Rocket Fuel (FUEL) CEO John Resigns; Will Remain as Chairman; Interim Appointee Named

Rocket Fuel (NASDAQ: FUEL) announced it will begin the process to identify a successor to the company’s Chief Executive Officer, George John.

Mr. John, a co-founder who has led the company since 2008, will remain Chairman of the Board and have an active role, focusing on acquiring and developing strategic customer relationships. Monte Zweben, an accomplished marketing and technology executive and Rocket Fuel Board member since 2010, has been appointed interim CEO while the company searches for a full-time replacement.

“After building an impressive next-generation executive staff, the last piece of which was our new Chief Revenue Officer Randy Wootton, I realized the time is right to identify a successor as CEO to help Rocket Fuel achieve its financial goals and guide it through its next stage of growth,” Mr. John said. “Managing Rocket Fuel to profitability is a very different challenge than the growth-focused mode of the past few years. Throughout his career Monte has provided operational leadership through different stages of corporate growth from start up companies to billion dollar enterprises. He also shares the same passion for AI, Big Data, marketing and technology that we all have at Rocket Fuel.”

Mr. John led Rocket Fuel from a concept in March 2008 to a global public company with over $400 million in revenue from software products and media products sold to ad agencies and marketers. The company's 2014 revenue represented growth of 70% over 2013, with 130% revenue retention from 2013 customers. Deloitte ranked the company #1 on its Technology Fast 500 list in 2013, as the fastest-growing technology company in North America, and #15 on the list for 2014.

“We are grateful for George’s exceptional leadership and his contributions to Rocket Fuel’s growth,” said Clark Kokich, Rocket Fuel’s Lead Independent Director. “Monte’s experience makes him the ideal interim CEO to help the company achieve its financial goals for 2015. With George serving in an active role driving strategic customer development and acquisition, Rocket Fuel intends to accelerate the realization of the Company’s long term vision to expand its business by bringing a unified digital marketing platform to agencies and enterprise marketers.”

The Board of Directors has formed a CEO search committee, of which Mr. John is a member and will engage a leading executive search firm to help identify candidates as expeditiously as possible. Rocket Fuel is seeking a CEO with a proven track record of success in scaling to a multi-billion dollar global company; achieving and driving profitability; and global expertise in bringing enterprise technology to market.

About Monte Zweben

Mr. Zweben has extensive experience in AI, Big Data, marketing and media technology, enterprise software and public company management. His early career was spent with the NASA Ames Research Center’s Artificial Intelligence Branch. Mr. Zweben then founded and was CEO of Red Pepper Software, a leading supply chain optimization company, which merged with PeopleSoft. He then ran PeopleSoft’s largest business unit as General Manager and Vice President of its Manufacturing Business Unit. Mr. Zweben founded and was CEO of Blue Martini Software – the leader in e-commerce and multi-channel systems for marketing retailers. Following Blue Martini, he was chairman of SeeSaw Networks, a digital, place-based media company. Mr. Zweben’s newest venture, Splice Machine, delivers the Hadoop RDBMS, an alternative to Oracle, to scale real-time applications using commodity hardware without application rewrites.

Mr. Zweben is the co-author of the book Intelligent Scheduling and has published articles in the Harvard Business Review and various computer science journals and conference proceedings. He serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board for Carnegie-Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. Mr. Zweben has a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and earned an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Business Outlook

The Company reiterates its business outlook for the first quarter of 2015, which was originally provided in a press release dated February 19, 2015.

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