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Lew Cirne
Lew Cirne
Lew Cirne
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Lew Cirne is a Canadian-American Silicon Valley–based technologist and entrepreneur who promotes software analytics technology. He was the founder and CEO of Wily Technology, which was acquired by CA, Inc. in March 2006.[1] Cirne founded the company New Relic in 2008.[2] "New Relic" is an anagram of Lew Cirne's name.[2]

Key Information

Career

[edit]

Lew Cirne was raised in Port Hope, Ontario. His parents, Geoff and Jean Cirne, were immigrants to Canada from Manchester, England. Cirne attended Trinity College School and in 1993 received an A.B. from Dartmouth College with a major in computer science.[3] After college, Cirne held senior technical positions at Apple[4] and Hummingbird Communications.

In 1998, Cirne founded Wily Technology. He was responsible for developing Wily Technology's vision of enterprise class application performance management and is credited with bringing it to the Java platform. Cirne was one of the chief technologists and driving force in enterprise application performance and availability. He served as Wily Technology's president and chief executive officer until October 2001.[5]

In 2008, Cirne began focusing on software as a service (SaaS) while an entrepreneur in residence for Benchmark Capital and founded New Relic. New Relic is a provider of Web application performance management. New Relic's technology monitors Web and mobile applications in real-time that run in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.[6]

Cirne stepped down as CEO on July 1, 2021, becoming executive chairman of the company's board of directors. Former Microsoft and Adobe vice president Bill Staples became CEO.[7][8]

Contributions

[edit]

Cirne has been described as a pioneer in the development of application performance management (APM).[9][10] He holds 19 patents in this area of expertise.[11] Cirne has also made major contributions to several other software systems.[citation needed]

In 2006, Cirne and Wily chairman David Strohm announced a $1 million gift to Dartmouth College. The gift supported the creation of an endowed scholarship called the Wily Scholars Fund, and to establish a fund for undergraduate internships in early-stage technology companies, called the Wily Initiative Fund.[12]

In 2016, Cirne funded two full scholarships, and the construction of the Cirne Learning Commons, at Trinity College School.[13][14]

Cirne is sometimes referred to as the "Coding CEO".[15] He dedicates every Thursday and Friday to coding.[3] Cirne has been known to take week-long coding retreats at his Lake Tahoe cabin, often inviting New Relic developers.[16]

Accolades

[edit]

Cirne was named as a finalist in the 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California.[17]

In 2024, Cirne was inducted into the Dartmouth Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame.[18]

References

[edit]
[edit]
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Lew Cirne

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Lew Cirne is a Canadian-American software engineer, entrepreneur, and technology executive renowned for founding Wily Technology in 1998 and , Inc. in 2008, both pioneering companies in (APM) software. As the founder and longtime CEO of , he led the company from its inception in his living room to a publicly traded SaaS powerhouse that was acquired in 2023 by private equity firms and TPG for $6.5 billion, serving over 85,000 customers worldwide as of 2025. Cirne holds 19 patents in software systems and is recognized as a "Coding CEO" for his hands-on approach to development, including annual coding retreats and prototyping sessions. Born in , , Cirne developed an early passion for software at age 12 when his parents gifted him a Commodore computer, sparking a lifelong fascination with coding and technology. As the only child of immigrants from who arrived in in 1966, he became the first in his extended family to attend college, attending on financial aid and earning an A.B. in in 1993. Dartmouth's strong program and emphasis on broad profoundly influenced his career trajectory, blending technical expertise with strategic vision. Cirne began his professional career as a software engineer at Apple in 1992, followed by a role at Hummingbird Ltd., a Toronto-based enterprise software firm. In 1998, he founded Wily Technology with $35,000 from seven friends, developing innovative APM tools that addressed software performance bottlenecks; the company was acquired by CA Technologies in 2006 for $375 million. Drawing on this experience, Cirne launched New Relic in 2008 as CEO and board member, growing it into a leader in observability platforms for web and mobile applications, with the company achieving a 45% revenue increase in fiscal 2017 and going public in 2014. He transitioned from CEO in July 2021 to Executive Chairman before the 2023 acquisition, during which he rolled over a portion of his stake to support the deal. As of November 2025, Cirne serves as Founder of New Relic, Strategic Limited Partner at Four Rivers Group, and Founder and CEO of The Gamaliel Project, while contributing to philanthropy, including a $1 million gift to Dartmouth in 2006 to establish the Wily Scholars Fund and Wily Initiative Fund for computer science initiatives.

