Doug Burgum mortgaged $250,000 of farmland to fund a small accounting software company in Fargo, North Dakota. He joined in 1983, when it had eleven employees, and became its president the next year. By 1997 Great Plains Software sold its Dynamics accounting products to small and midsize businesses through a network of resellers. That June it went public, a software company far from Silicon Valley with a sun-and-wheat logo.

Seed Money From the Farm

Great Plains was founded in 1981 and built accounting software for personal computers when most businesses still kept books on paper or on costly minicomputers. Burgum's farmland stake put him at the center of it. His family group bought out the other owners in 1984. The company sold through local partners who installed and supported the software. Its Dynamics product lines ran general ledger, payables and payroll for growing firms.

Fargo Sells to Redmond

Great Plains priced its IPO at $16 a share in June 1997 and listed on Nasdaq. It grew to more than 2,000 employees. In December 2000 Microsoft agreed to buy the company for about $1.1 billion in stock, and the deal closed in April 2001. Burgum became a senior vice president running Microsoft Business Solutions. Its main product lives on as Microsoft Dynamics GP. Burgum later served as governor of North Dakota and became US Secretary of the Interior in 2025.

Cover: The Harvest of Buckwheat, Paul Sérusier. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a grain harvest (the Great Plains, the sun-and-wheat logo).