June 19, 2024 • 38 mins
Tune in to the latest episode of my podcast, where we dive deep into the stories behind the success.In this episode, I'm thrilled to host Fred Voccola, the dynamic CEO of Kaseya, who has transformed the IT management and security software industry. From an annual revenue of $85 million to over a billion, Fred shares how Kaseya has expanded through strategic acquisitions and innovative thinking, growing to employ 4,800 people.
Fred opens up about the highs and lows of his journey, discussing the critical pivots and innovative steps that helped navigate his success through crises and the economic halts. He sheds light on the challenges and triumphs of scaling a business, integrating cultures after acquisitions, and the importance of adaptability and focusing on customer-centric solutions.
Fred also discusses the influential role his family and upbringing played in shaping his entrepreneurial spirit and how his connection to his dog Cooper, who, despite being paralyzed, has become a symbol of hope and resilience.Cooper's story has inspired many, leading to the creation of the CoopWorks Foundation, which supports disabled animals and provides therapy for veterans.
Through his experiences and the growth of Kaseya, Fred emphasizes the importance of focusing on solving problems, reducing friction for customers, and constantly innovating to stay ahead in business.This episode is not just about business growth but also about personal resilience, community impact, and the real stories behind a seemingly overnight success.
Tune in for a deep dive into how embracing challenges can lead to innovation and success and how personal passion can drive corporate social responsibility. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or an established leader, Fred's story will inspire you to think differently about adversity, leadership, and the power of giving back.
00:00 - Introduction: Fred Vacola's Journey
04:06 - Solving Big Problems
25:59 - Building a Customer-Centric Culture
31:38 - The Joy of Helping Others: The Cooper Foundation
Fred On Socials: YouTube: @kaseyacorp
IG: @Kaseyacorp
FB: https://www.facebook.com/KaseyaFan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fred-voccola
https://www.kaseya.com/
Jon on Socials:
IG: @streetschultz
FB: Jon Schultz
LinkedIn: jonschultz1
www.jonschultz.com
Fred opens up about the highs and lows of his journey, discussing the critical pivots and innovative steps that helped navigate his success through crises and the economic halts. He sheds light on the challenges and triumphs of scaling a business, integrating cultures after acquisitions, and the importance of adaptability and focusing on customer-centric solutions.
Fred also discusses the influential role his family and upbringing played in shaping his entrepreneurial spirit and how his connection to his dog Cooper, who, despite being paralyzed, has become a symbol of hope and resilience.Cooper's story has inspired many, leading to the creation of the CoopWorks Foundation, which supports disabled animals and provides therapy for veterans.
Through his experiences and the growth of Kaseya, Fred emphasizes the importance of focusing on solving problems, reducing friction for customers, and constantly innovating to stay ahead in business.This episode is not just about business growth but also about personal resilience, community impact, and the real stories behind a seemingly overnight success.
Tune in for a deep dive into how embracing challenges can lead to innovation and success and how personal passion can drive corporate social responsibility. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or an established leader, Fred's story will inspire you to think differently about adversity, leadership, and the power of giving back.
00:00 - Introduction: Fred Vacola's Journey
04:06 - Solving Big Problems
25:59 - Building a Customer-Centric Culture
31:38 - The Joy of Helping Others: The Cooper Foundation
Fred On Socials: YouTube: @kaseyacorp
IG: @Kaseyacorp
FB: https://www.facebook.com/KaseyaFan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fred-voccola
https://www.kaseya.com/
Jon on Socials:
IG: @streetschultz
FB: Jon Schultz
LinkedIn: jonschultz1
www.jonschultz.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, welcome to the JohnSchultz Podcast. We have an incredible guest
today, a Jersey guy just likeme. Love when I get Jersey people
on the podcast. It's Fred Vacola, CEO Kissea. An amazing company,
it management security software expanding. Youknow, he's grown it by incorporating other
(00:24):
companies such as It, Glue,Rocket Cyber or Dato or Dato I want
to pronounce that properly. You knowwe're going to talk about this, but
you know, went from eighty fivemillion in revenue to over a billion,
forty eight hundred employees. I don'tknow how your brain can actually take that
all in and operate it the wayyou do. But you have other great
(00:47):
things that he does because friend's agiver. One hundred percent is the Cooper
of Acola Family Foundation, which we'regoing to talk about. So welcome to
the podcast. Fred. Where didyou grow up and how would you describe
yourself as a young a young adult, young kid, as a young kid
or a young adult. Let's startwith the kid. Let's start with the
(01:07):
kid. So I grew up inJersey, obviously, grew up in Middletown,
New Jersey. Go South as ayoung kid, I was a complete
spaz. I think I think ourmutual friend Dominic would agree with that.
I was very blessed to have theabsolute greatest parents in the world and that
(01:29):
that that makes such a difference insomebody's life, you know. And you
know, my mom was the greatestmom. I'm sure everyone says that,
but I it's just fantastic. Myfather's wasn't as an amazing father, very
entrepreneurial, you know, very strict, two brothers, one older, one
younger. And I also was luckyenough when I was really young John I
(01:55):
met the I mean, I wasvery lucky that I met a core group
of friends that to this day,you know, ten years later, because
I'm only twenty one years ago,all these years later, I can still
say I have the same four bestfriends that I've had since kindergarten and second
grade, uh and sixth grade.That's what I deal. It's it's been
(02:19):
an amazing journey. And that's whatit's like growing up in Jersey. And
you can talk about it, youknow, that unique element of aggression and
loyalty. Yeah, at least combinationof it. So it was a great
upbringing. It's it's it's awesome.I mean I and I also feel like
I have the same and I andI have it in levels right, because
everything that I've been involved in asI got older, I still have these
(02:43):
sets of friends. And the mostfun I have is when I bring my
sets of friends all together and it'sjust it's off. That's how I met
one hundred and that's what I callit Charlotte's web right of just greatness of
great French. So you mentioned yourparents, I feel the same way.
(03:06):
How did that shape your entrepreneurial spirit? Also, because you know, we
have our stage in the life ofwhat we want to be or do.
How did it affect you? Yeah, so it really a couple of things
I think that are important for tobe entrepreneurial and to be an entrepreneur two
different things. You an entrepreneur issomeone who takes the financial risk and does
(03:30):
it themselves. Entrepreneur real is someonewho is disruptive, but maybe can be
disruptive in someone else's organization. Youknow, they're still very creative. So
my father was incredibly was both.So the first half of his career,
you know, he was military andgovernment stuff and agency stuff like that.
But then when he went into theprivate sector. He was. He was
(03:53):
a very early computer guy. AndI say computer guy John because computer guide
when you're in the Vietnam era andyou're in Vietnam and then you go to
military intelligence school and you learn aboutwhat a computer is. The computers were
the size of the rooms that we'rein. They had less processing power than
our cell phones, you know,and you were coding a even pre punch
(04:15):
card. You can imagine that.So he was super early in the computer
game, if you will. Andthen when he went to the private sector,
the data processing is what computers werereally used for, big, huge
scale data processing. And my fatheris a very innovative mind. He's very
(04:39):
always looking at ways of making thingsbetter. And he always taught me find
a big problem, a big problemthat affects a lot of people, and
solve that problem. If you dothat, you'll feel really good about yourself
and most likely you make a tonof money while you're doing And lucky for
me, my father made a lotlot of money after I was already an
(05:00):
adult. So I didn't grow upin a you know, I didn't grow
up without the chip on the shoulderthat most of us have. But so
I saw him building companies as akid, whereas as a as an adolescence
that came to fruition as a youngadult. So one of the things that
giving a given example was is theeasy Pass system. The company he was
(05:23):
the principal of. He and hispartners, they conceptualized it, invented it,
and rolled out easy Pass. Sothe first tall collection systems world.
