Christopher Picarde

Christopher, tell us about your career history and expertise

For the past 11 years, I worked in AI revenue enablement at Bigtincan, which I joined at a very early stage, with just a few million in revenue. The business was founded in Sydney, Australia, and quickly became global, with an expansion into Boston, US and the UK.

During my time there, we grew the business to over $100 million in revenue in a highly competitive market. I built and led global sales teams across three continents and spent a lot of time focusing on cross-functional alignment – working closely with marketing, customer success and business development teams to make sure we were delivering consistent value to customers. A major part of that success came from helping customers adopt AI-powered workflows that integrated directly into the tools they used every day. As software continues to move towards meeting users in their daily workflows rather than forcing them into new ones, my work centered on making sure our solutions were embedded and intuitive.

But overall, my career has ultimately been about helping sales and marketing teams be more effective with the tools, messaging and content they use every day. My role evolved from being one of the early sales reps to leading global revenue, with a strong focus on helping customers see continuous value from the platform and building a scalable go-to-market approach.

What first attracted you to Summize?

I first spoke with Summize’s CEO Tom Dunlope around six months before I joined, and I was immediately excited by his vision for the business. It reminded me a lot of my early days in revenue enablement, where you could see meaningful investment starting to flow into a space that was ready for change. What stood out was how proactively Summize was educating the market – not just selling a product but helping understand the value of CLM, AI-powered workflows and automation. Through conversations with the wider leadership team, it was clear there was strong alignment around where the business was heading and how to get there.

I was also drawn to the focus on meeting end users where they work. That was a big driver of success in my previous roles, and seeing Summize take that same approach of putting powerful technology in the hands of users really resonated with me.

What does it mean to be CRO at Summize?

At a high level, the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is a role responsible for full-cycle revenue, but at Summize it’s really about bringing a global organization together. The company has grown so quickly into a truly international business, with sales teams across the US and UK, and my role is to build on that momentum. That means helping the team evolve from what’s already been a successful journey into a more repeatable, scalable revenue motion. It’s about refining our messaging, aligning how we operate across regions and making sure we’re set up for the next phase of growth.

Day to day, the role is highly cross-functional. I work closely with marketing, customer success, product and engineering to share what we’re seeing in the field and make sure we’re adapting campaigns, positioning and priorities based on real customer feedback. Alignment across teams is critical, especially in a global organization operating across time zones.

What do you find most interesting about the legal tech space?

Legal tech is an incredibly exciting space because it’s historically been slower to adopt technology than other functions like sales and marketing. That creates a significant opportunity for innovation and transformation.

From my previous experience selling into a wide range of organizations, I’d already seen many of the challenges around contracts, procurement and workflows, and how different those processes can look depending on maturity. I was surprised by how many businesses are still early in their Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) journey, alongside others who are starting to realize the full value of modern contract management.

With the rapid evolution of AI over the last couple of years, the timing feels right. The combination of intelligent workflows, automation and natural language interaction has the potential to fundamentally change how legal teams operate, and Summize is well positioned to be part of that shift.

What does the future look like at Summize, and what are you most excited about?

My focus when it comes to the future is building on the strong foundation already in place. That means making sure we have the right coverage across go-to-market to support customers effectively, while also building a long-term pipeline that supports sustainable growth.

The US represents a particularly significant growth opportunity, and expanding our presence across regions will allow us to better support customers coast to coast. More broadly, success for me looks like taking Summize into our next phase of growth while continuing to scale the team globally.

What I’m most proud of in my career is the teams I’ve built, and that’s something I’m continuing at Summize. If we can grow a high-performing, aligned go-to-market organization that helps customers unlock real value and productivity gains, we’ll know we’ve got it right.