Innovation at Scale: My Journey with Keith Krach from Purdue to DocuSign and Beyond
Right from the start, I knew Keith was one-of-a-kind. Whip-smart. Funny. A real “I’d-follow-you-anywhere leader. After college I joined him at GMFanuc Robotics, a joint venture between GM and Fanuc, the Japanese robotics company. Keith quickly rose to the top and, at 26, became GM’s youngest-ever VP. He led an amazing team of young engineers to sell 942 robots in a single year—a moonshot at the time. Fanuc is now the largest provider of industrial robots in the world source.
In the late ‘80s, Keith moved west to test his mettle in Silicon Valley. He joined the four other founders of Rasna, focusing on providing sophisticated analytical software for the everyday design engineer. The company combined computer aided design (CAD) with Analysis software, to invent GEA technology and created a new category: Design Optimization. Rasna then expanded the category to Mechanical Design Synthesis. Under Keith’s leadership as the COO, Rasna grew quickly and was about to file for an IPO with Morgan Stanley, when Parametric Technology swooped in and acquired us.