Now, being a Jersey guy,we can remember driving down to the Jersey
shore, sitting at those huge,huge traffic jams that got caused by having
to stop and pay you twenty fivecents back then to a toll and it
(05:44):
would make it thirty mile drive anhour and a half long. And it
took like fifteen years for us tocome to fruition. But I remember when
my father had a company Data comeand they sold it to Lockheed and they
I hate these are the word inventedbecause it's a it's a system, not
necessarily a product. But they inventedand brought to market the electronic col collection
systems. And just seeing that likethe vision of it, the actual vision
(06:09):
of saying how much better are wegoing to make the trip to the beach,
you know, or how much bettercan we make the trip to New
York City. Just I mean seeingthat happen in real time, dealing with
the union all the imagine the challengeof dealing with the cult collectors Union for
that, you know, like thatkind of disruptive innovation massive. And then
later it was you know, earlyat a company called Navtech, which was
(06:31):
the company that literally invented in vehiclenavigation. So when you're doing rep guidance
and you put it into today yourphone, the maps, the navigable maps.
That was that was Rushshield to mydad and a bunch of guys who
who delivered that to the world,and it's changed everything. And so just
seeing that, I was so luckyto just be at the dinner table.
(06:55):
And then when I went to collegehearing how they were doing it, and
just realizing that status quo doesn't haveto be the status quo. You can
change it and don't let someone tellyou can't, you know, just go
after it and fight and make theadjustment and the rewards come. It was,
it was. I was so luckyto have that at it. I
(07:15):
love that I had Uri levine Onwho founded Ways, so obviously yeah,
I guarantee you Uri, my fatherin rush shields. They I one hundred
percent guarantee you they maybe I'm gonnaget him on a group text and we'll
all be up badass. Yeah.So uh, but you know he had
the same sort of mindset for he'slike fall in love with the problem,
(07:39):
right, not the solution, becausethe solutions are only a result of that
grind. Like you're saying, whatyou're fat And I guess being around that,
I felt the same thing with myfather. He was in real estate.
Obviously I I am as well,and I just saw all the things
that he had to fight through.You know, he never he never felt
like it was working the way itshould, but he would always have a
(08:01):
positive attitude. My mother, whohas the most positive attitude. That unit,
like, like you said, you'reeveryone together, made everyone feel they
could still do it and it's amazing. So you live that your first company,
I think you started in college oryou know, so you had that
mindset. Where did that go?And then give us a little evolution of
(08:24):
why you I guess you went there, tried to go to Wall Street,
but then you left and why thatcame to bear? Yeah, looking back
in and that was as an olderdude, I look back in my twenty
one year old college scenior yourself,I couldn't get hired. I couldn't get
a job. I got a coupleof interviews, you know, Goldyn Sachs
and JP Morgan and all fancy Solomonbrothers, Lehman brothers, they were around
(08:50):
back then. Yeah, I thoughtI wanted to be like a Wall Street
dude. Now that I understand WallStreet, I'm glad that I wasn't.
Not that they're bad people is notfor me, don't building. But I
thought that's what I wanted to do, and I was. I must be
I've been a horrible interviewer. Imust have been terrible because I got not
one second interview. They wouldn't evenlook at me. As I always say,
(09:13):
John, I'm not handsome enough.I'm not the Ivy League pedigree,
I guess, but I can go. I'm very happy. But so happens
at of necessity. I had agood job. I mean, that was
it. And so I also waskind of a nerd in school. I
liked my classes, and I wouldbe the nerd that would sit in the
(09:33):
front row of his sociology class becauseI found it interesting or you know,
not to mention the business classes economicsclass. I liked it. Yeah,
so I sawed my first company.There's a lot of financial services regulatory change
happening. When I was in college. Glass STEAGALAC came down. Interstate Banking
and Branch Efficiency Actors passed that allowedbanks to operate across states, and it
(09:56):
really allowed the American bankings ancial servicesystem to evolve to what it is today,
to get very big. Before beforethen, we had a tremendous number
of small financial institutions. So ourbiggest institutions couldn't compete with the foreign institutions
because they didn't have the asset base. So these two laws were passed in
the Clinton air that allowed the Bushand Clintin air that allowed you know,
(10:20):
it allowed banks and institutions to getbig. So as they got big,
they needed to process and manage hugevolumes of data. This is in the
nineties early nineties, long time agodata sets up on mainframes. So technology
was changing quick and the ability toanalyze and move data and information and systems
(10:41):
was happening at a pace never seen. It was the IT revolution. So
we saw a need and I justwrote a little piece of software that would
do some stuff for grabbing data offmain trains and doing some stuff that I
got lucky enough that a little consultingcompany decided to buy it, and they
bought it. It was it wasit was five figures, John, It
(11:03):
wasn't six fide. It was aswing. But got a ton of money
for when you're in Jersey, whenyou're Coty. I dinner thought it's that
kind of money. And you know, they bought it, and I got
started in software and I got superlucky, and I went to work for
that consulting company. That consulting companygot bought by a company called AMDOL,
which is a big mainframe company thatFujitsu bought them. So I'm a twenty
three year old kid and I'm like, you know what, I don't want
(11:26):
to be a number at Fujitsu.I'm going to go try something different.
And I got super lucky. Igot I got, I picked up introduced.
I found a company called Prism Solutions, and they were early company.
They were doing data warehousing work forETL stuff kind of like what the software
(11:46):
that I did, and a smallcompany, but they were a Silicon Valley
company in the super early days inthe Valley with a management team of people
that are now like Silicon Valley legends, but they were all early in their
career and I learned the game asan East Coast guy. The game that
was pretty much the exclusive domain ofa very small number of people in the
(12:09):
Bay Area because in the early tomid nineties, you know, there was
there were not large scale private equity, venture growth equity didn't exist. There
was a handful of players, andI was lucky enough that I got exposed
to them as the crazy East Coastkid of the group. So that company
went public. We then sold itafter a public and then I moved out
(12:31):
west and you know, I gotinvited and I started to get the network
of people in the valley, andI did one of the first web hosting
companies that was that was when webhosting was like the sexy thing. There
was no that that company we raisedlike five hundred million dollars before undred and
fifty million bucks. And I learneda valuable in the dot com crash blew
(12:52):
everybody up, and I learned alesson that profits matter, you know.
And so then after that, Ihad another little moment in my life.
I lived in San Francisco then andI came back east. We sold that
company to IBM bought some and rackSpace bought some. So I came back
back east. Back home, hadsome some stuff that my mom had to
(13:13):
do with, and I met aguy named Yoki Sloan or Hebrew Yochi like
the O got it and this crazyIsraeli guy. He's one of is my
second mentor, and two mentors,my old man, my dad and then
Yogi and Yoki's for those of youthat are in the IT and nerding security
(13:35):
stuff. He was the founder ofa company called Mercury Interactive, which went
public and HP bottom for a coupleof billion dollars like twenty years ago.
It's a huge ecent, very veryinnovative, smart one of the smartest,
the other my dad smartest guy now. And he had a company called he
started a company technically yeah, actyou called me starting a company called Identify
(14:00):
Software. And I was one ofthe first people in. And he graciously
now calls me a co founder ofIdentified. I wasn't a co founder.
He started it. I was wellthe first guys in, and so he
and I built the business. Hewent up to god, I think about
fifty million runner at fifty million dollarsin rev and that was in two thousand,
right fifty thousand, and we soldit oh six to BMC Software for
(14:22):
one hundred and fifty million bucks.That was I had some other exits,
but that was a nice payday.That was fun. And how many I
mean, like these stories are amazing, but let everyone know, I mean,
like, how many times did youthink it was dead, that it
wasn't going to work? Because likelike like if you read about you're like,
(14:43):
it looks like it's this perfect Cinderellastory and we know that's not really
what it is. So what werethe challenges? I'll tell you a great
story about identifying. So first off, i'd say every eighteen months, shit
go sideways. You know, inthe business, the industry that I've chosen,
you pivot all the time. AllI mean I mean massive pivots,
(15:05):
not oh I pivoted. I reducedmy price five percent. Now like massive
pivots, whole distribution models, wholesalerecapitalizations, everything totally changes, and you
know, hopefully luck is on yourside because nobody's smart enough to do it.
All right, So the identify here'sa great story about identifying. We're
doing maybe a million and a halfof revenue, maybe two million two thousand
(15:28):
and one September of two thousand andone. We have offices Israel is where
we had our R and D becauseback in two thousand and one, Israel
was a low cost center. Rightnow it's very expensive that it wasn't great
engineering talent there. We have maybemillion dollars in the bank, million half
dollars in the bank. Nine toeleven happens. Our offices are Lower Manhattan.
