Rick Altinger, Glooko

When Glooko brought Altinger on board as CEO four years ago, there was worry in some camps about a potential culture clash. You could’ve trotted out every stereotype in the book: supposedly flashy mobile-era tech player (with offices in Palo Alto to boot) hires old-world, sober-minded exec with years of experience (nearly 20 years now, including a stint at Intuit Health), and each has a wet-blanket effect on the other. As it turned out, it was a perfect match: Altinger’s steadying hand as the company’s first official CEO helped spur huge growth. In the last few years, Glooko – a maker of a remote patient-monitoring platform for diabetes – has inked deals with Roche, Medtronic and Novo Nordisk and merged with fellow diabetes-management company Diasend to expand its reach into 23 countries. The Novo agreement, announced in January, calls for the development of a range of jointly branded digital-health solutions for diabetes management. Altinger has big expectations: In the launch announcement, he said he expects the partnership “to empower tens of millions of patients.”