Signpost Appointment (IMage credit Pixabay/geralt)BambooHR has appointed Brian Crofts as its new Chief Product Officer. The appointment sees him replace co-founder Ryan Sanders in the role. Sanders will become co-chair on the company’s board of directors. Crofts joins from Auditboard, where he was also Chief Product Officer. Crofts also spent four years as CPO at Pendo and sits on the board at Canopy, a SaaS practice management platform for accounting professionals. He was also Chief Product Officer at BambooHR rival Namely, so he is familiar with the HR industry. Before that, he spent 11 years at Intuit, leading product for QuickBooks and TurboTax.

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR
Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

Crofts commented: “I am honored to join BambooHR as its next Chief Product Officer, and I look forward to working with our tremendous customers, partners, and product and engineering teams to continue to grow our ecosystem of innovative products. In past roles, I had the opportunity to develop a deep appreciation for HR and people leaders, and I believe BambooHR has an opportunity to build solutions that address the many evolving challenges our customers face each day.”

Brad Rencher, CEO of BambooHR, commented: “Brian’s experience has given him a rare combination of expertise and skills – he can both create and execute at a high level while also evangelizing a vision and strategy for product development. This, along with his passion for both HR and growing businesses, makes him the perfect fit as our next CPO. As a product-led organization, he’s the leader we need to drive the innovation required to build solutions to meet today’s HR and business challenges. I couldn’t be more excited to have him on the team.”

Co-founders to co-chairs

Sanders joins the second founder Ben Peterson as the board of directors co-chair. It is a move that founders often find difficult to make. Both Sanders and Peterson still have a role to play in the company they built, but they now have a leadership team to carry the company forward that they are happy with. They believe it is also a team that can take BambooHR to the next level.

Ryan Sanders, co-founder of BambooHR, commented: “After fourteen years of building BambooHR, I’m proud of the work the team has done to create a product that provides solutions to HR managers’ most significant challenges. We have an amazing opportunity in front of us to capitalize on the product we have built, and I’ve decided the time is right for me to step away from day-to-day product management. I strongly believe Brian Crofts is the right leader to elevate our product strategy as we focus on innovation and growth moving forward.”

Peterson stepped back in 2019, with Rencher stepping in. In the last few months, he has built a strong leadership team adding Justin Judd as CFO, Anita Grantham as head of people and now Crofts as Chief Product Officer. BambooHR is a leader in the G2 Grid for Human Resource Management Systems. The company now has 27,000 customers using its affordable HR solution to improve HR operations’ efficiency and talent retention. The company now has over £100 million in annual revenue.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

Rencher has built a leadership team to drive growth. The question is whether he will seek funding to accelerate that growth? Also, with Crofts in place, will BambooHR look to leverage his experience working in the UK and start a more serious international expansion? The company is focused on the US, but could Crofts expand that focus to the UK?

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