Starbucks President and CEO Kevin Johnson, a longtime tech trade chief who beforehand led Juniper Networks and spent 16 years at Microsoft, is becoming a member of the board of Seattle startup Amperity.
Based in 2016, Amperity has attracted manufacturers resembling Alaska Airways, Patagonia, Kroger, and others that use the corporate’s software program to fine-tune their focused advertising and marketing campaigns by connecting disparate information sources about particular person buyer habits.
Starbucks was an early adopter of Amperity’s know-how. Amperity CEO Kabir Shahani mentioned Johnson becoming a member of the corporate’s board “felt like an apparent and really particular match” given his expertise. It’s additionally a uncommon transfer from Johnson, who doesn’t sit on different tech startup boards.
“You’ll be able to’t probably assemble higher context for somebody to be useful as we proceed to scale Amperity,” Shahani mentioned.
Johnson joined the Starbucks board in 2009. He grew to become president and chief working officer in 2015 and changed longtime CEO Howard Schultz in 2017. He’s helped the Seattle espresso big with numerous tech-related initiatives resembling its “Deep Brew” AI program and a cope with restaurant tech firm Brightloom, led by former Starbucks Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman.
Johnson additionally spent 5 years as CEO of Juniper Networks and was a high chief at Microsoft, the place he labored carefully with Invoice Gates and Steve Ballmer.
The Starbucks chief was additionally a part of the Nationwide Safety Telecommunication Advisory Committee underneath presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“The way forward for all consumer-facing companies requires a deeper understanding of their prospects, the flexibility to personalize buyer experiences, and the agility to acknowledge and adapt to shifting buyer behaviors and preferences,” Johnson mentioned in an announcement. “Digital buyer relationships are the important thing, and Amperity is in a novel place to assist companies unlock this digital potential by unifying first-party buyer information after which enabling the perception and personalization that elevates the client expertise and builds model loyalty.”
Amperity raises $50M to take on Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle and others with its customer data platform
Amperity’s platform ingests trillions of data points from a single customer — via emails, purchase history, mobile app usage, website traffic, physical store visits, etc. — and crunches that information with machine learning to give marketers a holistic understanding of a given user.
Shahani said he was concerned when the pandemic hit given that a majority of Amperity’s customers come from industries directly impacted by the crisis such as restaurants, travel, and hospitality.
But he said clients have actually stuck with Amperity and the company plans to continue scaling through the pandemic.
“In a highly disrupted environment, it’s important for a consumer business to ‘know your customer’ now more than ever,” said Shahani, who co-founded Amperity with Derek Slager. The entrepreneurs beforehand began Appature and offered the Seattle-based healthcare advertising and marketing firm to IMS Well being in 2013.
Amperity has 160 workers and expects so as to add one other 120 individuals over the subsequent 12 months. It has raised $87 million to this point, together with a $50 million Collection C spherical final 12 months that was up for the Deal of the 12 months: Funding class on the GeekWire Awards.
Different Amperity board members embody Concur co-founder and Accolade CEO Raj Singh; former Tableau gross sales government Kelly Wright; and Madrona Enterprise Group Managing Director Matt McIlwain.
In November 2019, Amperity acquired Custora, the same buyer intelligence platform. Amperity faces competitors from Salesforce, Oracle, Adobe, and different giants providing buyer information software program.
