The big thing that Dyn CEO Jeremy Hitchcock didn’t tell me (or anyone in the press) at the time of his company’s $50 million funding announcement Tuesday is that he’s stepping down.
The timing is not all that surprising, except for the PR omission. From the outside at least, the company’s growth round from Pamplona Capital Management looks more like a private equity takeover than a venture round, especially given Dyn has been around since 2001 and has been profitable. It’s unclear whether Pamplona owns a majority stake in Dyn, as the company declined to disclose its valuation in the deal, but it is now almost certainly the largest stakeholder.
Hitchcock said in an interview with TechCrunch that he’s staying on full-time at Dyn with the title of “founder.” He remains a board member, and adds in an e-mail to Xconomy today that he’s “not going anywhere.”
Hitchcock’s day-to-day successor, at least for now, is a familiar face in Boston tech: Jim Baum, the former CEO of Netezza (acquired by IBM) and Endeca (later acquired by Oracle), and an early employee at Parametric Technology Corp. Baum is also a venture partner at OpenView Venture Partners, and has been involved with startups including DataStax, Cazena, and Evergage. Like Hitchcock, he’s a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Baum is listed as executive chairman at Dyn. According to his LinkedIn profile, he’s been chairman of Dyn’s board since November 2014. Baum told TechCrunch that he’ll work with the board to develop a “long-term leadership strategy.”
