorensen Institute and Virginia Public Access Project Council |
Matt Calkins is the co-founder, CEO, chairman, and president of Appian Corporation, and a world champion board gamer. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Calkins grew up in Mill Valley, California. [1] He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1994 with a degree in economics. [1] [3] He then joined MicroStrategy, a business software vendor [1] where he was the director of the Enterprise Product Group. [5] When he was 26, he left MicroStrategy and co-founded Appian. [5]
In 1999, Calkins co-founded Appian and began building software tools such as an intranet portal for the U.S. Army. [1] In 2008, the company raised $8 million, and in 2014, raised $36 million in a secondary offering led by venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. [1] Appian later went public in May 2017. [1] [6] [7] As of 2019, Calkins owns just under half of the company which is valued at $2.1 billion. [1] [8] [9] Calkins believes there are different dimensions of AI. [10] [11]
Calkins left MicroStrategy in 1999 in order to launch Appian Corporation. [1] [2] He was 26 years old. [2] [1] Appian creates low-code software that helps businesses build apps more quickly. [1] [2] [3] It is used by government agencies including the United States Food and Drug Administration, and private companies such as T-Mobile, Bayer, and Exelon Corp. [12] The company went public in 2017 and Calkins owns just under half of it. [1]
Calkins is well known for designing board games and playing competitively. [13] He has collected 1,000 games, [13] and has won a number of events at the World Boardgaming Championships. [1] [2] [14] [15] His philosophy is that business and gaming have a lot of similarities: business skills can make someone a better game player, and playing games helps to make him a better CEO. [13] [16]
Calkins created the board games Sekigahara, Tin Goose, Charioteer, and Magnet. [1] [2] [17]
Calkins has contributed to The New York Times about the value of board games in business. [19]
In 2017, Calkins was named to the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) board of directors. [20] He also serves on the leadership council of the Virginia Public Access Project and the board of the Sorensen Institute. [21] He was previously on the board for the NVTC TechPAC. [20] Calkins was named to the 2022 Virginia 500: Federal Contractors - Technology. [22]
Calkins is a supporter of Elon Musk's involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency, but has criticized its implementation, saying: "it wasn’t nearly as much as we needed, and we probably didn’t need the chain saw. We needed the chisel." [23]
Calkins helped the Renew Democracy Initiative to create fight4ukraine.com, a website that tracks the world's response to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. [24] This initiative included banning the sale of software to Russia. [25] [26] [27]
Category:Chief executives in the technology industry