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Tony Alika Owens. (Amperity Photo)
Tony Alika Owens, a longtime tech exec who previously spent a decade at Salesforce, was named CEO at Amperity, a Seattle-based startup that helps companies collect and manage customer data.
Owens, who also worked at Oracle and was most recently a president at conversational commerce company LivePerson, tells GeekWire he was drawn Amperity’s “massive market opportunity.”
Founded in 2016, Amperity reached a billion-dollar valuation in 2021 after raising $100 million. The company established itself as a leader in the customer data platform sector, or CDP.
Amperity helps companies fine-tune marketing campaigns and understand buying habits by connecting fragmented data sources about individual customers via emails, purchase history, mobile app usage, website traffic, physical store visits, and more.
Owens said tailwinds from the AI boom and increasing amounts of first-party and synthetic data will help boost the value of a tool like Amperity.
He said the company “nails it over everybody” with its ability to organize customer data in a specific way and then “load that into applications where our customers can derive value.”
Amperity earlier this year announced Lakehouse CDP to help companies streamline how customer data is shared and managed internally. It also has a product called AmpAi that uses AI to boost data analysis and forecasting.
Owens said the company plans to roll out more products targeted at technical users, such as data scientists. He said customers “want to put the keys in the hands of those people that are more on the technical side of the house.”
Customers include Alaska Airlines, DICK’s Sporting Goods, Under Armour, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Owens sees potential to add smaller-sized companies as new customers.
“A lot of our revenue is mid-enterprise and enterprise,” he said. “We have the opportunity to start moving down the stack.”
The company declined to share revenue metrics.
Amperity has a number of competitors, including Salesforce, Adobe, Tealium, Treasure Data, Portland, Ore.-based Lytics, and others.
Amperity, ranked No. 16 on the GeekWire 200, has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few years. Owens said the 260-person company, along with many others during the recent venture capital boom times, may have invested in growth too aggressively before the tech slowdown that began in 2022.
But he’s bullish on the company’s current financial outlook. “I think a lot of folks are going to struggle,” he said. “We have an opportunity to be in a position of strength.”
Owens is the company’s third CEO since early 2022, when ex-CEO and co-founder Kabir Shahani abruptly departed.
Barry Padgett, who took over for Shahani, announced earlier this year that he would step down.
Chris Jones, Amperity’s customer and product officer, filled in for Padgett as the company’s interim CEO. He’s now a senior vice president.
Owens also joined Amperity’s board as a result of his new role. Other board members include Concur co-founder and Accolade CEO Raj Singh; Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain; Kevin Johnson, former president and CEO of Starbucks; and music superstar Ciara.
Amperity co-founder Derek Slager, who is also on the board, is still in his original role as chief technology officer.
“I’m incredibly excited and confident in Tony’s leadership as we enter our next phase of growth,” Slager said in a statement.
