Datto is an American cybersecurity and data backup company. Founded in 2007 in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 2017 it became a subsidiary of the Vista Equity Partners and merged with Autotask Corporation. History Founding of Datto Founded in 2007 in Connecticut by software programmer Austin McChord, McChord initially built and marketed his own hand-made data backup devices. Securing his first customers in 2008, he afterwards built a system that allowed for data synchronization between two computers, before building a version of Zenith InfoTech that ran on Linux. By the end of 2009, the company had $70,000 in monthly sales. When a new Datto product in 2010 caused old systems to crash, a replacement system was designed from scratch: SIRIS was released several months later as a free upgrade. In 2011, sales were $9 million. The following year, they were at $25 million. Global expansion In September 2013, the company raised $25 million in its first round of venture capital financing, which was led by General Catalyst Partners. The established business model sold products primarily through managed service providers. By 2013 the company was continuing to focus on small and mid-size businesses, with clients such as Susan G. Komen for the Cure and several NFL teams. In 2014, Datto Inc. purchased Backupify, a cloud-to-cloud backup company. Backupify focused on backing up data on servers, complementing Datto's focus on local or private clouds. In November 2015, the company garnered $75 million in a Series B funding round mostly led by Technology Crossover Ventures. In 2015, it became Connecticut's first "unicorn" company. In early 2017, Datto acquired Open Mesh. Datto was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for around $1.5 billion in late 2017. As part of the deal, Datto merged with the Vista portfolio company Autotask Corporation and Austin McChord remained CEO of the combined company. McChord stepped down as CEO in October 2018, remaining on the board. In January 2019, following the announcement of McChord’s departure, Datto named Tim Weller as its new CEO. Weller joined Datto in 2017 as chief financial officer before stepping into the chief executive role. Before joining Datto, Weller was CFO at Akamai, where he led its initial public offering, and CFO at clean energy technology company EnerNOC. In October 2020 Datto officially began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol “MSP”, selling 22 million shares to raise $594 million in its IPO.