Sharon Florentine, editorial director for CyberRisk Alliance's channel brands MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, sat down with Joseph Landes, co-founder and chief revenue officer at Nerdio to talk about the desktop-as-a-service managed services and solution provider's massive fundraise, plans for expansion, the importance of listening to the channel, and more. Transcript has been lightly edited for flow.
Sharon Florentine: Joseph, thanks for taking the time! So, we've heard about the $500 million fundraise that Nerdio announced. Why don't you talk me through what happened and what this means for Nerdio and for the channel?
Joseph Landes: Well, thank you, Sharon. Yes, we announced our Series C fundraise just a few [weeks] ago. We raised $500 million at a $1 billion-plus valuation, which is very exciting for our employees. Our employees come to work every day, work super hard to delight our customers, to delight our partners, and it's just great validation of the work that we're doing in the desktop-as-a-service ecosystem, working with MSPs, and much more. So, we're very excited about the news and very excited to partner with General Atlantic, who's the leader of the round, as well as Lead Edge Capital and StepStone who are also participating in the round, so they will be joining up to add a bunch of new resources to our company, and help us continue to delight our partners and our clients.
Sharon Florentine: Fantastic. So, that's a huge fundraise. What does that say about Nerdio's success over your tenure at the company and your market position?
Joseph Landes: Well, we like to say we're a very outside-in company, you know. We go out and we spend a lot of time with our partners, with our clients and we let them tell us where we should focus. And I think, being an outside-in company, really, really keeps you humble, and it is about waking up every day, doing a lot of listening and adjusting, and making sure that you're continuing to deliver on what those partners and clients want and need.
With partners, you know, we started our company helping MSPs build successful cloud practices using Microsoft Azure. We've since expanded that beyond just Azure to the entirety of Microsoft 365. And really that expansion came from our MSPs who said, 'I want to get more out of my investment in Microsoft 365. Can you help us?' So we pivoted in that direction to add the Microsoft 365 suite to our existing investment in Azure. And the other area that we really take a lot of pride in being leaders in is desktop-as-a-service; that's really helping partners move away from legacy on-premises [virtual desktop infrastructure] VDI over to cloud-based DaaS, led by Microsoft.
Sharon Florentine: So, I know we just talked about how the channel contributes to Nerdio's success. But I also wanted to ask, what, specifically, do you see the company using the funds for? And why focus on those areas in particular?
Joseph Landes: Yeah, I will say, Sharon, one more thing about the channel: I tell my team that if you want real answers, wake up every day and go out and speak to partners. They'll tell you what you're doing right and wrong, and I think there's a tendency for vendors, software vendors, if you will, to wake up every day and sit inside their offices and just come up with stuff they think partners and clients will like. But I think the best learning happens when you go out and you speak to partners, because they're the ones who are using your products. They're the ones who need to be empowered to be successful. And I think that's something we do really well. Again, we take a lot of pride in that. We do have a very channel-friendly, partner-friendly organization.
When you ask about use of the funds and how we're going to leverage this incredible investment that General Atlantic made in us, it will be doing a lot more of the same, Sharon. We're going to continue to build strong relationships with the channel.
It's going to be meeting our channel partners where they are, whether that's at events or on webinars, at our own events, like our upcoming Nerdiocon, our Nerdio training camps. It's about continuing to provide incredibly high levels of support to our partners, both pre- and post-sales support. And it's about geographic expansion. It's about going out and meeting more MSPs in different locations around the world. This past year, we opened up in Australia and New Zealand, and I anticipate opening up in other countries.
We're very excited about it, and, you know, we're excited to continue meeting partners as we go out there and build our company.
