Software Combined appoints Brent Maxwell as group CTO

Software Combined, the permanent capital acquirer of B2B software businesses across ANZ and Benelux, has appointed Brent Maxwell as the group’s first group CTO.

The appointment creates a dedicated group-level technical function across Software Combined's 13 portfolio businesses, each independently run at different stages of AI adoption and development velocity.

His brief will be to work alongside each business individually providing enablement support tailored to the unique needs of each business across the group.  

As Group CTO, Maxwell's focus spans AI readiness and development velocity across the portfolio, technical due diligence on future acquisitions, and building out technical leadership capability across the group. 

He brings more than a decade of technical leadership across high-growth software businesses, including three prior CTO appointments and a senior architecture role at AWS to drive cloud adoption with strategic partners across APAC.  

Most recently, at Synthetix, a FinTech business, he rebuilt the technology function from the ground up, redesigning the organisation around AI-driven development and delivering a high-frequency derivatives exchange in four months.

"We've acquired 13 businesses. In every one of them, the founders built something genuinely worth growing, not just maintaining. Our job is to continue their mission and take it further," Evert den Hollander, co-founder and CEO of Software Combined, said.

"Brent's job is to make sure the technical and innovation capabilities of these businesses keep pace with the opportunity ahead of them." 

"The conversations happening across the tech community right now aren't about whether to adopt AI, they're about pace and depth. How fast, how embedded, how real," Stefan Jansen, co-founder and CRO of Software Combined, said.

"Brent has lived and delivered on those questions. His job is to bring that into our group: not as a future initiative, but as the work we're doing right now." 

"Software Combined backs its businesses and the people inside them for the long term, that's not common in this space," said Maxwell.

"My job is to work alongside teams that are already excellent and help them move faster, bring the pace and depth of AI development into businesses that are ready for it.

"Thirteen portfolio companies and growing. That's a real opportunity."