After more than two decades of technical vision and European roots, OutSystems is entering a new chapter. Founder Paulo Rosado, who has been the face of the company for many years, is handing over the reins to Woodson Martin. The former Salesforce executive brings a strong commercial focus and a clear ambition: to expand OutSystems’ presence.
Until the spring of 2025, OutSystems was still led by its founder. Portuguese entrepreneur Paulo Rosado founded the company in 2001, intending to transform how business software is developed. He brought deep technical expertise, drawing on his earlier entrepreneurial venture Intervento, a company specializing in e-business software infrastructure, as well as experience in Oracle’s R&D department and a strong academic background in technology.
Under Rosado’s leadership, OutSystems has come a long way. Its foundation in Europe and its rare focus on this region within the IT world have proven successful. The software development platform experienced rapid growth, and during Rosado’s two decades as CEO, the company weathered several waves of technological change, including the rise and quiet decline of low-code.
Today, OutSystems is adapting once again, this time to the rise of AI agents. This follows its earlier step into AI with the launch of Mentor. A separate article will explore how Mentor and the new Agent Workbench complement each other. For now, we take a closer look at the company’s new CEO and his plans for further growth in Europe and beyond.
Read also: OutSystems makes Agent Workbench generally available
Commercial versus technical experience
OutSystems is certainly no stranger in the European app development scene. According to OutSystems, visitor numbers at this year’s ONE Conference are incredibly high. More than 4,000 visitors are exchanging ideas in the Portuguese building. This year, the conference is being held in the country of the founder, Rosado. He makes a brief appearance on stage to say that he is enjoying his retirement and “sleeping in.” He, however, still has a grip on the company in his new role as a member of the OutSystems board.
Of the few thousand visitors, the majority are familiar with OutSystems as customers or partners. At the same time, a conference remains a great place to attract new customers or give them that extra push to commit to a software solution. “Hundreds of companies here are still at the beginning of their journey and may be evaluating OutSystems for the first time. Others have just started their first project but are trying to figure out where this is going,” says Martin. “OutSystems has a great community of thousands of customers who use the product to build business applications. This organic growth will further strengthen our business.”
With more than 20 years of existence in Europe, market saturation is a growing bottleneck. This is where the change of CEO plays the most significant role. Martin’s strength lies in the commercial side of entrepreneurship, whereas Rosado excels in technical knowledge. Martin brings 18 years of Salesforce experience, including the expansion of AppExchange into the world’s largest enterprise cloud marketplace.
In his new role as CEO at OutSystems, Martin would like to redo that project. Martin sees North America as an ideal location to start. He is playing on home turf there, because, unlike the Portuguese Rosado, there is now an American in the office. He developed an affinity for the European market by living in Paris and London for several years. He will have to draw most on his American experience in the expansion strategy: “We have a strong presence in Europe, but the US market offers enormous opportunities for platforms like ours.”
Strategy for growth
Martin will reuse the ideas he gained at Salesforce to enter the American market. Specifically, he is implementing the V2MOM framework (Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures) to align and execute. “At Salesforce, we learned how a strong ecosystem accelerates growth,” he says. The community flywheel is a core component. Developers, partners, and customers reinforce each other through knowledge sharing and collaboration. Martin: “Thousands of people are building their careers on our platform. This accelerates our innovations because they bring the latest technologies to customers.”
What OutSystems customers hear will also be pushed further toward the strong ecosystem. The focus is on customer successes and practical use cases. The European event in Lisbon demonstrates this by giving the stage to some early adopters of Agent Workbench.
With the appointment of Woodson Martin, OutSystems has prepared itself to address new areas. Martin’s commercial background should be much better suited to this than Paulo Rosado’s highly technical background. At the company’s public events, customer stories will lead the keynotes, while behind the scenes, teams will continue working on solutions that are as easy as possible to implement in business environments.