(15:52):
Our offices get destroyed. We havemaybe forty thirty five people in the
company, maybe forty ten of usare in North America. Hat and you
know we had some we had sometragedy there. So we're a company that
we mean the world changed that day, you remember, we all remember,
Yeah, And from purely leaving thepersonal's eye and the losses, I know
(16:15):
that if you lose an office,no big deal in twenty twenty twenty four,
right, go work from home.It's a lot harder to do that
when you're an early stage startup company. You need to collaborate and pivot.
So not only was the office gone, so the people were no longer was
right. So that's that's tough todeal with in a lot of fronts.
Now the economy stopped. It wasvery similar for about a three week period.
(16:40):
What happened after nine to eleven wasvery similar to what happened right when
COVID came out a ground to ahalt. So we're like shit. The
way that you sold software, thekind of software we sold identified was it
was application performance monitoring software. Theway you sold that we should jump on
an airplane and you'd fly to ayou know, a city bank or JC
(17:02):
Penny or Wells Fargo, and youwould do a demo of your product and
then they would do a trial,and nine months later you get a sale
of one hundred thousand dollars two milliondollars. You couldn't do that anymore.
We literally there, you couldn't travel, and not to mention, no one
wanted to travel, right, Soit was we had to pivot. The
Internet was in the early stages,so we decided that we were going to
(17:27):
invest in something called WebEx. WebExwas the predecessor of like go to meeting
and Zoom and teams, and wewould start setting up online virtual meetings like
like like a zoom meeting in twothousand and one. Now I'd say one
fifth of our customers didn't have thebandwidth where they could do it. Oh
(17:48):
God, that's what it was.So that's a pivot I was. I
mean, I remember all of uswe stopped taking salary and I were paying
ourselves a lot of money then,but stopped taking salary were I didn't do
expense reports for like ten months becauseI don't think the company had the money
to do it. Yeah, youknow. And then that new way of
selling allowed us to scale massively becauseit allowed us to hire salespeople at a
(18:18):
much faster rate because we didn't havethe half a million dollar travel and overhead
burden we normally would have had fora person. So when there's trial and
tribulations and challenges, innovation comes in. And that innovative step allowed us to
get to the next step, changingour price model and stuff. And then
we you know, that company calledfire and eventually BMC two and then you
(18:40):
sawd it and did well. Solet me ask you a question on that,
and then we're going to get intocaseya, because if you know,
every time something unfortunately, we don'twant to feel those things. We don't
really want those to happen. Candidly, but they do and you see that
it only created some thing better.Are you taking that mentality on where you
(19:03):
are in caseya and disrupting yourself allthe time, Like talk to people about
the myth of overnight success means you'reconstantly disrupting yourself because you know it's you
said, every eighteen months, something'sgoing to change. Yeah, how is
a mentality like that in business?Yeah? So I think many things and
you you indicated this earlier and somethingyou said not looking at your productor looking
(19:26):
at the problem or focusing on theproblem. I think the most any advice
I'd give to anybody, entrepreneur ornot is NonStop recognize what is the problem
you are trying to solve, andfix that problem, and then make it,
you know, whatever solution you build, product, service, you know,
(19:48):
facility, whatever, fix that problem. Then make it really easy for
people to consume your product or serviceor whatever you're offering. Get rid of
friction. Friction is the enemy ofcommerce. Friction is bad. I mean,
if it's hard for you to dosomething, you're not gonna do it.
It's hard for you to go tothe story, You're not gonna go
to the store's it's make it easy, and I think a lot of people
(20:11):
miss that. So we're talking aboutthe myth of overnight success. If if
you or if we as business professionalsare not constantly thinking about the problem,
how the solution makes the problem better, not about the solution as a as
a pretty toy that I can thatI can make my little baby, but
(20:32):
how to make sure that my babyis solving the problems that are needed and
then making sure it's easy and youeliminate friction. That's the truth, because
like you're a you're an avert.Like look at Google, like they're gonna
have to reinvent, like they hadthis thing for a very long time.
You know, I was on Perplexitythis morning. I mean, like I'm
trying different things that I never wouldtry in cyber and why you're melding all
(20:57):
these things? They got to buttinference. If the if I don't get
the answer back from Perplexity fast,it's not going to work. If I
can't work with your product totally.And it's so so within caseya knowing that's
the case, knowing that you've grownso much so fast. You need to
have a culture of people that feelthat what's that challenge wherever you wanted to
(21:22):
just like say I'm done because Idon't know how I'm going to get this
to happen, integrating new people,adding locations. I mean, like you've
been in hyper growth, So howdo you handle that? Yeah, So
I took this company over about youknow, nine and a half years ago,
maybe ten. We we had aboutabout fifty million of revenue then,
(21:45):
give or take and mad maybe threehundred employees. We're at like a billion
and a half of gap revenue thisyear over five thousand employees. So it's
a lot of growth. Like yousaid, doesn't happen overnight. There have
been massive challenges the company over.We were in trouble the company as as
I've said publicly, we had lostour way. Companies stopped being about our
(22:07):
customer and the customer we serve asa very unique customer, a very I
mean this complementary, a very needykind of customer, customer that you really
have to service. We serve smallbusiness owners. Our customers are the IT
and security service providers that do allof the technology work for small to mid
sized businesses around the world. Profileof our customer twenty five employees, owner
(22:32):
oup, which is the majority ofbusinesses I mean right and the U market
and it's personal form and our products. The solution that we provide is the
cog for them literally, so we'lldo upwards of fifteen Our revenue will be
upwards of fifteen or twenty percent ofour customer's revenue. Think about that relationship
(22:53):
and our software. If our softwaredoesn't perform, our customer doesn't get paid
literally and instantly. So it isa very dependent relationship. So what that
forces us to do is take innovationto a different level because not only does
(23:14):
it have to be easy to consume, it has to be easy for our
customer to monetize. So when youask about challenges, I could spend the
next three hours John talking about I'llgive you a couple of anecdotes. In
the very beginning, we had todo wholesale changes and build a culture.
We had to build a culture whereCasey when we got here, a lot
(23:37):
of great people, but they fellinto what a lot of software companies do.
They focused on their product as astandalone thing, not on how their
product is solving their customers problems,and they started making a product that wasn't
built for the customer. It wasbuilt for the engineer's pleasure of those building.
(23:57):
That was a big cultural change.We had the changes in a better
company, a customer centric company.I mean we are. You talk to
our accountants, if you talk toour lawyers, they'll talk about the customer
centricity of this place and how ourone job on this world is to make
sure that our customers, they're calledMSPs, our customers powered by Cassea,
(24:18):
are the best, the most profitable, they do the most financial success.
Other challenges. We've made a lotof acquisitions. Two years ago, we
bought our biggest competitor, a companycalled Pato Public Company. We're a private
company, they're a public company.So you know, a buy a buyout
of of a buyout of a publiccompetitor by a private company mechanically is not
(24:42):
hard. There were a lot ofcultural differences between the two companies, has
been well stated in the industry mediathat we have. And the companies they
had more employees than we did.You know, it was it was a
that was the that was challenging.Now what made a chance challenging? It
wasn't the cultural issues. You know, those things are they're hard to solve
(25:04):
for, but you solve for them, because you you just pushed forward and
you present something that benefits the customer. If they're not with it, you're
out. And if you've become aboutthe customer stay. We made some mistakes
when we did our billing integration,so we had to integrate these two giant
systems, and we mess it upa little bit, and it pissed off
(25:27):
pretty substantially about seven percent of ourcustomers. And that doesn't sound like much
for those that aren't listening. Thatwas the most challenging professional time of my
life because if we have sixty thousandcustomers, seven percent of that, you
know it's four thousand or whatever.It's a lot of customers. It's a
(25:49):
lot with an absolute huge number.And these customers are like, wait a
minute, I'm doing two million.Our customer might be doing two million dollars
a year in revenue and they're payingthousand dollars a month with us, So
that's six hundred thousand a year andwe're billing them double because we missed our
building system right and then and that'sa catastrophic thing. And it just you
(26:12):
know, and because we're so sensitiveto our customers, we it caused it
caused a lot of challenges and we'rehere, we are on the other side
of it. We're rocking. Soit was constantly innovating, problem solving and
figuring out what to do and pivotingthe ORG and creating you know, fire
teams and it. It was.It was challenging. So there's never a
(26:36):
straight line of success. Anybody whotells you that is there lying or they're
the luckiest to and being in theworld. Uh, you know, but
it was we got through it soso and I always find when I get
through those moments, like I don'tknow, that's what like I like,
like I say this all the time. I like the movie Rudy and like
I like the like when you haveto go through it and you get to
(26:56):
the other side. Uh. Inthose story are the epitomes of that that
I've watched life stronger. You know. It makes first of all, what
happens when that stuff happens, Youidentify weaknesses in the ORG and you're always
twenty twenty, Oh my god,I should have moved this person to here,
added this group, done this,done. That's that's frustrating because as
(27:18):
perfectionists really started we do we wantto be right yeah. The other point.