Early life and education

Childhood and early interests

Lew Cirne was born in 1970 in , Canada, to English immigrant parents who had moved from , , to in 1966, establishing him as a Canadian-American technologist. As their only child, he grew up in , a small town about an hour east of , where his working-class parents had settled. A pivotal family influence came in 1982, when Cirne was 12 years old and his parents bought him a Commodore computer for Christmas, igniting his passion for programming and software creation. This early access led him to pursue self-taught coding projects during high school, including co-creating a computer game that secured his first publishing contract, fostering a profound fascination with computers well before any formal training. These formative experiences in technology and personal development set the stage for his later university studies in .

Academic background

Cirne attended , a private boarding school in , graduating with the class of 1989. Cirne then enrolled at on financial aid, with his parents investing their retirement savings to support his education; as the first in his extended family to attend university, he was drawn to Dartmouth's intimate, small-town campus environment and its commitment to a broad, interdisciplinary education. He earned an A.B. in in 1993. Dartmouth's program, renowned for its rigor, was complemented by the institution's liberal arts tradition, which included courses in and classical studies—fields Cirne briefly explored before focusing on . This blend shaped his innovative problem-solving approach and entrepreneurial perspective, emphasizing not just technical proficiency but also creative and ethical dimensions of technology. The college's early adoption of Apple Macintosh computers in 1989 further honed his skills, aligning with his longstanding interest in programming.

Professional career

Early positions in technology

After earning an A.B. in from in 1993, Lew Cirne joined Apple Computer as a senior software engineer. In this role, he contributed to the development of and developer tools for the Macintosh operating system, focusing on engineering challenges in large-scale software projects during the mid-1990s. His work at Apple spanned approximately three years, providing foundational experience in and organizational management within a major technology firm. Cirne later transitioned to Hummingbird Communications, a Toronto-based company, where he served in a senior engineering position for about two years around 1996–1997. There, he focused on development, including early explorations of technology and contributions to performance optimization in software products amid the booming demand for scalable business applications. His responsibilities involved leading development efforts and addressing key pain points in software performance, which honed his technical leadership skills in a smaller, more agile environment compared to Apple. By 1997, Cirne's experiences in these roles fueled his growing interest in startups and innovative software solutions, prompting his shift toward entrepreneurship.

Founding and leading Wily Technology

In 1998, Lew Cirne founded Wily Technology in his living room in Santa Cruz, California, initially operating as a solo venture to address challenges in application performance monitoring. Drawing on his prior engineering experience at Apple and Hummingbird Communications, Cirne bootstrapped the company with a focus on innovative software solutions for enterprise environments. This humble beginning marked his transition from corporate engineering roles to entrepreneurship, setting the stage for Wily's rapid evolution in the burgeoning field of application management. Central to Wily's offerings was Introscope, its flagship product developed under Cirne's leadership, which enabled real-time monitoring and analysis of application performance in production environments. Introscope provided end-to-end visibility into application transactions, helping enterprises detect bottlenecks, isolate issues, and minimize downtime for large-scale systems. This tool quickly gained traction by offering customizable dashboards and method-level insights, distinguishing Wily from competitors in the early days of web-enabled applications. As president and CEO from 1998 to 2001, and subsequently as until 2006, Cirne guided Wily's expansion to serve approximately 450 enterprise clients worldwide, including major organizations such as DaimlerChrysler, , , and Cingular. The company's growth reflected increasing demand for reliable performance management in mission-critical systems across sectors like , , and . Under Cirne's direction, Wily achieved consistent growth, culminating in its acquisition by in March 2006 for $375 million in cash, which validated the company's innovative approach and provided a significant exit for its founder.

Establishing and growing New Relic

In 2008, Lew Cirne founded in , launching it as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform focused on (APM) to help developers monitor and optimize software in real time. Drawing briefly from his prior experience selling Wily Technology, Cirne envisioned a cloud-native solution that addressed the limitations of on-premises tools, emphasizing ease of deployment and scalability for growing digital applications. A deliberate choice was to base the company's engineering headquarters in Portland rather than , aiming to tap into the city's talent pool and foster a distinct culture away from high-cost tech hubs. Cirne served as New Relic's CEO from its inception through May 2021, guiding the company through rapid expansion and strategic pivots. Under his leadership, New Relic went public in December 2014 via an (IPO) on the , raising approximately $115 million and achieving an initial exceeding $1.4 billion. The firm subsequently grew to a multi-billion-dollar valuation, fueled by increasing adoption among enterprises and startups, and broadened its offerings beyond core APM into comprehensive and full-stack monitoring capabilities, integrating metrics, logs, traces, and events into a unified platform. This evolution positioned New Relic as a leader in software analytics, serving millions of users including Fortune 100 companies. In May 2021, Cirne transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman, handing operational leadership to Bill Staples while retaining significant board influence on strategy and innovation. Key milestones under this phase included the July 2023 acquisition by firms and TPG for $6.5 billion in an all-cash deal at $87 per share, taking the company private and providing resources for further growth. As of 2025, continues to evolve its products, incorporating AI-powered insights for predictive monitoring and achieving reported returns on investments for users, with Cirne's ongoing board role shaping these advancements amid rising demand for intelligent, full-stack solutions.

