Chip Pearson
American entrepreneur and business executive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chip Pearson is an American entrepreneur and business executive. He is best known as a founder and former CEO of JAMF Software.[1]
Biography
Pearson is a longtime resident of St. Paul, Minnesota. He co-founded JAMF Software (now Jamf) with Zach Halmstad in 2002.[2] At the time Pearson owned an IT services company[3] that could use the work being done by Halmstad at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to streamline information technology administration. Those tools became a product known as Casper, sold by a company formed to support the product called Jamf Software.[4]
Jamf Software
Pearson ran Jamf with Halmstad until 2016, taking $30 Million in Venture capital financing from Summit Partners.[5] Pearson and Halmstad recruited and hired Dean Hager as the CEO prior to leaving the organization.[6] In 2017, Jamf was acquired by Vista Equity Partners and the founders departed the company.[7]
Prior to selling Jamf, the organization generated over $52 million in annual revenue, served more than 5,500 customers,[8] had nearly 500 employees,[9] and had just opened its eighth global office. At that point, JAMF had an estimated valuation of $225 million.[10] Since the sale, Jamf has grown to over 1,500 employees.[11] Jamf is now traded on NASDAQ under the symbol JAMF.[12]
Following Jamf, Pearson was involved in the 2017 project DocuMNtary about software companies in Minnesota.[13] He also runs the Minnesota investment firm Bootstrappers and served on the Board of Directors at software companies like When I Work and Kipsu.[14]