John Dillon built his career as a hands-on operator, serving as CEO of five enterprise software companies—Salesforce.com, Hyperion Solutions, Navis, Engine Yard, and Aerospike—after starting out as a systems engineer at EDS and spending five years as a nuclear submarine officer in the Navy, and he has repeatedly landed at turning points in the industry, from Oracle's growth from $100 million to $1 billion in revenue to the early rise of SaaS at Salesforce. He believes strongly in hiring carefully rather than quickly, arguing that a team's slowest member sets the pace for everyone else, and this operating credibility has carried into governance roles, including serving on TransAct's board for over a decade before stepping in as its interim CEO.