You know, there's a phrase,if it doesn't kill you, it
makes you stronger. All those cheesythings. Let me tell you if you
if you really struggle and you reallycome through something hard and identify software at
that company, we still have annualreunions. We do. I mean the
(27:40):
culture that we had was phenomenal.Like Casseia. You come down to Miami
and you walk around Miami, You'llsee thousands of people where I am Casasa.
You'll see our customers, customers whereshirts I bleed casse blue. We
set our customer conference in Las Vegas. We had six thousand people there and
itzing that the pride not only theplaces that our customers feel, they know
(28:03):
we screw up, Like listen,we're humans. We're a company made up
of humans. But we will wewill do everything short of dying to make
our customers lives better and they appreciateit. So when you come on the
other side of something like that together, it makes the bond really strong well,
and people care more about brands andwhat people are doing to help others
(28:26):
today and social good. And Iknow your move to put Caseya Center into
play what was brilliant because regardless ofhow big you are, you look bigger.
Like you know, our company,we had a big sign on a
building. It wasn't even our building, but it was great sign. It's
rights. Yeah, and you know, it just shows that you have an
impact in the in the area andsociety that you're in. Yeah. And
(28:51):
then the casea center for us,all that's true. I mean, we're
we're looking to hire a couple thousandpeople over the next three four years in
Miami, around the world. Actually, Amy's read quarters, so yeah,
it helps helps a lot. Theother is for our customers, John,
remember the Intel inside campaign kids theaverage buyer of computers. So, for
those who don't know in the podcast, in the nineties, personal computers were
(29:15):
new. It wasn't you didn't goyou know, not everyone had five computers.
You're very lucky for me. Therewere two hundred pounds to carry them
around, and they were the sameprice they are today. So you know,
in nineteen ninety five, fifteen hundreddollars was a lot more than it
is. Tone and Intel sold microprocessors, and they were selling them to Dell
(29:36):
and IBM and Hewlett Packard and Compactand Gateway and Acer and all these so
they wanted they wanted to direct market, direct to consumer market the brand Intel.
So they're brilliant. They create somethingcalled Intel inside. So now they
did such a good job with thisbrand that when my mom would go to
the store, go to Egghead Software, go to Sears to buy a computer,
(29:57):
she'd say, all I need toknow is said it has Intel inside,
because intelligence shout process. So withCassey, we're doing the same thing.
Our customers are out there delivering itand security services to all the small
to mid sized businesses in the world, and we're building a brand awareness that
Cassey is the most secure in theplant. So we want the dentist,
(30:18):
the lawyer, the architect, realestate guy to say to their I person,
are you powered by casse Because ifyou're powered by Cassea, you're good.
And that's that's the driver behind thecase. And you're you're you're in
the community. You're giving back allthe time the community. You're doing all
sorts of cool things, you know, And let's talk about cooper like because
(30:40):
to me, I'm a I'm ananimal lover to the end of my days.
I mean, I don't know howpeople can't be Uh, you've integrated
this unbelievable pet that you have.Oh it's the most I can't these faith,
these faces, I die. Butyou really made this a thing,
(31:02):
like you know, obviously it's acharitable thing. But there's this Cooper I
guess ask Cooper AI thing going on. Yeah, so talk a little bit
about why you're so into this.Yeah, so why Like Cooper's dog,
he's actually desperate now hanging out listeningto us talk about him. He's like,
guys keep not talking about and he'san amazing guy. He's had people
(31:26):
have Pekinese. But he had anaccident. He got paralyzed from his on
his hind side, so his backlegs and his tail got paralyzed. So
it happened about seven seven and ahalf years ago, eight years ago.
Cooper's sixteen and a half years old. So he's rocking and so you know
he can walk. So he learnedhow to spinal walk, which is where
you like whiggle your back legs tomove. And yeah, you know that's
(31:47):
he's getting older. That's going awaynow, so you know he's kind of
can't walk. Some dogs get thewheels. He tried the wheels and stuff.
I've seen that, yup. SoCooper's been an inspiration for a lot
of people. We take him toa lot of veteran places. You know,
you get the kids coming back fromthe war. Imagine your ninete year
old kid, you're you know,you get your legs are blown off or
I don't mean to be negative,but something bad happens. That's hard to
(32:07):
keep faith in life. And oneof the things that I learned by being
involved in the veterans community is takingwhen you're depressed, taking care of someone
or something is one of the bestways of healing depression. You feel needed
and wanted and creates perfect giving.Yeah, so you know, Cooper would
(32:29):
go and then the young men andwomen would see Cooper and be like,
holy shit, if this guy cando it, what does that mean?
And so we put together some stuffwhere we take disabled animals and bring them
to getting for vets to work withand it's been amazing and it's one of
the things that the Cooper Foundation doesand it's it's just amazing to see really
changing these guys. I love it. I mean to have an inspiration with
(32:52):
you all day, every day andto let other people feel it. And
now you're and now you're incorporating itinto Causeyah, which means Coopera will live
forever. Right, So yeah,so we uh are we have we deal
with some pretty serious cybersecurity stuff inour in our world are we are the
(33:12):
global leader in iteen cybersecurity management forsmall to mid sized business And not to
scare everybody, but of the cybergangs and the cyber criminals around the world,
the commercial ones, not the theespionage acts. About ninety nine percent
of attacks are going after companies ofless than five hundred people. They're Yeah,
you read about the MGM getting hit, and you read about Caesar's getting
hit and things like that. Thoseare the ones that make the papers,
(33:36):
which you don't see about with thousandsof law firms that get twenty five thousand
dollar ransoms every day. The reasonthe criminals go after them is quite simple.
They're an easier target the and they'rebelow the radar. FBI has limited
resources, interpool has limited resources.Yeah, this is the wild West.
So our technology we were the we'rethe primary defender of small to mid sized
(33:59):
businesses around the world and take alot of pride. So we have a
lot of ai in our in whatwe do, and we leverage AI as
a tool to help us to dodifferent things. And from a a lot
of the technology advances so fast thatsometimes it's important to create something memorable so
people remember what you do usually buymore stuff. And I'm like, ef
(34:22):
it, We're going to call thisthe Cooper Intelligence Engine, and you know
you put I gotta I got apicture of it right here in the back
of my phone. Dude. Everyoneloves the mascot and I look Ronald McDonald.
I mean, like we've been seeingit for years. It works,
so hopefully it's amazing. Case Centerthey got to sell some of those Cooper
(34:44):
dots. Yeah, and it commerciallyworks. It creates a nice brand.
But what it also does. Imean, you like it's you know,
from a from a humanitarian perspective,if you will, I mean, I'm
active, like you an animal causesand kids, animals, veterans are education.
What it t rests my time with. And I mean we've rallied thousands
of people in the Cassaic community aroundthis. At our event in Las Vegas,
(35:07):
we did hundreds of thousands. Soon the last day, early in
the morning, we had a lotof our customers come and they donated their
time and a lot of us donatedthe money to put together some packages for
veterans, holdless veterans and things,and it was it's out. I mean,
it's people who normally wouldn't think aboutbeing active and helping things. They
(35:28):
rally around Cooper. Oh, Cooper'shelping the That's okay, we'll do it
like it's listen. But that's themagic. It's we want to rally.
People just need to be shown theway. But to have a brand that
you can feel happy to identify with, which is animals are you know,
Cooper is amazing And I just wantto commend you on that because you know
(35:51):
what we can get very stuck andjust what we're doing and how to grow
and we all have investors and customers, but to get outside yourself and go
help the community and people, andI just think that's what always makes me
feel the best. So yeah,it's it's people talk about having fun.
