Announcing Our New CEO

Today we are announcing a new CEO for DataStax, Chet Kapoor. This blog post is from our outgoing CEO Billy Bosworth and is a repost of an employee email he sent earlier this morning. All of us at DataStax extend a warm welcome to Chet and a fond farewell to Billy.

I want to share some exciting news about DataStax’s future. We have hired a new CEO, Chet Kapoor, to lead us on the next phase of our journey! We started the search for my successor early this year. Since finding Chet, he and I have been working together intensely in preparation for his arrival. Effective today, he is taking over and I will be transitioning out of DataStax over the coming weeks.

When I first cast the new vision of our future, I could see that we needed a more ambitious, bold approach across the company.  Publicly, I set those wheels in motion and we have made amazing progress. In seven short months we delivered an incredible Accelerate conference, launched the Constellation brand, and now have Apollo in open beta!

Privately, I was asking myself all the same hard questions I was asking of every other area in the company.  Was I, as CEO, going to give us maximal effectiveness in our next phase? After many deep discussions with our co-founder, Jonathan, and the board, we all agreed that we wanted a new perspective to execute our vision. We commissioned a lengthy and thorough search, and Chet clearly emerged as the best choice from a wide pool of candidates. I could not be more energized and excited about watching him lead DataStax into the future.

With any change comes emotion, and despite my sometimes gruff exterior, I am no different. For nearly nine years, DataStax has been a big, important part of my life. I have countless memories of so many great people that I will always cherish. I want to offer a huge THANK YOU to all of you who have made the journey so special! This is truly an amazing group of people.

Stay focused on our customers and go full throttle!  These are going to be the biggest days yet for DataStax!!!

Sincerely,
Billy

 

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