What You Don't Know About Peter Granat
Title: CEO, Cision (merged with Vocus this year)
Company: Public relations software – provides access to media and blogger database, distributes press releases, manages influencer outreach, measures social media activities, and analyzes effectiveness of campaigns. After Cision’s merger with Vocus and other recent buys, the company has 2,000 employees in nine countries and revenue will reach $380M in 2015.
Job: Bringing together four companies – Cision, Vocus, Gorkana Group and Visible Technologies – to make up Cision, integrating products, introducing customers to new products, setting strategy for 2015. The Vocus name is being sunsetted but its over 300 employees will stay in the DC area to focus on development and sales and services.
Customers: Large brands in consumer tech, travel, financial services and healthcare. Small businesses also use the company’s PRWeb product to promote their stories.
Latest news: Introducing existing Cision customers to Vocus products like Help A Reporter Out and PRWeb, and Vocus customers to Cision product features like access to news monitoring through LexisNexis.
Career highlights: Buying four companies in the last year; being promoted to run Cision as a public company at age 39; and becoming CEO of Cision’s European operation ($100M in revenue at the time) in 2008 and moving family to London.
Grew up: Outside Philly in Bryn Mawr
Current home: Chicago but traveling most weeks
Schools: University of Vermont and Northwestern (MBA)
First job: Sales for Boston-based MediaMap, which built a proprietary database of tech reporters, in 1992. Company was eventually sold to Cision.
Why work in tech: Father introduced me as a kid to computer user groups and continued to be a tech geek through middle and high school. I’m also a huge news junkie and have always been in tech and media companies.
Daily habit: Get online by 5:30am to catch up on European emails.
Favorite vacation spot: Sailing in British Virgin Islands. Met my wife on a bareboat charter in Tortola.
Favorite DC restaurant: Black Salt (MacArthur Blvd.)
Bucket list: Live abroad (again). Anywhere in Europe – Amsterdam, Paris maybe.
Family: Married, two sons (ages 3 and 7); and Springer Spaniel
Free time: Being with family – swimming, birthday parties, traveling, skiing.
