Avalara Founders

Scott McFarlane
Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avalara

Founder Scott McFarlane assumed the roles of President and Chief Executive Officer of Avalara in 2006. Prior to joining Avalara, Scott spent six years with Check Point Software Technologies, Inc. and was Vice President of Solutions and Strategies. In this capacity he oversaw all of business development, emerging markets, OPSEC partner alliances, product management and market segments on a worldwide basis. Prior to Check Point, Scott held a wide variety of other positions within the company from Vice President, Sales - Strategic Products to Vice President, Worldwide Sales Operations. In these capacities he was involved in virtually all areas of partner alliance, channel sales, product management and marketing. While at Check Point, the company grew from $100 million to almost $500 million in sales and 1,100 employees worldwide. Scott was one of the original employees of MetaInfo, Inc. joining the company in 1995 and serving as President. MetaInfo was acquired by Check Point Software Technologies in April 1998.

At the Meta IP Group, Scott oversaw daily operations, development and the worldwide sales operation. Under his guidance, the Meta IP Group grew from a staff of four to 70 and successfully released three award-winning products.

Scott has had a successful career in a wide variety of business environments, including working with rapidly growing start-up ventures in emerging markets. He places a priority on team building and the importance of core values throughout the organization. Today he sits on several boards in a variety of fields.

Prior to joining MetaInfo, Scott was Chief Operating Officer and program manager at Community Sector Systems, where he was instrumental in structuring the company and delivering PsychAccess, an electronic patient record system for the mental health industry. Prior to that, he was Vice President of development for AIRCOA, the largest independent hotel company in the U.S., where he was responsible for projects worth more than $750 million. He also served as president of one of its subsidiaries, creating the 10th largest design and purchasing company in the U.S. During his tenure, the company grew from 25 to 250 people at a corporate level and 20,000 employees nationwide. He was also a key member of the company's successful IPO and financing strategy that raised more than $50 million.

Scott earned a degree in economics from Claremont McKenna College in southern California in 1979. While in college, he co-founded NAS Fitness with his roommate and introduced and distributed Lifecycle, the most popular computerized bike in history.


Rory Rawlings
Founder and Chief Tax Automation Officer, Avalara

Rory Rawlings is the founder and Chief Tax Automation Officer of Avalara. In his early career as an accountant and CPA, he gained extensive experience with financial planning, business planning, profit analysis and tax research. Rory worked into a career in information technology at Boeing, where he wrote custom applications, and then with PowerCerv, which specialized in enterprise resource planning (ERP) for mid-sized companies, as a Senior Software Developer and Director of Professional Services for the West Region.

He then worked for PhotoDisc (now Getty Images) as the Director of IT. He spearheaded enterprise architecture and business planning and completed an customization and implementation of an ERP system. He designed several sales tax engines, which included full lifecycle design, development and implementation. He then joined BDO Seidman as the Senior Manager of Packaged Solutions where he was responsible for system selection and implementation. He has designed and developed a data warehousing and reporting application integrated with Scala and Crystal Reports with incorporated repository, multi-language capabilities and financial report structures in the database design. He was certified as a PowerBuilder Developer and instructor in Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD).

Rory currently has four patents related to sales tax technology and leads all development efforts for Avalara. He lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with his wife, Patricia Rawlings, and their two children, Matthew and Christina.

Jared Vogt
Founder and Chairman of the Board, Avalara

Founder Jared Vogt assumed the role of Chairman of the Board in 2007. Jared has been a pioneer in the technology industry for well over a decade. In 1994, he co-founded MetaInfo, Inc., a successful software developer in Seattle. The MetaInfo products provided core networking functionality for Internet systems and grew on the popularity of Microsoft Windows NT and the World Wide Web to rapidly become market leaders. With his team, Jared grew the business to more than 20,000 customers worldwide, selling exclusively over the Internet. Although mainstream today, this "go to market" strategy was in its infancy in 1994. MetaInfo employed some of the brightest minds in the world for IP addressing and was profitable within a month of opening its doors, ultimately sold it to Check Point Software in 1998.

MetaInfo was courted by Cisco, Nortel and Lucent, but Check Point was chosen because Jared believed that Internet security was a key enabler of the Internet itself. Jared believed that his company's technology would dovetail nicely with security.

After the acquisition of MetaInfo in 1998, Jared founded Trillium Lane in order to work with and invest in a number of technology startups in areas as diverse as digital media production, audio software and health care systems.