Technological contributions

Pioneering application performance management

In the late , Lew Cirne founded Wily Technology and invented Introscope, the pioneering tool for end-to-end monitoring of applications, which addressed critical visibility gaps in by enabling real-time diagnostics without requiring code modifications. Developed in 1999, Introscope utilized to insert monitoring probes into running programs, providing developers and IT teams with granular insights into application performance across distributed systems. This innovation marked a departure from traditional server-level monitoring, offering transaction-level that revealed bottlenecks in complex, web-based environments. Cirne is widely recognized as the creator of the multi-billion-dollar (APM) market, fundamentally shifting the industry's approach from reactive firefighting of outages to proactive diagnostics that prevent performance degradation. By introducing automated, real-time analytics, Introscope empowered organizations to optimize software before user impact, establishing APM as an essential discipline for modern enterprise IT. During the dot-com era, Cirne faced significant challenges in validating the need for such real-time analytics in distributed systems, as enterprises were initially skeptical of investing in tools for Java-based web applications amid the 2000-2001 bust, leaving Wily with just four months of at one point. Despite these hurdles, Cirne's persistence in demonstrating Introscope's value—through pilots showing rapid issue resolution in production—proved instrumental in gaining traction among early adopters like major banks. Wily's technology, including Introscope, exerted lasting influence on APM standards following its 2006 acquisition by for $375 million, where it formed the core of CA's service assurance portfolio and set benchmarks for transaction tracing and root-cause analysis in enterprise monitoring. This integration helped standardize proactive performance practices across the industry, with Introscope's methods adopted in subsequent tools at companies like .

Advancements in software observability

Under Lew Cirne's leadership, expanded its platform beyond initial (APM) capabilities following its 2008 launch, evolving into a comprehensive solution by incorporating diverse data sources such as metrics, traces, logs, and events. This shift culminated in the 2019 introduction of One, described as the industry's first entity-centric platform, which unified full-stack monitoring across , applications, and user experiences in cloud-native environments. By enabling seamless ingestion of from open and third-party sources, the platform addressed the complexities of modern distributed systems, allowing teams to correlate data for faster issue resolution. Cirne advocated for "software analytics" as a critical discipline for digital businesses, positioning it as a means to derive actionable insights from vast performance datasets to optimize user satisfaction and operational efficiency. He emphasized metrics like , an for measuring application responsiveness from the end-user perspective, which adopted early to quantify satisfaction thresholds and guide performance improvements. This focus on analytics extended observability beyond technical diagnostics, enabling business stakeholders to align software performance with strategic goals such as revenue impact and . Cirne's contributions to open-source initiatives further advanced industry standards for , with actively supporting projects like OpenTelemetry for standardized collection and the (CNCF) for cloud-native tooling. Through thought leadership in keynotes and partnerships, he promoted transparency in code performance by integrating open-source into platforms, fostering and reducing for developers. These efforts built on his earlier APM innovations at Wily Technology, extending them to encourage broader adoption of observable, resilient software architectures. As Executive Chairman since 2021, Cirne has guided New Relic's integration of AI-driven capabilities, including Applied Intelligence for and across full-stack data, as well as tools for monitoring AI workloads like large models in production environments. By 2024, these advancements incorporated querying of for rapid insights, enhancing in complex, AI-augmented systems. In May 2025, New Relic integrated with Copilot's agentic coding capabilities, further advancing AI-assisted development and . His oversight has also emphasized for emerging paradigms like , ensuring platform compatibility with distributed edge deployments to maintain performance in low-latency scenarios.

Awards and recognition

Entrepreneurial honors

In 2013, Lew Cirne was named a finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year award in the region, an accolade that highlighted the rapid growth and innovative business model of under his leadership. This recognition underscored his success in scaling a software startup from inception to a significant player in the enterprise technology sector. Cirne's entrepreneurial achievements were further acknowledged in 2017 when he was included in The SaaS Report's Top 50 SaaS CEOs list, which celebrated leaders driving the expansion of cloud-based software analytics and services. The selection emphasized his strategic vision in building into a high-growth SaaS company focused on performance monitoring. That same year, profiled Cirne as a "CEO Coder" in a feature article, praising his unique blend of executive oversight and hands-on technical coding that fueled entrepreneurial at . This distinction spotlighted his active involvement in product development as a key factor in the company's startup success. Cirne also received honors within startup ecosystems through high-profile invitations, such as delivering the keynote address at the Oregon Technology Awards in 2017, organized by the Technology Association of Oregon, where he shared insights on scaling tech ventures. Such engagements affirmed his status as a influential figure in fostering entrepreneurial communities. In 2024, Cirne was inducted into Dartmouth College's Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, recognizing his foundational role in pioneering through Wily Technology and .

