Nader Mikhail

Founder & Chief Executive Officer Elementum

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Nader Mikhail is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Elementum, an enterprise software company that now positions itself as an AI-native replacement for legacy enterprise SaaS, built around workflow automation. Elementum is unusual in its origins: rather than starting as an independent venture, it was conceived inside Flextronics, the contract manufacturing giant, where Mikhail was a Vice President and had been asked by then-CEO Mike McNamara to solve the company’s supply chain management problem. After a year spent evaluating the available software and concluding that nothing adequate existed, he proposed building it — and ran the resulting business as a separate company with its own team, office and culture from the start. The original thesis, backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, was that supply chain software was overdue for the same shift that Salesforce had brought to CRM and Workday to HCM. The company has since broadened from supply chain incident management into general enterprise workflow automation and artificial intelligence, counting Sanofi, Under Armour and Snowflake among its named customers.

Career Highlights

• Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Elementum, and a member of its board.
• Raised a $50 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, within total reported venture funding of roughly $65 million.
• Vice President at Flextronics, where Elementum was conceived and from which it was spun out.
• Four years on McKinsey & Company’s cloud computing team, working on transformation programmes for large enterprises.
• Serial founder from an early age: started his first venture while still in high school and had worked on four startups by the time he finished college.
• Frequent commentator in supply chain and business press on rebuilding supply chains after pandemic-era disruption.

Professional Journey

Mikhail’s entrepreneurial activity began unusually early — he started his first venture while still in high school and had been involved in four startups by the time he graduated from college, where he read Engineering and Economics at UC Irvine. He then spent time at an investment management firm before joining McKinsey & Company, where he worked for four years on the firm’s cloud computing team and on transformation programmes for very large companies.

He moved from consulting into an operating role at Flextronics, the global contract manufacturer, as a Vice President. There, then-CEO Mike McNamara tasked him with fixing how the company managed its supply chain. Mikhail spent roughly a year assessing the available commercial software and concluded that the category had not been rebuilt for the cloud era in the way that customer relationship management and human capital management already had been. Rather than buying, he proposed building.

Elementum was the result. Although it originated inside Flextronics, Mikhail has been explicit that it operated as a genuinely separate business from the outset, with its own team, premises and culture, rather than as an internal IT project that was later carved out. Chris Schaepe at Lightspeed Venture Partners backed the thesis and led a $50 million Series B; total reported funding has been put at around $65 million.

Under Mikhail’s leadership the company’s positioning has evolved considerably. It began as a supply chain visibility and incident management platform aimed at what the company described as the multi-trillion-dollar product economy, and for several years he was a regular voice in supply chain trade press, particularly on post-pandemic supply chain rebuilding. More recently Elementum has repositioned around AI-native enterprise workflow automation, presenting itself as a replacement for legacy enterprise SaaS rather than as a supply chain specialist, and publicly names Sanofi, Under Armour and Snowflake among its customers. Mikhail remains founder, CEO and a board member.

Education

Stanford Graduate School of Business

MBA

University of California, Irvine

Bachelor’s degrees, Engineering and Economics