(36:12):
And I guess when you're a youngman, having funds, going to Vegas
and partying, right, and thenas you get older, it's playing with
your kids or your nieces, yournephews, and then when you get older,
it's about you know, other things, helping people. And I've been
told that. I remember hearing thatwhen I was in my early twenties at
prison for some of the folks outnow among the elite in the technology world,
(36:34):
icons of the industry telling me that, and I'm like okay, And
now I'm like, yeah, Iget more joy, you know, I'd
rather I get more joy at awatching what the kids do with the SPCA
and Momuth County. One of thethings that than making another X amount of
dollars or going to another party orit's cool. It's something that it's an
inevitable truth. And the most joythat I've ever had is a fielding company
(37:00):
and watching the people the companies growso those people can do the same thing
that I'm doing, and that's tryingto pass it forward. Well, you're
building people, not just things,and like we're all human and we all
talk about AI. It's just atool. You can never replace what we
have as relationships and the people thatwe're around, and that's where I get
(37:21):
all my energy. So we gotto give it back. But I want
to thank you for even spending thisamount of time. People are gonna love
this. I know people hopefully thatyour company will listen to this, and
you know, they get to seeFred in a whole different way, which
is a is a great way andpeople should know it. So so thank
you well John, thanks again.I appreciate doing it, and you know,
(37:44):
I just the only thing I'd leavewith everyone who listens is when you're
doing something you care about, yougot passion for, you can't fake it,
you know, don't don't quit.So many people make bullshit up and
they it just it's it's yeah,it's not going to be perfect. Thanks
again, Thank you again. Awesome, Thanks shaving
All right, welcome to the JohnSchultz Podcast. We have an incredible guest
today, a Jersey guy just likeme. Love when I get Jersey people
on the podcast. It's Fred Vacola, CEO Kissea. An amazing company,
it management security software expanding. Youknow, he's grown it by incorporating other
(00:24):
companies such as It, Glue,Rocket Cyber or Dato or Dato I want
to pronounce that properly. You knowwe're going to talk about this, but
you know, went from eighty fivemillion in revenue to over a billion,
forty eight hundred employees. I don'tknow how your brain can actually take that
all in and operate it the wayyou do. But you have other great
(00:47):
things that he does because friend's agiver. One hundred percent is the Cooper
of Acola Family Foundation, which we'regoing to talk about. So welcome to
the podcast. Fred. Where didyou grow up and how would you describe
yourself as a young a young adult, young kid, as a young kid
or a young adult. Let's startwith the kid. Let's start with the
(01:07):
kid. So I grew up inJersey, obviously, grew up in Middletown,
New Jersey. Go South as ayoung kid, I was a complete
spaz. I think I think ourmutual friend Dominic would agree with that.
I was very blessed to have theabsolute greatest parents in the world and that
(01:29):
that that makes such a difference insomebody's life, you know. And you
know, my mom was the greatestmom. I'm sure everyone says that,
but I it's just fantastic. Myfather's wasn't as an amazing father, very
entrepreneurial, you know, very strict, two brothers, one older, one
younger. And I also was luckyenough when I was really young John I
(01:55):
met the I mean, I wasvery lucky that I met a core group
of friends that to this day,you know, ten years later, because
I'm only twenty one years ago,all these years later, I can still
say I have the same four bestfriends that I've had since kindergarten and second
grade, uh and sixth grade.That's what I deal. It's it's been
(02:19):
an amazing journey. And that's whatit's like growing up in Jersey. And
you can talk about it, youknow, that unique element of aggression and
loyalty. Yeah, at least combinationof it. So it was a great
upbringing. It's it's it's awesome.I mean I and I also feel like
I have the same and I andI have it in levels right, because
everything that I've been involved in asI got older, I still have these
(02:43):
sets of friends. And the mostfun I have is when I bring my
sets of friends all together and it'sjust it's off. That's how I met
one hundred and that's what I callit Charlotte's web right of just greatness of
great French. So you mentioned yourparents, I feel the same way.
(03:06):
How did that shape your entrepreneurial spirit? Also, because you know, we
have our stage in the life ofwhat we want to be or do.
How did it affect you? Yeah, so it really a couple of things
I think that are important for tobe entrepreneurial and to be an entrepreneur two
different things. You an entrepreneur issomeone who takes the financial risk and does
(03:30):
it themselves. Entrepreneur real is someonewho is disruptive, but maybe can be
disruptive in someone else's organization. Youknow, they're still very creative. So
my father was incredibly was both.So the first half of his career,
you know, he was military andgovernment stuff and agency stuff like that.
But then when he went into theprivate sector. He was. He was
(03:53):
a very early computer guy. AndI say computer guy John because computer guide
when you're in the Vietnam era andyou're in Vietnam and then you go to
military intelligence school and you learn aboutwhat a computer is. The computers were
the size of the rooms that we'rein. They had less processing power than
our cell phones, you know,and you were coding a even pre punch
(04:15):
card. You can imagine that.So he was super early in the computer
game, if you will. Andthen when he went to the private sector,
the data processing is what computers werereally used for, big, huge
scale data processing. And my fatheris a very innovative mind. He's very
(04:39):
always looking at ways of making thingsbetter. And he always taught me find
a big problem, a big problemthat affects a lot of people, and
solve that problem. If you dothat, you'll feel really good about yourself
and most likely you make a tonof money while you're doing And lucky for
me, my father made a lotlot of money after I was already an
(05:00):
adult. So I didn't grow upin a you know, I didn't grow
up without the chip on the shoulderthat most of us have. But so
I saw him building companies as akid, whereas as a as an adolescence
that came to fruition as a youngadult. So one of the things that
giving a given example was is theeasy Pass system. The company he was
(05:23):
the principal of. He and hispartners, they conceptualized it, invented it,
and rolled out easy Pass. Sothe first tall collection systems world.
Now, being a Jersey guy,we can remember driving down to the Jersey
shore, sitting at those huge,huge traffic jams that got caused by having
to stop and pay you twenty fivecents back then to a toll and it
(05:44):
would make it thirty mile drive anhour and a half long. And it
took like fifteen years for us tocome to fruition. But I remember when
my father had a company Data comeand they sold it to Lockheed and they
I hate these are the word inventedbecause it's a it's a system, not
necessarily a product. But they inventedand brought to market the electronic col collection
systems. And just seeing that likethe vision of it, the actual vision
(06:09):
of saying how much better are wegoing to make the trip to the beach,
you know, or how much bettercan we make the trip to New
York City. Just I mean seeingthat happen in real time, dealing with
the union all the imagine the challengeof dealing with the cult collectors Union for
that, you know, like thatkind of disruptive innovation massive. And then
later it was you know, earlyat a company called Navtech, which was
(06:31):
the company that literally invented in vehiclenavigation. So when you're doing rep guidance
and you put it into today yourphone, the maps, the navigable maps.
That was that was Rushshield to mydad and a bunch of guys who
who delivered that to the world,and it's changed everything. And so just
seeing that, I was so luckyto just be at the dinner table.
(06:55):
And then when I went to collegehearing how they were doing it, and
just realizing that status quo doesn't haveto be the status quo. You can
change it and don't let someone tellyou can't, you know, just go
after it and fight and make theadjustment and the rewards come. It was,
it was. I was so luckyto have that at it. I
(07:15):
love that I had Uri levine Onwho founded Ways, so obviously yeah,
I guarantee you Uri, my fatherin rush shields. They I one hundred
percent guarantee you they maybe I'm gonnaget him on a group text and we'll
all be up badass. Yeah.So uh, but you know he had
the same sort of mindset for he'slike fall in love with the problem,
(07:39):
right, not the solution, becausethe solutions are only a result of that
grind. Like you're saying, whatyou're fat And I guess being around that,
I felt the same thing with myfather. He was in real estate.
