About

I’m Kevin Merritt, a technology entrepreneur living and working in Seattle, WA - the cloud capital of the world. I’m an angel investor, advisor and/or board director, fortunate to work with a number of promising startups.

Combining my passion for winemaking with my background growing and running SaaS companies, I’m an investor, board director and Chief Operating Officer at InnoVint, the world’s leading SaaS wine production solution for commercial wineries. In a very meta way, I’m also a very happy InnoVint customer and end user, as I also work part-time as a cellar assistant at the Kevin White Winery in Woodinville, WA. If that weren’t enough to keep me busy in the wine industry, in the evenings I’m studying viticulture and enology at the Northwest Wine Academy at South Seattle College.

Through August of 2019 I was the President of Tyler Technologies Data & Insights division, which came about via Tyler’s acquisition of Socrata in April, 2018. Tyler (NYSE:TYL) offers line of business and data analysis solutions to more than 15,000 public sector institutions.

In January 2007 I founded blist, the world’s easiest to use, cloud-based database, which was conceptually and aesthetically a lot like what Airtable is today. With serendipitous uptake by the government, combined with the economic downturn of late 2008, in early 2009 we pivoted from blist, rebranding as Socrata in May 2009. I served as the founder and CEO of Socrata (née blist) for 11 years, until the acquisition by Tyler.

Socrata helped define and shape a new software category - open data - in which governments make the data they collect and create available to the public in both human-readable and machine-readable formats. Today Socrata is the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for open data and data-driven government. Socrata raised $54M of venture capital and employs 150 of the most resourceful, passionate and creative individuals in industry.

Prior to founding Socrata (blist), I founded cloud-based email archiving company, MessageRite, in 2002. MessageRite merged with anti-spam and anti-virus company FrontBridge Technologies in 2004, forming a new software category - email hygiene. The combined company was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. After the acquisition I spent a couple of years at Microsoft as Director of Operations of one of its only, at that time, cloud-based, SaaS offerings - Exchange Hosted Services.

Early in my career I was a programmer, product manager, engineering manager and CTO. Of all the roles I’ve held, I’m proudest to be a founder and entrepreneur.