Amperity CEO Barry Padgett is stepping down from the Seattle startup to spend time with his teenage children and will transition to an advisor role beginning next month.
Chris Jones, Amperity’s customer and product officer, will take over as interim CEO.
Padgett told GeekWire he looks forward to helping his kids launch their next academic endeavors, with his son enrolling in West Point and his high school daughter heading to school in Virginia.
“I haven’t had a summer off since I was 12 years old,” Padgett said, adding that as a kid he worked “detasseling” corn in Indiana.
Padgett joined Amperity as president and chief operating officer in 2020 and became CEO in 2022.
He said the startup just came off a record quarter and turned a “substantial profit for the first time.”
Founded in 2016, Amperity helps companies fine-tune their targeted marketing campaigns by connecting fragmented data sources about individual customer habits via emails, purchase history, mobile app usage, website traffic, physical store visits, and more. The idea is to give marketers a holistic understanding of a given user and increase sales while boosting brand loyalty.
Amperity earned “unicorn” status in July 2021, reaching a $1 billion valuation after raising $100 million. But the startup went through three rounds of layoffs since August 2022, including a 10% workforce reduction in February 2023.
Padgett took the top job at Amperity following the sudden departure of co-founder Kabir Shahani, who said he left voluntarily for personal reasons. Shahani also resigned from the company’s board.
The company recently announced Lakehouse CDP to help companies streamline how customer data is shared and managed interally. Amperity has roughly 300 employees — down from nearly 400 in early 2023.
Jones joined Amperity in 2018 and was previously at Microsoft for more than 26 years where he helped lead teams including Healthcare NExT, OneDrive and SharePoint, and others.
“Over the past four years, under the leadership of Barry, Amperity has undergone a transformative journey, emerging as a fundamentally different and stronger company,” Jones said. “Barry’s vision and guidance have been instrumental in navigating the challenges posed by the pandemic, market dynamics, and economic downturns.”
Padgett spent 20 years at SAP Concur, beginning as a software engineer and moving up the ladder to chief product and strategy officer. He worked three additional years at SAP as president, then served as Stripe’s chief revenue officer for one year before taking the role at Amperity.
Since his resignation, Shahani has co-founded Avante, a startup that’s in stealth mode and whose website says it’s “empowering a healthier workforce and a healthier bottom line.” Avante raised $10 million earlier this year.
Amperity co-founder Derek Slager is still in his original role as chief technology officer. The company’s board of directors includes Concur co-founder and Accolade CEO Raj Singh; Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain; Kevin Johnson, former president and CEO of Starbucks; and music superstar Ciara.