Obviously I I am as well,and I just saw all the things
that he had to fight through.You know, he never he never felt
like it was working the way itshould, but he would always have a
(08:01):
positive attitude. My mother, whohas the most positive attitude. That unit,
like, like you said, you'reeveryone together, made everyone feel they
could still do it and it's amazing. So you live that your first company,
I think you started in college oryou know, so you had that
mindset. Where did that go?And then give us a little evolution of
(08:24):
why you I guess you went there, tried to go to Wall Street,
but then you left and why thatcame to bear? Yeah, looking back
in and that was as an olderdude, I look back in my twenty
one year old college scenior yourself,I couldn't get hired. I couldn't get
a job. I got a coupleof interviews, you know, Goldyn Sachs
and JP Morgan and all fancy Solomonbrothers, Lehman brothers, they were around
(08:50):
back then. Yeah, I thoughtI wanted to be like a Wall Street
dude. Now that I understand WallStreet, I'm glad that I wasn't.
Not that they're bad people is notfor me, don't building. But I
thought that's what I wanted to do, and I was. I must be
I've been a horrible interviewer. Imust have been terrible because I got not
one second interview. They wouldn't evenlook at me. As I always say,
(09:13):
John, I'm not handsome enough.I'm not the Ivy League pedigree,
I guess, but I can go. I'm very happy. But so happens
at of necessity. I had agood job. I mean, that was
it. And so I also waskind of a nerd in school. I
liked my classes, and I wouldbe the nerd that would sit in the
(09:33):
front row of his sociology class becauseI found it interesting or you know,
not to mention the business classes economicsclass. I liked it. Yeah,
so I sawed my first company.There's a lot of financial services regulatory change
happening. When I was in college. Glass STEAGALAC came down. Interstate Banking
and Branch Efficiency Actors passed that allowedbanks to operate across states, and it
(09:56):
really allowed the American bankings ancial servicesystem to evolve to what it is today,
to get very big. Before beforethen, we had a tremendous number
of small financial institutions. So ourbiggest institutions couldn't compete with the foreign institutions
because they didn't have the asset base. So these two laws were passed in
the Clinton air that allowed the Bushand Clintin air that allowed you know,
(10:20):
it allowed banks and institutions to getbig. So as they got big,
they needed to process and manage hugevolumes of data. This is in the
nineties early nineties, long time agodata sets up on mainframes. So technology
was changing quick and the ability toanalyze and move data and information and systems
(10:41):
was happening at a pace never seen. It was the IT revolution. So
we saw a need and I justwrote a little piece of software that would
do some stuff for grabbing data offmain trains and doing some stuff that I
got lucky enough that a little consultingcompany decided to buy it, and they
bought it. It was it wasit was five figures, John, It
(11:03):
wasn't six fide. It was aswing. But got a ton of money
for when you're in Jersey, whenyou're Coty. I dinner thought it's that
kind of money. And you know, they bought it, and I got
started in software and I got superlucky, and I went to work for
that consulting company. That consulting companygot bought by a company called AMDOL,
which is a big mainframe company thatFujitsu bought them. So I'm a twenty
three year old kid and I'm like, you know what, I don't want
(11:26):
to be a number at Fujitsu.I'm going to go try something different.
And I got super lucky. Igot I got, I picked up introduced.
I found a company called Prism Solutions, and they were early company.
They were doing data warehousing work forETL stuff kind of like what the software
(11:46):
that I did, and a smallcompany, but they were a Silicon Valley
company in the super early days inthe Valley with a management team of people
that are now like Silicon Valley legends, but they were all early in their
career and I learned the game asan East Coast guy. The game that
was pretty much the exclusive domain ofa very small number of people in the
(12:09):
Bay Area because in the early tomid nineties, you know, there was
there were not large scale private equity, venture growth equity didn't exist. There
was a handful of players, andI was lucky enough that I got exposed
to them as the crazy East Coastkid of the group. So that company
went public. We then sold itafter a public and then I moved out
(12:31):
west and you know, I gotinvited and I started to get the network
of people in the valley, andI did one of the first web hosting
companies that was that was when webhosting was like the sexy thing. There
was no that that company we raisedlike five hundred million dollars before undred and
fifty million bucks. And I learneda valuable in the dot com crash blew
(12:52):
everybody up, and I learned alesson that profits matter, you know.
And so then after that, Ihad another little moment in my life.
I lived in San Francisco then andI came back east. We sold that
company to IBM bought some and rackSpace bought some. So I came back
back east. Back home, hadsome some stuff that my mom had to
(13:13):
do with, and I met aguy named Yoki Sloan or Hebrew Yochi like
the O got it and this crazyIsraeli guy. He's one of is my
second mentor, and two mentors,my old man, my dad and then
Yogi and Yoki's for those of youthat are in the IT and nerding security
(13:35):
stuff. He was the founder ofa company called Mercury Interactive, which went
public and HP bottom for a coupleof billion dollars like twenty years ago.
It's a huge ecent, very veryinnovative, smart one of the smartest,
the other my dad smartest guy now. And he had a company called he
started a company technically yeah, actyou called me starting a company called Identify
(14:00):
Software. And I was one ofthe first people in. And he graciously
now calls me a co founder ofIdentified. I wasn't a co founder.
He started it. I was wellthe first guys in, and so he
and I built the business. Hewent up to god, I think about
fifty million runner at fifty million dollarsin rev and that was in two thousand,
right fifty thousand, and we soldit oh six to BMC Software for
(14:22):
one hundred and fifty million bucks.That was I had some other exits,
but that was a nice payday.That was fun. And how many I
mean, like these stories are amazing, but let everyone know, I mean,
like, how many times did youthink it was dead, that it
wasn't going to work? Because likelike like if you read about you're like,
(14:43):
it looks like it's this perfect Cinderellastory and we know that's not really
what it is. So what werethe challenges? I'll tell you a great
story about identifying. So first off, i'd say every eighteen months, shit
go sideways. You know, inthe business, the industry that I've chosen,
you pivot all the time. AllI mean I mean massive pivots,
(15:05):
not oh I pivoted. I reducedmy price five percent. Now like massive
pivots, whole distribution models, wholesalerecapitalizations, everything totally changes, and you
know, hopefully luck is on yourside because nobody's smart enough to do it.
All right, So the identify here'sa great story about identifying. We're
doing maybe a million and a halfof revenue, maybe two million two thousand
(15:28):
and one September of two thousand andone. We have offices Israel is where
we had our R and D becauseback in two thousand and one, Israel
was a low cost center. Rightnow it's very expensive that it wasn't great
engineering talent there. We have maybemillion dollars in the bank, million half
dollars in the bank. Nine toeleven happens. Our offices are Lower Manhattan.
(15:52):
Our offices get destroyed. We havemaybe forty thirty five people in the
company, maybe forty ten of usare in North America. Hat and you
know we had some we had sometragedy there. So we're a company that
we mean the world changed that day, you remember, we all remember,
Yeah, And from purely leaving thepersonal's eye and the losses, I know
(16:15):
that if you lose an office,no big deal in twenty twenty twenty four,
right, go work from home.It's a lot harder to do that
when you're an early stage startup company. You need to collaborate and pivot.
So not only was the office gone, so the people were no longer was
right. So that's that's tough todeal with in a lot of fronts.
Now the economy stopped. It wasvery similar for about a three week period.
(16:40):
What happened after nine to eleven wasvery similar to what happened right when
COVID came out a ground to ahalt. So we're like shit. The
way that you sold software, thekind of software we sold identified was it
was application performance monitoring software. Theway you sold that we should jump on
an airplane and you'd fly to ayou know, a city bank or JC
(17:02):
Penny or Wells Fargo, and youwould do a demo of your product and
then they would do a trial,and nine months later you get a sale
of one hundred thousand dollars two milliondollars. You couldn't do that anymore.