Industry and leadership accolades

Lew Cirne is recognized as a pioneer of modern application performance management (APM) through his foundational work at Wily Technology and New Relic. This attribution highlights his technical innovations in monitoring software performance, influencing the broader observability landscape in enterprise technology. Prior to his transition from CEO in 2021, Cirne was rated in the top 10% of CEOs for companies of similar size (1,001-5,000 employees) in San Francisco on Comparably, with an overall score of 78/100 based on 383 employee ratings, reflecting strong perceptions of his executive guidance and company culture. Earlier assessments, such as in 2017, ranked him #29 among the best CEOs of large companies based on employee feedback, underscoring consistent praise for his market influence and team management. Cirne's serial entrepreneurship has earned him invitations to prestigious academic events, including speaking engagements at Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series in 2014, where he discussed scaling ventures and innovation strategies. Similarly, his experiences have been featured in Harvard Business School case studies, such as "Founder-CEO Succession at Wily Technology," which examines his leadership transitions and has been used to teach executive decision-making in firms. Following his 2021 transition from CEO to executive chairman at , Cirne received industry recognition for guiding the company's strategic shift to a consumption-based model and ensuring continuity amid challenges. TechCrunch highlighted his role in rebuilding the firm over several years and his endorsement of the subsequent go-private deal in 2023 as executive chairman, affirming his enduring impact on the company's direction.

Philanthropy

Establishment of family foundations

In 2012, Lew Cirne co-founded the Beloved in Christ Foundation alongside his wife, Kirsten Cirne, as a family philanthropic vehicle to support various charitable causes. The foundation was formally established as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2015 and manages an endowment of approximately $148 million as of 2023, primarily derived from Cirne's proceeds from technology business exits. Its mission centers on partnering with servant-hearted individuals and organizations to address needs through investments in food, shelter, education, transportation, and healthcare, with a particular emphasis on Christian ministries, educational programs, and global health initiatives. Cirne plays an active role in the foundation's governance as director and , while he and his wife serve on advisory councils and boards for select grantees, including YoungLife International—a Christian —and CURE International, which provides surgical care for children with treatable conditions in low-resource settings. The foundation's grants support worldwide efforts, including schools, camps, and churches, reflecting a commitment to faith-based and humanitarian priorities. In 2025, Cirne established The Project as an extension of his family's philanthropic work, fully funded by the Beloved in Christ Foundation to advance faith-based initiatives through technology. Named after a biblical figure known for , the project develops AI tools to help users read, understand, and engage more deeply with the , aiming to make scripture accessible and insightful for broader audiences without any cost to participants. Cirne's philanthropic structures also maintain ties to his alma maters. As a alumnus (class of 1993), he contributed a $1 million gift in 2006 to endow scholarships for students and establish a fund for undergraduate internships in early-stage companies. Separately, the Beloved in Christ Foundation served as the lead donor for the renovation and naming of Cirne Hall at in —his high school alma mater (class of 1989)—which includes upgraded library, academic support, and administrative facilities to enhance educational resources.

Major donations and initiatives

In 2016, Lew Cirne established the Cirne National Scholarships at in , providing full-tuition boarding awards to promising Canadian students entering grades 9 through 11. These merit-based scholarships aim to support talented youth from diverse backgrounds, fostering opportunities in education with an emphasis on and STEM fields. Cirne has also supported faith-based and community initiatives through his involvement in the Palau Experience, a program promoting spiritual growth and cultural immersion in . Along with his wife, Kirsten Vliet Cirne, he serves on the host committee, contributing to efforts that blend —aligned with Palau's renowned conservation commitments—with faith-driven outreach and global ministry. Their participation underscores a commitment to projects that integrate personal values of service and sustainability, particularly in 2025 amid ongoing international engagements. A notable philanthropic effort involved disaster relief, as in September , when the Beloved in Christ Foundation, overseen by Cirne and his family, pledged support for victims of Oregon wildfires that scorched over 1 million acres. This initiative, funded partly through stock donations, provided aid for recovery in affected communities, reflecting Cirne's focus on immediate humanitarian response. However, Cirne's giving has faced scrutiny, particularly in 2020 when employees raised concerns about the alignment between his personal philanthropic choices and the company's inclusive culture. Internal discussions highlighted tensions over donations to organizations perceived as conflicting with diversity commitments, such as contributions to Faith Academy, which excludes LGBTQ+ students, and support for evangelist Sid Roth. Employees reported a sense of cultural mismatch, leading to lowered and calls for greater transparency in how leadership values intersect with corporate ethos. Cirne addressed the unrest in company memos, emphasizing a return to business priorities amid the debates.

References

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