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Anonymous ID: 1dd771 May 11, 2024, 4:47 p.m. No.20854382   🗄️.is 🔗kun

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Business career

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Great Plains Software

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In March 1983 Burgum mortgaged $250,000 of farmland to provide the seed capital for the accounting software company Great Plains Software in Fargo, North Dakota.[9][15] He became the company's president in 1984 after leading a small group of family members in buying out the rest of the company. During the 1980s, Fortune magazine often ranked Great Plains Software among the nation's top 100 companies to work for. Burgum grew the company to about 250 employees by 1989 and led it to about $300 million in annual sales and a 1997 IPO, after using the Internet to help it expand beyond North Dakota.[16] In 1999 the company acquired Match Data Systems, a development team in the Philippines.[17] In 2001 Burgum sold Great Plains Software to Microsoft for $1.1 billion.[18] He has said he built the company in Fargo because of its proximity to North Dakota State University, which acted as a feeder school, in order to employ its stream of engineering students.[19]

Microsoft

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After the sale, Burgum was named Senior Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions Group,[13][20] the offshoot created from merging Great Plains into the corporation.[12] At Microsoft, he was responsible for making enterprise apps a priority.[21] In 2005, Burgum expressed interest in stepping down as senior vice president to become Microsoft Business Solutions chairman.[22] But in September 2006, he told journalists that he planned to leave Microsoft entirely by 2007.[23] He was replaced by Satya Nadella; Nadella has said Burgum inspired him "to find the soul of Microsoft".[24]

Investment firms

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In 2008 Burgum co-founded Arthur Ventures, a venture capital company that invests in businesses involved in technology, life sciences, and clean technologies.[25][26] The group began operation with a $20 million fund and primarily invested in companies in North Dakota and Minnesota.[27] By 2013 it had expanded its operations into Nebraska, Missouri, Arizona, and Iowa.[27]

Burgum is also the founder of the Kilbourne Group, a real-estate development firm focused on Downtown Fargo.[28][29] In 2013 Burgum created plans to build the tallest building in Fargo—a 23-story mixed-use building—to be named either Block 9 or Dakota Place.[30] The building was completed in 2020 as the RDO tower. [31] The company has also advocated for a convention center to be built in Downtown Fargo.[32] It has acquired and renovated many Fargo properties, including the former St. Mark's Lutheran Church and the former Woodrow Wilson alternative high school.[33] Several of the companies he has invested in are in Fargo.[18][34]

 

Board work

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Burgum has served on the advisory board for Stanford Graduate School of Business[13] and was on the board of SuccessFactors during the 2000s, becoming its chairman from 2007 till the 2011 sale of the company to SAP. In 2012 he became the first chairman of the board for Atlassian, after it expanded from its initial board of three members (none of whom served as the official chair).[35] During 2011 and 2014, he twice spent several months as the interim CEO of Intelligent InSites,[13] a company for which he has served as the executive chairman of the board since 2008.[26] That year he also became a member of Avalara's board of directors.[36]

Philanthropy

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Burgum is a philanthropist and has supported philanthropic causes such as the Plains Art Museum.[37] In 2001[38] he donated a refurbished school building he had acquired in 2000 to North Dakota State University. It was named Renaissance Hall and became home to the university's visual arts department, major components of the architecture and landscape architecture department and the Tri-College University office.[39] In 2008 Burgum started the Doug Burgum Family Fund, which focuses its charitable giving on youth, education and health.[13]

Political career

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Early involvement

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Burgum endorsed Republican Steve Sydness for one of North Dakota's U.S. Senate seats in 1988.[40] He also supported the gubernatorial campaigns of Republicans John Hoeven and Jack Dalrymple in 2008 and 2012.[41][42]