We literally there, you couldn't travel, and not to mention, no one
wanted to travel, right, Soit was we had to pivot. The
Internet was in the early stages,so we decided that we were going to
(17:27):
invest in something called WebEx. WebExwas the predecessor of like go to meeting
and Zoom and teams, and wewould start setting up online virtual meetings like
like like a zoom meeting in twothousand and one. Now I'd say one
fifth of our customers didn't have thebandwidth where they could do it. Oh
(17:48):
God, that's what it was.So that's a pivot I was. I
mean, I remember all of uswe stopped taking salary and I were paying
ourselves a lot of money then,but stopped taking salary were I didn't do
expense reports for like ten months becauseI don't think the company had the money
to do it. Yeah, youknow. And then that new way of
selling allowed us to scale massively becauseit allowed us to hire salespeople at a
(18:18):
much faster rate because we didn't havethe half a million dollar travel and overhead
burden we normally would have had fora person. So when there's trial and
tribulations and challenges, innovation comes in. And that innovative step allowed us to
get to the next step, changingour price model and stuff. And then
we you know, that company calledfire and eventually BMC two and then you
(18:40):
sawd it and did well. Solet me ask you a question on that,
and then we're going to get intocaseya, because if you know,
every time something unfortunately, we don'twant to feel those things. We don't
really want those to happen. Candidly, but they do and you see that
it only created some thing better.Are you taking that mentality on where you
(19:03):
are in caseya and disrupting yourself allthe time, Like talk to people about
the myth of overnight success means you'reconstantly disrupting yourself because you know it's you
said, every eighteen months, something'sgoing to change. Yeah, how is
a mentality like that in business?Yeah? So I think many things and
you you indicated this earlier and somethingyou said not looking at your productor looking
(19:26):
at the problem or focusing on theproblem. I think the most any advice
I'd give to anybody, entrepreneur ornot is NonStop recognize what is the problem
you are trying to solve, andfix that problem, and then make it,
you know, whatever solution you build, product, service, you know,
(19:48):
facility, whatever, fix that problem. Then make it really easy for
people to consume your product or serviceor whatever you're offering. Get rid of
friction. Friction is the enemy ofcommerce. Friction is bad. I mean,
if it's hard for you to dosomething, you're not gonna do it.
It's hard for you to go tothe story, You're not gonna go
to the store's it's make it easy, and I think a lot of people
(20:11):
miss that. So we're talking aboutthe myth of overnight success. If if
you or if we as business professionalsare not constantly thinking about the problem,
how the solution makes the problem better, not about the solution as a as
a pretty toy that I can thatI can make my little baby, but
(20:32):
how to make sure that my babyis solving the problems that are needed and
then making sure it's easy and youeliminate friction. That's the truth, because
like you're a you're an avert.Like look at Google, like they're gonna
have to reinvent, like they hadthis thing for a very long time.
You know, I was on Perplexitythis morning. I mean, like I'm
trying different things that I never wouldtry in cyber and why you're melding all
(20:57):
these things? They got to buttinference. If the if I don't get
the answer back from Perplexity fast,it's not going to work. If I
can't work with your product totally.And it's so so within caseya knowing that's
the case, knowing that you've grownso much so fast. You need to
have a culture of people that feelthat what's that challenge wherever you wanted to
(21:22):
just like say I'm done because Idon't know how I'm going to get this
to happen, integrating new people,adding locations. I mean, like you've
been in hyper growth, So howdo you handle that? Yeah, So
I took this company over about youknow, nine and a half years ago,
maybe ten. We we had aboutabout fifty million of revenue then,
(21:45):
give or take and mad maybe threehundred employees. We're at like a billion
and a half of gap revenue thisyear over five thousand employees. So it's
a lot of growth. Like yousaid, doesn't happen overnight. There have
been massive challenges the company over.We were in trouble the company as as
I've said publicly, we had lostour way. Companies stopped being about our
(22:07):
customer and the customer we serve asa very unique customer, a very I
mean this complementary, a very needykind of customer, customer that you really
have to service. We serve smallbusiness owners. Our customers are the IT
and security service providers that do allof the technology work for small to mid
sized businesses around the world. Profileof our customer twenty five employees, owner
(22:32):
oup, which is the majority ofbusinesses I mean right and the U market
and it's personal form and our products. The solution that we provide is the
cog for them literally, so we'lldo upwards of fifteen Our revenue will be
upwards of fifteen or twenty percent ofour customer's revenue. Think about that relationship
(22:53):
and our software. If our softwaredoesn't perform, our customer doesn't get paid
literally and instantly. So it isa very dependent relationship. So what that
forces us to do is take innovationto a different level because not only does
(23:14):
it have to be easy to consume, it has to be easy for our
customer to monetize. So when youask about challenges, I could spend the
next three hours John talking about I'llgive you a couple of anecdotes. In
the very beginning, we had todo wholesale changes and build a culture.
We had to build a culture whereCasey when we got here, a lot
(23:37):
of great people, but they fellinto what a lot of software companies do.
They focused on their product as astandalone thing, not on how their
product is solving their customers problems,and they started making a product that wasn't
built for the customer. It wasbuilt for the engineer's pleasure of those building.
(23:57):
That was a big cultural change.We had the changes in a better
company, a customer centric company.I mean we are. You talk to
our accountants, if you talk toour lawyers, they'll talk about the customer
centricity of this place and how ourone job on this world is to make
sure that our customers, they're calledMSPs, our customers powered by Cassea,
(24:18):
are the best, the most profitable, they do the most financial success.
Other challenges. We've made a lotof acquisitions. Two years ago, we
bought our biggest competitor, a companycalled Pato Public Company. We're a private
company, they're a public company.So you know, a buy a buyout
of of a buyout of a publiccompetitor by a private company mechanically is not
(24:42):
hard. There were a lot ofcultural differences between the two companies, has
been well stated in the industry mediathat we have. And the companies they
had more employees than we did.You know, it was it was a
that was the that was challenging.Now what made a chance challenging? It
wasn't the cultural issues. You know, those things are they're hard to solve
(25:04):
for, but you solve for them, because you you just pushed forward and
you present something that benefits the customer. If they're not with it, you're
out. And if you've become aboutthe customer stay. We made some mistakes
when we did our billing integration,so we had to integrate these two giant
systems, and we mess it upa little bit, and it pissed off
(25:27):
pretty substantially about seven percent of ourcustomers. And that doesn't sound like much
for those that aren't listening. Thatwas the most challenging professional time of my
life because if we have sixty thousandcustomers, seven percent of that, you
know it's four thousand or whatever.It's a lot of customers. It's a
(25:49):
lot with an absolute huge number.And these customers are like, wait a
minute, I'm doing two million.Our customer might be doing two million dollars
a year in revenue and they're payingthousand dollars a month with us, So
that's six hundred thousand a year andwe're billing them double because we missed our
building system right and then and that'sa catastrophic thing. And it just you
(26:12):
know, and because we're so sensitiveto our customers, we it caused it
caused a lot of challenges and we'rehere, we are on the other side
of it. We're rocking. Soit was constantly innovating, problem solving and
figuring out what to do and pivotingthe ORG and creating you know, fire
teams and it. It was.It was challenging. So there's never a
(26:36):
straight line of success. Anybody whotells you that is there lying or they're
the luckiest to and being in theworld. Uh, you know, but
it was we got through it soso and I always find when I get
through those moments, like I don'tknow, that's what like I like,
like I say this all the time. I like the movie Rudy and like
I like the like when you haveto go through it and you get to
(26:56):
the other side. Uh. Inthose story are the epitomes of that that
I've watched life stronger. You know. It makes first of all, what
happens when that stuff happens, Youidentify weaknesses in the ORG and you're always
twenty twenty, Oh my god,I should have moved this person to here,
added this group, done this,done. That's that's frustrating because as
(27:18):
perfectionists really started we do we wantto be right yeah. The other point.
You know, there's a phrase,if it doesn't kill you, it
makes you stronger. All those cheesythings. Let me tell you if you
if you really struggle and you reallycome through something hard and identify software at
that company, we still have annualreunions. We do. I mean the
(27:40):
culture that we had was phenomenal.Like Casseia. You come down to Miami
and you walk around Miami, You'llsee thousands of people where I am Casasa.
You'll see our customers, customers whereshirts I bleed casse blue. We
set our customer conference in Las Vegas. We had six thousand people there and
itzing that the pride not only theplaces that our customers feel, they know
(28:03):
we screw up, Like listen,we're humans. We're a company made up
of humans. But we will wewill do everything short of dying to make
our customers lives better and they appreciateit. So when you come on the
other side of something like that together, it makes the bond really strong well,
and people care more about brands andwhat people are doing to help others
(28:26):
today and social good. And Iknow your move to put Caseya Center into
play what was brilliant because regardless ofhow big you are, you look bigger.
