Stackery CEO and co-founder Nate Taggart is leaving the serverless software development startup, telling employees in a message that he believes the Portland-based company needs a different leader for its next phase of growth.
“The startup that we’ve built together now works with some of the largest companies in the world and the incredible growth that we’ve seen over the last two quarters is a clear reflection of the value we’ve created for our customers,” Taggart wrote in the message, which was posted online by Stackery on Thursday. “This success now affords me an opportunity to step aside so that Stackery can recruit a new leader with experience in scaling a high-growth company.”
Taggart was the subject of a GeekWire story in March that included allegations of psychological abuse and intimidation against him by his former spouse, Kate Taggart. Nate Taggart denied the allegations. The issues raised in that story did not play a role in Taggart’s decision to leave or in his related discussions with the Stackery board, said Abner Germanow, the company’s chief marketing officer and customer advocate, speaking with GeekWire via phone. Nate Taggart couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.
Stackery makes technology that helps software developers write serverless computing applications, in which code is handled directly by the cloud and triggered by predefined events, avoiding the need to spin up and pay for virtual machines.
Founded in 2016, the company is a graduate of the Techstars Seattle startup program. Stackery has raised $7.3 million from investors including Voyager Capital, Steve Kishi of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Pipeline Capital Partners, and Founders’ Co-op. The company has 17 employees.
Stackery’s user base has grown by 300 percent in the last six months, confirming Taggart’s original hypothesis about the demand for the company’s technology, Germanow said. Taggart’s background is in product development, with experience at companies including GitHub and New Relic.
Now, the key challenge facing Stackery is not whether the company is trying to solve the right problem, but how the company can scale, Germanow said. Taggart had “a longstanding conversation with the board about how he didn’t feel like he was the right person” to lead Stackery into that next phase, “and after a number of discussions decided that the best thing for him to do at this point was to actually separate from the company,” Germanow said.
Stackery doesn’t have a specific deadline for bringing aboard a new CEO but is already having conversations in its search, said Chase Douglas, the company’s co-founder and CTO. In the meantime, Stackery is being led by an executive team that includes Douglas; Germanow; Laura Meyer, finance and operations leader; and Sam Goldstein, vice president of product and engineering.
