I have made the hard decision to leave Microsoft at the end of August/early Sept.

Deciding to move is never an easy decision to make and this time is no different for me. I absolutely love Office 365, working with developers and ISVs and the amazing team I have the fortune of running and working with every day. I am crazy proud of what we have achieved in the last year and half I have worked on the team and am very happy with the direction it’s going. I am more bullish than ever about Office 365 and in particular the opportunity around it.

So much so that I want to take part in it!

I’m extremely excited about the opportunity to build amazing software products and for that reason I am co-founding a brand new Kirkland based innovation lab, HyperFish, focused on taking ideas from inception through to fruition with the goal of making customers businesses run better in the cloud and with Office 365. You might wonder exactly what ideas and over time we will have more specific details to share around what we are building … so stay tuned for that!

I couldn’t be happier to be joining forces with Brian Cook, co-founder of Nintex, on this journey. Brian is an experienced entrepreneur and business leader who helped take Nintex from an idea to a company with over 5000 customers worldwide. Anyone who has spent any time around SharePoint will know about Nintex and the great products they make.

I’m very excited about the opportunities we have to dream up and build products that help businesses in the cloud. We are setting up shop in Kirkland WA on the shores of Lake Washington, so I won’t be moving out of the area.

I’m looking forward to the challenge!

-CJ