Secondmind hires Josh Olphin as Head of Business Development, EMEA
Secondmind today announces the appointment of Josh Olphin as its new Head of Business Development to help accelerate the company’s growth and reach in the EMEA region. He joins Secondmind from Dassault Systèmes, where he established a strong track record of developing and expanding strategic partnerships that delivered significant short- and long-term business growth. Olphin brings a wealth of domain expertise to Secondmind and a demonstrated ability to create value-based solutions that span every customer lifecycle stage in the automotive and aerospace sectors.
Olphin consistently exceeded sales targets and led complex negotiations at Dassault Systèmes and was an award-winning sales leader for four years in a row. The key to his success was his ability to foster deep and lasting relationships that resulted in multimillion-pound deals and substantial annual recurring revenue growth. His approach is rooted in customer-centricity and customer success, and his intimate understanding of the challenges facing engineers and their business results in the selection of the right products and solutions to meet their current and future needs.
Olphin will lead the EMEA Business Development team at Secondmind to deepen its partnerships with automakers, tier 1 suppliers, and engineering services companies. The team will be responsible for nurturing and converting existing opportunities, and cultivating a robust, strategic pipeline of customer and partner prospects. His understanding of the challenges and opportunities for sustainable development of vehicles both at a start-up and OEM level offers insights in electrification and the transition to software-defined vehicles that will help shape the Secondmind product roadmap and exceed customer expectations, and his team’s efforts will be pivotal in cementing Secondmind advanced machine learning solutions in automotive design and development.
Olphin’s appointment bolsters the Secondmind business leadership team and comes on the heels of Siemens simulation software veteran Morgan Jenkins joining the company as Chief Product Officer earlier this month. Increasing the depth and breadth of the Secondmind business leadership is a further sign of the momentum Secondmind carried into 2024, following the expansion of its strategic partnership with Mazda, and the close of a $16 million funding round that included Mazda and existing Secondmind investors in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Gary Brotman, Chief Executive Officer at Secondmind, said: "Josh possesses an impressive ability to grow revenue, develop and deepen relationships anchored in mutual respect and value, and close long-term contracts with key players across the model-based systems engineering and simulation ecosystems. His enthusiasm for the Secondmind brand, technology and the potential for our solutions to transform vehicle design and development is infectious, and the team and I are excited to have someone of Josh’s calibre and exceptional character with us on our journey.”
Josh Olphin, Head of Business Development at Secondmind, said: "I am thrilled to join Secondmind, a company that I see as a leader in automotive, with versatile technology that has the power to transform how we design, build, simulate, test and certify products. I hope over the coming weeks to share with my network the transformative potential of our solutions. My commitment to excellence in customer satisfaction and delivery aligns with Secondmind’s values to not only meet but exceed expectations and deliver significant industry value. The recent expansion of Secondmind’s strategic partnership with Mazda serves as proof of market demand for our innovative solutions for system design and calibration, and underscores our potential to lead the industry towards a more sustainable future."
