Code42 taps software exec Payne as CEO

Code42, the Minneapolis-based maker of backup and synchronization software, hired industry veteran Joe Payne to succeed one of its co-founders as chief executive and president.

The appointment, announced Tuesday, climaxes a leadership transition that began in late May when Matthew Dornquast relinquished control of the firm, which he led from its start in 2001 to about $65 million in revenue last year.

In his last role, Payne led Toronto-based Eloqua Inc., a provider of marketing software, from $11 million to $125 million in six years before it was purchased by Oracle Corp. in 2013.

"It's that kind of growth we'd like to aim for here," Payne said. "It's a long journey, but it is really satisfying when you do it right."

Payne visited Code42's headquarters Monday afternoon to meet executives and staffers. Payne, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, said he will continue to live there and ­commute to Minnesota several times a month.

Dornquast and the company's other co-founders and board have been planning for the change for some time. Over the past six weeks, another co-founder, Mitch Coopet, served as acting chief executive. The company hired a national recruiting firm to line up candidates and said that Dornquast participated in the search.

In a statement issued by the company, Dornquast said, "As Joe joins, Code42 is in a strong position to expand its offering in data security. Joe is the right person to lead Code42 through its next big wave of growth."

The company, best known for its CrashPlan product for both enterprises and consumers, for the past year focused more intensively on the business market and doubled its revenue among large companies. In October last year, it also moved into the data synchronization space with SharePlan, which was designed to swiftly share large files across mobile devices and computers. That product moved the company more squarely into competition with firms like Dropbox and Google.

"The underpinnings of the culture are very strong," Payne said. "The customer retention rate is 95 percent and our net promoter score, which measures the satisfaction of customers, is the highest I have seen for a provider of business-to-business software."

He said Code42 this year has also been edging into data analysis, building on the experience it has had with customers that customize the company's software to extract information about their business.

"One of our biggest customers was using the data and built some of their own tools to do forensics and analysis," Payne said. "Code42 has an opportunity to leverage that."

Evan Ramstad • 612-673-4241