Suggestions
Axe Novotny
Senior Solution Engineer at Oracle
Professional Background
Axe Novotny is an accomplished Senior Sales Engineer with a wealth of experience in the fields of Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and Subscription Management. Over the years, Axe has curated an impressive professional journey that showcases both his technical acumen and his remarkable interpersonal skills. Starting from humble beginnings as a Counter Intelligence Non-Commissioned Officer in the US Army, Axe has transitioned to become a pivotal player in the tech industry, particularly in software sales and engineering.
His current role at Oracle as a Senior Solution Engineer specializing in CPQ Cloud and Subscription Management highlights his expertise in these niche technologies. Here, Axe leverages his extensive background to deliver tailored solutions that enable customers to optimize their sales processes and enhance subscription management capabilities. His passion for CPQ and Subscription Management is not just a professional trait but a personal enthusiasm that he believes can be infectious, significantly benefiting his current and prospective customers.
Prior to his position at Oracle, Axe demonstrated his technical capabilities at Salesforce, where he held several important roles including Technical Account Manager, Platform Lead Solution Engineer for Healthcare and Life Sciences (HLS), and CPQ Practice Lead. His tenure at Salesforce provided him with a robust foundation in cloud solutions, positioning him as a thought leader in the CPQ space.
Axe's expertise is further complemented by his previous positions as a Salesforce Solutions Architect/Developer at Generation Tux, and a Programmer Analyst II/Salesforce System Administrator/Developer at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). His career also spans financial domains, where he served as a Financial Analyst and Portfolio Manager at both UCSF and Stanford University, showcasing his versatility and commitment to excellence across different fields.
Education and Achievements
Axe is a firm believer in the power of education and continuous learning, as evidenced by his impressive academic credentials. He holds a Master's Degree in Computer and Information Sciences from Northwestern University, where he achieved a remarkable GPA of 3.9 out of 4.0. This advanced degree underscores his commitment to understanding the complexities of technology and its applications in business solutions.
His academic journey began with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Accounting from Grand Canyon University, where he also maintained a GPA of 3.90. This solid foundation in accounting has equipped Axe with a strong analytical mindset that is crucial in his roles within software engineering and sales, especially when dealing with intricate pricing models and financial analysis related to subscription services.
In addition to his degrees, Axe has pursued personal development opportunities through esteemed organizations, such as studying Arabic at the Defense Language Institute. His dedication to learning is further highlighted by his engagement with Salesforce's Trailhead platform, where he has honed his skills in Salesforce across various domains, earning over 500 badges and demonstrating his commitment to lifelong learning and professional excellence.
Axe’s military background has also instilled in him a strong sense of discipline and leadership, qualities that have served him well throughout his career. His passion for technology, combined with his analytical strengths and rich experience, makes him a dynamic force in the tech and sales landscapes.
Achievements
Axe has consistently demonstrated his ability to drive results and innovate within his field. His achievements include:
- Senior Solution Engineer at Oracle: Focused on CPQ Cloud and Subscription Management, where he has played a crucial role in helping organizations streamline their sales processes and enhance customer engagement.
- Helped Propel Business Growth: At Salesforce, he contributed significantly to the business growth of teams and clients by implementing effective solution strategies, enhancing client relations, and ensuring that customers fully realized the potential of their Salesforce implementations.
- Leadership in CPQ Solutions: As CPQ Practice Lead at SNAP Business Intelligence Consulting, he spearheaded initiatives that educated clients about the complexities and advantages of CPQ systems, which solidified his reputation as a thought leader in this area.
- Diverse Expertise in Financial Analysis and Technology: His broad experience in financial analysis and technology development across prestigious institutions such as UCSF and Stanford University indicates a well-rounded and multifaceted professional who can address challenges from various angles.
- Commitment to Professional Growth: Axe is dedicated to continuous personal and professional enhancement, evident in his active involvement in learning platforms like Salesforce Trailhead, where he stays ahead of trends and technologies, ensuring he can provide cutting-edge solutions to his clients.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Axe Novotny is an exemplary professional whose career is marked by dedication to technology solutions, impressive educational accomplishments, and a distinct ability to engage with clients effectively. His journey from military service to a formidable presence in the tech and sales arenas exemplifies resilience, adaptability, and a lifelong commitment to learning. With his expertise in CPQ and Subscription Management, Axe continues to influence positively those around him, steering businesses toward success through innovative strategies and genuine enthusiasm for his work.
Location
People also viewed
Related People
Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.