Another Boston tech boss is stepping down – The Boston Globe

Another local technology CEO is heading out the door.
Software company LogMeIn said on Thursday that chief executive Bill Wagner is stepping down after nine years with the company.
He will be replaced by Mike Kohlsdorf, a longtime private equity investor and president of Francisco Partners Consulting. Francisco Partners led a group of investors that bought LogMeIn for $4 billion in 2020, and Kohlsdorf has previously served as CEO for six companies his firm acquired.
“Working closely with LogMeIn’s executive team, we’ll continue to stay at the forefront of evolving work trends and further accelerate the company’s long-term growth and leadership as a best-in-class software solutions provider,” Kohlsdorf said in a statement.
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Kohlsdorf, who is based in Atlanta, is not planning to relocate to Boston, LogMeIn said. Wagner will remain with the company in an advisory role until the end of the month, the company said. Neither executive was available for an interview on Thursday.
Wagner joined LogMeIn in 2013 as chief operating officer and got the top job in 2015 when co-founder Michael Simon stepped aside. Under Wagner’s leadership, the company collected an array of online software services for businesses, buying password app LastPass in 2015, conferencing app GoToMeeting in 2016, and messaging app Jive Communications in 2018.
The company has been in transition amid the pandemic and since the Francisco acquisition closed in August of 2020. In October, Wagner announced the company would be permanently “remote-centric,” resulting in a cut of half of its office space in Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood. And last month, the company said it would spin off the LastPass password management service as a separate business.
LogMeIn’s GoTo family of applications for helping remote workers communicate and collaborate should continue to benefit from the pandemic-induced shift to working from home, Gartner analyst Mike Fasciani said. But Microsoft is putting increasing pressure on LogMeIn and other rivals by including its Teams app as part of the popular Office 365 package.
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“LogMeIn is getting their fair share but it is increasingly a market where Microsoft is gaining influence,” Fasciani said. Kohlsdorf, the new CEO, will need to continue the company’s efforts to “pull together a broader portfolio of related features and applications… to build something better than a generic meeting tool. There’s some opportunity there,” he said.
Kohlsdorf’s decision to head the company from Atlanta shouldn’t disrupt LogMeIn’s leadership. Since the acquisition, outgoing CEO Wagner had been hiring from outside Boston for his executive team. New chief financial officer Rich Veldran lives in New Jersey, chief revenue officer Bill Robinson is located in Georgia, and chief information security officer Michael Oberlaender is based in the Houston area.
LogMeIn started life in 2003 as the brainchild of software entrepreneur Simon and Hungarian software developer Marton Anka. The pair expanded and shifted the company, originally called 3am Labs, from offering just a remote access app Anka had written to selling more diversified enterprise software and services. Anka retired in 2013, two years before Simon handed the top job to Wagner.
Wagner’s departure adds to a growing list of long-time Boston tech leaders stepping down from chief executive roles.
HubSpot CEO and cofounder Brian Halligan stepped down as chief executive last summer. John Van Siclen at Waltham software services firm Dynatrace and Stephen Kaufer, the CEO and cofounder of Tripadvisor in Needham, left their posts at the end of 2021. David Meredith at Burlington-based software company Everbridge is leaving at the end of this month. And Jeff Ray, the chief executive of Boston video-tech company Brightcove, plans to retire at the end of 2022.
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Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @ampressman.
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