Like you know, our company,we had a big sign on a
building. It wasn't even our building, but it was great sign. It's
rights. Yeah, and you know, it just shows that you have an
impact in the in the area andsociety that you're in. Yeah. And
(28:51):
then the casea center for us,all that's true. I mean, we're
we're looking to hire a couple thousandpeople over the next three four years in
Miami, around the world. Actually, Amy's read quarters, so yeah,
it helps helps a lot. Theother is for our customers, John,
remember the Intel inside campaign kids theaverage buyer of computers. So, for
those who don't know in the podcast, in the nineties, personal computers were
(29:15):
new. It wasn't you didn't goyou know, not everyone had five computers.
You're very lucky for me. Therewere two hundred pounds to carry them
around, and they were the sameprice they are today. So you know,
in nineteen ninety five, fifteen hundreddollars was a lot more than it
is. Tone and Intel sold microprocessors, and they were selling them to Dell
(29:36):
and IBM and Hewlett Packard and Compactand Gateway and Acer and all these so
they wanted they wanted to direct market, direct to consumer market the brand Intel.
So they're brilliant. They create somethingcalled Intel inside. So now they
did such a good job with thisbrand that when my mom would go to
the store, go to Egghead Software, go to Sears to buy a computer,
(29:57):
she'd say, all I need toknow is said it has Intel inside,
because intelligence shout process. So withCassey, we're doing the same thing.
Our customers are out there delivering itand security services to all the small
to mid sized businesses in the world, and we're building a brand awareness that
Cassey is the most secure in theplant. So we want the dentist,
(30:18):
the lawyer, the architect, realestate guy to say to their I person,
are you powered by casse Because ifyou're powered by Cassea, you're good.
And that's that's the driver behind thecase. And you're you're you're in
the community. You're giving back allthe time the community. You're doing all
sorts of cool things, you know, And let's talk about cooper like because
(30:40):
to me, I'm a I'm ananimal lover to the end of my days.
I mean, I don't know howpeople can't be Uh, you've integrated
this unbelievable pet that you have.Oh it's the most I can't these faith,
these faces, I die. Butyou really made this a thing,
(31:02):
like you know, obviously it's acharitable thing. But there's this Cooper I
guess ask Cooper AI thing going on. Yeah, so talk a little bit
about why you're so into this.Yeah, so why Like Cooper's dog,
he's actually desperate now hanging out listeningto us talk about him. He's like,
guys keep not talking about and he'san amazing guy. He's had people
(31:26):
have Pekinese. But he had anaccident. He got paralyzed from his on
his hind side, so his backlegs and his tail got paralyzed. So
it happened about seven seven and ahalf years ago, eight years ago.
Cooper's sixteen and a half years old. So he's rocking and so you know
he can walk. So he learnedhow to spinal walk, which is where
you like whiggle your back legs tomove. And yeah, you know that's
(31:47):
he's getting older. That's going awaynow, so you know he's kind of
can't walk. Some dogs get thewheels. He tried the wheels and stuff.
I've seen that, yup. SoCooper's been an inspiration for a lot
of people. We take him toa lot of veteran places. You know,
you get the kids coming back fromthe war. Imagine your ninete year
old kid, you're you know,you get your legs are blown off or
I don't mean to be negative,but something bad happens. That's hard to
(32:07):
keep faith in life. And oneof the things that I learned by being
involved in the veterans community is takingwhen you're depressed, taking care of someone
or something is one of the bestways of healing depression. You feel needed
and wanted and creates perfect giving.Yeah, so you know, Cooper would
(32:29):
go and then the young men andwomen would see Cooper and be like,
holy shit, if this guy cando it, what does that mean?
And so we put together some stuffwhere we take disabled animals and bring them
to getting for vets to work withand it's been amazing and it's one of
the things that the Cooper Foundation doesand it's it's just amazing to see really
changing these guys. I love it. I mean to have an inspiration with
(32:52):
you all day, every day andto let other people feel it. And
now you're and now you're incorporating itinto Causeyah, which means Coopera will live
forever. Right, So yeah,so we uh are we have we deal
with some pretty serious cybersecurity stuff inour in our world are we are the
(33:12):
global leader in iteen cybersecurity management forsmall to mid sized business And not to
scare everybody, but of the cybergangs and the cyber criminals around the world,
the commercial ones, not the theespionage acts. About ninety nine percent
of attacks are going after companies ofless than five hundred people. They're Yeah,
you read about the MGM getting hit, and you read about Caesar's getting
hit and things like that. Thoseare the ones that make the papers,
(33:36):
which you don't see about with thousandsof law firms that get twenty five thousand
dollar ransoms every day. The reasonthe criminals go after them is quite simple.
They're an easier target the and they'rebelow the radar. FBI has limited
resources, interpool has limited resources.Yeah, this is the wild West.
So our technology we were the we'rethe primary defender of small to mid sized
(33:59):
businesses around the world and take alot of pride. So we have a
lot of ai in our in whatwe do, and we leverage AI as
a tool to help us to dodifferent things. And from a a lot
of the technology advances so fast thatsometimes it's important to create something memorable so
people remember what you do usually buymore stuff. And I'm like, ef
(34:22):
it, We're going to call thisthe Cooper Intelligence Engine, and you know
you put I gotta I got apicture of it right here in the back
of my phone. Dude. Everyoneloves the mascot and I look Ronald McDonald.
I mean, like we've been seeingit for years. It works,
so hopefully it's amazing. Case Centerthey got to sell some of those Cooper
(34:44):
dots. Yeah, and it commerciallyworks. It creates a nice brand.
But what it also does. Imean, you like it's you know,
from a from a humanitarian perspective,if you will, I mean, I'm
active, like you an animal causesand kids, animals, veterans are education.
What it t rests my time with. And I mean we've rallied thousands
of people in the Cassaic community aroundthis. At our event in Las Vegas,
(35:07):
we did hundreds of thousands. Soon the last day, early in
the morning, we had a lotof our customers come and they donated their
time and a lot of us donatedthe money to put together some packages for
veterans, holdless veterans and things,and it was it's out. I mean,
it's people who normally wouldn't think aboutbeing active and helping things. They
(35:28):
rally around Cooper. Oh, Cooper'shelping the That's okay, we'll do it
like it's listen. But that's themagic. It's we want to rally.
People just need to be shown theway. But to have a brand that
you can feel happy to identify with, which is animals are you know,
Cooper is amazing And I just wantto commend you on that because you know
(35:51):
what we can get very stuck andjust what we're doing and how to grow
and we all have investors and customers, but to get outside yourself and go
help the community and people, andI just think that's what always makes me
feel the best. So yeah,it's it's people talk about having fun.
(36:12):
And I guess when you're a youngman, having funds, going to Vegas
and partying, right, and thenas you get older, it's playing with
your kids or your nieces, yournephews, and then when you get older,
it's about you know, other things, helping people. And I've been
told that. I remember hearing thatwhen I was in my early twenties at
prison for some of the folks outnow among the elite in the technology world,
(36:34):
icons of the industry telling me that, and I'm like okay, And
now I'm like, yeah, Iget more joy, you know, I'd
rather I get more joy at awatching what the kids do with the SPCA
and Momuth County. One of thethings that than making another X amount of
dollars or going to another party orit's cool. It's something that it's an
inevitable truth. And the most joythat I've ever had is a fielding company
(37:00):
and watching the people the companies growso those people can do the same thing
that I'm doing, and that's tryingto pass it forward. Well, you're
building people, not just things,and like we're all human and we all
talk about AI. It's just atool. You can never replace what we
have as relationships and the people thatwe're around, and that's where I get
(37:21):
all my energy. So we gotto give it back. But I want
to thank you for even spending thisamount of time. People are gonna love
this. I know people hopefully thatyour company will listen to this, and
you know, they get to seeFred in a whole different way, which
is a is a great way andpeople should know it. So so thank
you well John, thanks again.I appreciate doing it, and you know,
(37:44):
I just the only thing I'd leavewith everyone who listens is when you're
doing something you care about, yougot passion for, you can't fake it,
you know, don't don't quit.So many people make bullshit up and
they it just it's it's yeah,it's not going to be perfect. Thanks
again, Thank you again. Awesome, Thanks shaving
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.