Jon Darbyshire

Jon Darbyshire is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of SmartSuite, the AI-native work platform for GRC, IT, projects and business operations. He sets the company's product and go-to-market direction and leads a team based in Irvine, California and across Europe and Dubai. Since its launch in 2022 the platform has been adopted by more than 2,000 organizations, and in February 2025 the company announced $38 million in total funding, including a $13 million Series A led by Canapi Ventures with Sorenson Capital and High Alpha.

In 2000 Jon and his wife, Tara Darbyshire, co-founded Archer Technologies in Overland Park, Kansas, where he served as chief executive. Archer grew into one of the first enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platforms. The company was self-funded for its first eight years before taking an investment from Bain Capital Ventures in November 2008. When EMC Corporation agreed to acquire Archer in January 2010, in a transaction reported at $200 million, the company served 25 of the Fortune 100. The product continued inside RSA and operates today as Archer. After the sale, Jon and Tara established the Archer Foundation in Leawood, Kansas, which invested in about 50 early-stage companies in the Kansas City region.

Before Archer, Jon was a national partner at Ernst & Young from 1996 to 2000, where he led the firm's Global Enterprise Security Services practice and launched its eSecurityOnline venture, later sold to Computer Associates. Earlier he was a senior manager at Price Waterhouse. He holds a B.S. in finance and accounting from Kansas State University and completed the Ernst & Young Executive MBA Program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and in 2008 Treasury & Risk named him one of its 100 Most Influential People in Finance. He lives in Orange County, California, and writes about connected GRC, operational resilience and how AI is changing the way organizations govern their work.