Datto founder to step down as CEO
Founder built $1B data backup company in Norwalk
After creating a runaway tech success story in Norwalk, Austin McChord is stepping away as CEO of Datto, the data backup and security company that built to a $1 billion valuation within a decade.
After creating a runaway tech success story in Norwalk, Austin McChord is stepping away as CEO of Datto, the data backup and security company he created after college and built to a $1 billion valuation within a decade.
McChord will remain actively involved with Datto as an investor and board member, with the company elevating No. 2 executive Tim Weller to interim CEO while it considers a permanent replacement.
Datto was acquired last year by Vista Equity Partners. McChord laid the foundation of the company in a basement office of his father’s civil engineering firm in Wilton after graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997 with an idea for a small data backup device for use in small businesses and homes.
A native of Newtown and resident of Norwalk, McChord donated $50 million last year to RIT, with the school using it to bolster entrepreneurship and digital programs it offers students.
McChord would find success by tapping a sales channel of smaller, independent companies who manage information technology for business clients, and who lacked themselves a sophisticated data backup provider as part of the portfolio of services they offer. Today, some 14,000 managed services providers offering its suite to more than 500,000 business customers in more than 130 countries.
Datto has 1,400 employees after merging last year with Autotask, and currently lists 45 open jobs in Norwalk.
Speaking last month in Rochester in announcing an
expansion there with incentives from the state of New York, McChord gave no hint of his plans, calling it “a natural evolution” in a written statement.
“It’s pretty wild just how much Datto has grown,” McChord said last month in Rochester. “While we are far away from Silicon Valley ... it shows what can be built. I honestly believe that in the beginning, if Datto had moved to one of those major tech hubs, I don’t think that we would have been as successful as we are today.”
Among homegrown, high-tech companies in Connecticut, it is a success rivaled by few others. Datto is on a short list that includes Priceline.com and successor company Booking Holdings, which remains based in Norwalk two decades after its launch.
Datto disclosed a 36 percent increase in revenue last year, with its sustained growth trajectory lumping it in with tech companies seen as candidates for an initial public offerings of stock. To date this year, more than 170 companies have gone public at valuations in excess of $50 million, up by more than half from a year ago according to Renaissance Capital, a Greenwich firm that maintains an IPO pipeline tracker.
Datto hired Weller more than a year ago as chief financial officer, then elevated him to president and chief operating officer. At Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies in the late 1990s, Weller helped put together what was at the time one of the best initial public offerings of stock in history, with Akamai an early pioneer in helping websites stay up and running during surges in traffic.