SpringSmart Our Firm

SpringSmart Inc. specializes in helping companies build value through smart strategy and effective action. SpringSmart validates business opportunities, develops clearly differentiated positioning, executes effective go-to-market programs and builds partnerships. SpringSmart brings experience, perspective, and focus on results to ventures seeking fast, profitable growth.

Founded in 2000, SpringSmart specializes in technology-based businesses including software providers and web-based firms. SpringSmart principals have decades of management and operational experience in strategy, marketing and business development, product management, development and application at start-up and established ventures.

Elan Long

Elan Long excels at helping new and established ventures accelerate their growth by targeting and capturing new markets. She helps clients understand their markets and customers so they can clearly differentiate their products in ways that matter.

Before starting SpringSmart, Elan built product management organizations and methodologies that enabled faster and more profitable product launches. She took a wide range of new and revamped products and services to market worldwide and expanded distribution channels. And, she led acquisitions initiatives and transformed processes in support of strategic growth plans, successfully improving performance by targeting, evaluating, integrating and repositioning businesses.

Elan has worked in strategy and marketing for new and established ventures in technology, information publishing, and business services including SPSS, CIMCORP, GCA Corporation, Simon & Schuster, and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. She holds a Masters in Business Administration degree from Columbia University in the City of New York and a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from the University of Virginia. She has published and lectured on data analysis, technology, marketing, and management.

Douglas Watt

At SpringSmart, Doug works with new ventures to develop and execute business and product strategies, and to evaluate new technologies. Doug’s expertise in data collection, management analysis and reporting and in complex computing and communications systems is highly regarded. In technical and implementation decisions, Doug always brings the customer’s perspective and requirements to the forefront. He excels in developing and executing plans that move the business ahead, reduce time to market and create loyal, satisfied customers.

Doug has held executive management or senior technical positions at Brooks Automation, AutoSimulations, CIMCORP, ITT and Bell Labs. Doug has a B.Sc. from Southampton University, UK and has attended courses at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University. Doug has published and lectured on various software automation topics and served on a number of software standards committees.

Louise Rehling

Louise Rehling has deep experience in building and managing highly effective software development organizations. Louise has been involved in all the stages of growth of technology companies through IPO and beyond and has played a key role in enabling that growth by putting the organization and management team in place that can do the job. She has been responsible for the development of world-class products, from enterprise to shrink-wrap to web-based product portfolios, managing large world-wide development teams. Louise has taken a leadership role in realizing growth through acquisition by selecting, assessing, and integrating businesses and technologies. Many people whom she hired and mentored have gone on to successful careers in technology as high-level managers and lead developers.

Louise has a B.S. degree from the University of Illinois in Mathematics and two Masters Degrees from the University of Chicago in Psychology and Information Sciences. She was the Executive Vice President for Product Development at SPSS (NASDAQ: SPSS) and the Vice President for Product Development at Interface Software.