Neat®, a leader in Smart Organization Systems for the small business and consumer markets, today announced the appointment of Jeff Dickerson as chairman and chief executive officer. In this position, Dickerson is responsible for overall company leadership, strategic direction, and financial performance.
“Neat has searched long and hard to find the best leader for the next exciting chapter of its development,” said Michael Kopelman, a member of Neat’s board of directors and general partner of Edison Partners, Neat’s largest investor. “Jeff’s energy and get-it-done approach combined with his successful track record as a chief executive of cloud-based software companies, make him an exceptional choice to be Neat’s CEO.”
Jeff has 25 years of experience building teams and creating business value in a variety of strategic roles including sales, marketing, services, mergers and acquisitions, and operations. Before joining Neat, Jeff was the CEO and president of Sonian, Inc., a cloud-based archiving solution. Under his leadership, Sonian enjoyed 70%+ year over year revenue growth amassing 17,000+ B2B customers in over 40 countries through the distribution lines of IBM, RackSpace, Amazon and others. Prior to that, Jeff was the CEO of Metatomix, a provider of semantic based applications that was acquired by Versata, Inc. In 2004, he orchestrated a notable turnaround at eCredit, Inc., a provider of credit risk management and collections software, which was acquired by Fidelity Ventures in late 2006. He was previously the senior vice president of worldwide sales and services at MCK Communications, where he expanded revenue from $0 in 1997 to $60 million in 2001, setting the foundation for a successful public offering in 1999. Early in his career he was also a vice president of sales at Vmark Software, and held management positions at Prime Computer and Parametric Technologies.
During the executive search, Neat board member Ron Kaiser has served as interim CEO. In that time, the company added critical functionality to both Neat’s cloud service and mobile application, increased the customer base to over two million and expanded distribution into thousands of retail locations. Most recently, Neat announced a watershed agreement with Hewlett Packard to integrate Neat’s software into the newly launched Officejet 8040 e-All-In-One. “Under his capable leadership, the company continued to take crucial steps in its evolution,” added Kopelman.
“I could not be more enthusiastic about the opportunity that lies ahead of Neat,” commented Dickerson. “Neat is a remarkable brand that has successfully evolved to include the mobile and cloud capabilities that are so essential to how business gets done today. I am looking forward to building on that success in the emerging data and analytics arena and I feel honored to lead the next stage of Neat’s development.”
Jeff maintains an active role in the startup community and local charities, but when not building companies he can be found cycling, mountain biking, coaching or being a father to two “great daughters.”