Brett Jackson is a seven-time CEO and two-time COO with 35 years of experience scaling and transforming software and software-as-a-service companies with revenues ranging from $5M to $150M, both private and public. He has led companies through scale-ups, pivots, and turnarounds, predominately in the cybersecurity and analytics markets. Prior to his CEO roles, Brett gained extensive functional experience in go-to-market and product, having held multiple VP-level roles in Product Management, Sales, and Marketing.
As an experienced operator, Brett firmly believes that time is the real enemy and success requires relentless, focused execution, with a high sense of urgency, by a collaborative, high-performance team. He embraces challenges, finds fulfillment in a company’s journey to higher performance, and appreciates that a CEO’s work is never done.
Professional Highlights:
- Built the go-to-market and developed a high-performance leadership team for one of the early enterprise cybersecurity leaders, scaling revenues from $0 to $150M, leading to a successful IPO and a $1B exit within six years
- Pivoted a government-focused analytics company to a higher growth opportunity in the financial services industry, driven by the creation of a completely new business & product strategy and associated go-to-market which resulted in a successful exit within two years
- Successfully scaled an early-stage SaaS company by navigating away from its traditional core business and crowded competitive landscape, and repositioning to target an untapped new market opportunity, leveraging superior product/market fit, resulting in 10x revenue growth
- Led multiple companies through turnarounds requiring strategy changes, enhancing leadership teams, refining product strategies and roadmaps, rebuilding go-to-market functions, implementing best practice processes, improving customer retention, and driving more disciplined execution
- Designed and implemented multiple go-to-market models, built Sales and Marketing teams for multiple companies, serving customers in SMB, mid-market, and enterprise segments, as well as OEM, in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Asia Pac
Brett earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Brett and his wife Susanne live on a small farm in northern Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where they enjoy the outdoors. He is a volunteer first responder and enjoys lacrosse and endurance sports – running, cycling, 70.3s, and marathons.