Rob is an experienced software executive and entrepreneur. He has made significant contributions in the open source community both advising and running successful companies throughout the years. Bearden was President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SpringSource until its acquisition by VMWare. Before joining SpringSource, Bearden served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital, a leading venture capital firm based in the Silicon Valley. He was also COO for OpenSpan, a desktop integration software provider. Previously Bearden served as COO for JBoss, the world’s leading open source middleware company, where he helped architect and execute the company’s business model, managed its worldwide operations, and orchestrated its successful acquisition by Red Hat in 2006.
