Francine Geist

Chief Executive Officer Critical Start

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Francine Geist is Chief Executive Officer of Critical Start, a managed detection and response company in Plano, Texas, backed by Vista Equity Partners. Critical Start pairs AI-driven triage with human analysts to resolve security alerts. She was appointed in July 2026, succeeding Scott White in what the company called a planned leadership transition. She is a finance executive who became a CEO. At LiveAction, the network intelligence company, she joined as CFO in 2019, added the COO and president roles, became CEO in 2022 and led the company to its October 2024 acquisition by BlueCat. Before that she spent two decades in finance and operations at B2B data and software businesses.

Career Highlights

• Appointed Chief Executive Officer of Critical Start on 22 July 2026, effective immediately.
• CEO of LiveAction from June 2022, leading it through its acquisition by BlueCat in October 2024.
• Joined LiveAction as CFO in 2019 and took on the COO and president roles before becoming CEO.
• Oversaw LiveAction’s shift from about one-fifth of sales in annual recurring revenue to 100%, according to its investor Insight Partners.
• Deputy CFO and VP of Finance at INTTRA, the shipping software network, through its sale to E2open.
• VP of Global Sales Operations and Finance at TravelClick, after a decade at Dun & Bradstreet.
• MBA in finance from the Wharton School, 2003.

Professional Journey

Geist started as an auditor at Deloitte & Touche in the mid-1990s. She has said she soon found client service unsatisfying: “I didn’t like being on the outside, looking in.” After time at a startup that struggled in the dot-com crash, she earned an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2003, and chose a career in B2B software over banking or consulting.

She spent the next ten years at Dun & Bradstreet, the commercial data company. She then moved into private-equity-backed software, first as VP of Global Sales Operations and Finance at TravelClick, a hotel revenue data provider, and then as Deputy CFO and VP of Finance at INTTRA, the software and network business for the shipping industry. At INTTRA she helped lead the company through its sale to E2open.

She joined LiveAction, a Palo Alto network intelligence company backed by Insight Partners, as Chief Financial Officer in 2019. She took on the chief operating officer role and then the presidency. In June 2022 the board appointed her CEO, and her predecessor, Steve Stuut, became Executive Chairman. “I have held every job function in this company,” she later told Insight. Over her time there, LiveAction moved from about a fifth of its sales in annual recurring revenue to all of them, and she has said the company grew 300% during her tenure. In October 2024 LiveAction was acquired by BlueCat, the networking company.

On 22 July 2026 Critical Start named her CEO, effective immediately. She succeeded Scott White, who had led the company for two years. Critical Start runs a U.S.-based security operations center around the clock, and in June 2026 it released SOC AI, a multi-agent framework for alert investigation and response. Stephen Foster, a managing director at Vista Equity Partners, called her “a veteran software CEO with deep understanding of enterprise security buyers’ evolving needs and experience leading growth-focused, channel-driven businesses.”

Education

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

MBA, Finance, 2003

No record of her undergraduate institution was found.