Business data backup and recovery company Jungle Disk’s new Chief Technology Officer Nathan Anderson knew the position was a perfect fit as soon as he was offered the job by CEO Bret Piatt.
A lifelong San Antonio resident, Anderson studied physics and computer science in the ‘90s at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at San Antonio. But he left college without a degree to take a position with IPI GrammTech, a San Antonio provider of IT products and services.
After a few years, Anderson got a job at what he described as — at the time — a “little-bitty dot com startup.” That startup would ultimately become San Antonio’s premier tech company, Rackspace Technology, where Anderson would spend 15 years in various roles between 2000 and 2015.
Later, he would work as director of software engineering and DevOps for ClearDATA, a health care cloud hosting company. Most recently, he served as vice president of DevOps engineering for Chargify, a local billing and subscription management platform geared to business-to-business software-as-a-service companies.
Anderson said he enjoyed his time at Chargify and was in discussions for a possible CTO position during Chargify’s 2021 merger with SaaSOptics. He decided not to pursue it further since he felt that he lacked the necessary financial background for the job.
Michael Klett, co-founder and former chief technology officer of Chargify, today serves as chief software architect at Chargify and CTO at ServusConnect. He said he’s known Anderson for three years and that Anderson was a trusted employee who improves “everything around him” — not hastily, but methodically.
Anderson applied that methodical approach as his career progressed, creating a checklist for what criteria he would need in order to land his “dream” CTO position.
First, he wanted a company with a strong existing team and a solid set of already-established products. Second, he knew he’d want a role in a domain like software engineering which suited his background.
It was around that time that Piatt, whom Anderson had known for years, called him up in January to discuss a possible CTO position at Jungle Disk. It checked all of Anderson’s boxes. Jungle Disk, which prior to its 2021 acquisitions had roughly 30 employees, didn’t have a CTO, so Anderson would be the inaugural person in the position. Anderson’s role is twofold, he said: product engineering and development, with a focus on improving existing products and building up the company’s slate of offerings to meet customers’ needs.
Jungle Disk sits at an interesting transitional crossroads, he said, as the company is set to expand into a new building by the end of the year. It also acquired three new brands, KeepItSafe, OffsiteDataSync and LiveVault, in 2021, bringing its total number of employees up to 125 globally.
Anderson noted that as time goes by he feels more invested in building San Antonio’s tech scene by working for Alamo City-based companies and giving back to the community. He considers himself a people-first leader and one who values “putting the right people in the right seats.”
“It’s as much about learning the people as it is learning the technology and the products,” he said.
