Executive Profile: Fred Voccola of Kaseya
By Fred Voccola
WHAT ABOUT RUNNING A SOFTWARE COMPANY IS KEEPING YOU UP AT NIGHT?
Beyond everyday operational and organizational questions, I am always thinking about our customers. What are our customers thinking about us — Kaseya — right now? I constantly want to know exactly what our customers think of us in real time. It is important that we truly add measurable value to their companies.
It is increasingly easy for organizations to operate how they want to see the world, but it is vitally important to understand how the customers see you. It is essential that we are honest with ourselves in not only receiving feedback, but also in taking and implementing that feedback. I want to ensure that our company does not become too self-absorbed to understand what our customers think of us — and that’s something that starts with me and goes through every single person in the company. Kaseya exists for one reason, and that is to provide solutions that make our customers’ businesses better. As the CEO, it is my duty to make sure the “how we are doing” question is understood and felt throughout the company in an externally focused way.
THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER, YOU HAVE A SUCCESSFUL HISTORY OF DRIVING REVENUE GROWTH. WHAT’S THE SECRET?
I really don’t believe there is one overarching secret. You start with an understanding, which for Kaseya was having the right product market fit. We have perfected pricing, packaging, and our positioning to best appeal to the customer. In order for the customer to discover, purchase, and leverage the product, it has to be as friction-free as you can make it. You need to look at the pricing model, the business model, the sales model, the lead generation model — really every single aspect of the business — and determine the right approach to best facilitate that customer experience.
Another huge player in success is hiring a strong, dependable team. Moreover, you want a team that is driven and constantly motivated. There are enough instrumentation points so you can A/B test everything, and that is exactly how we operate. We are always testing pricing, packaging, sale processes, people, messages, and feature set combinations. Essentially, we treat the go-to-market function like a science, and this is where we evolve.
WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING IF YOU WEREN’T LEADING A SOFTWARE COMPANY?
I really can’t think of anything else I would rather be doing. But, if the tables were turned, I would love to teach young people in business. Whether it be coaching or mentoring, it would be immensely fulfilling to speak to young adults and professionals about the academics of business as a whole.
WHAT IS KASEYA’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE AS A COMPANY, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO OVERCOME IT?
It may sound anticlimactic, but our biggest challenge as a company is that we have so many opportunities we can pursue. We can take on 50 things, when we might only have the capacity to do 20. This requires ruthless prioritization and focus to make certain we stay true to our path down aggressive growth. We do not allow the temptation of tangential markets and opportunities to distract us from what we decide to do very well — that’s the biggest challenge that we have as a company.
We provide IT infrastructure management software for the small to midsize business segment. As the fastest-growing segment within technology today, we are given multiple avenues that we can pursue and not enough resources to pursue them. That said, we have adapted to be insanely ruthless about how we spend our time and resources to make sure that we’re pursuing the opportunities that yield the best returns for our customers, shareholders, and employees.
Fred Voccola
CEO, Kaseya
New York and Miami
Number Of Employees: 1000+
Year Founded: 2000
Growth Metrics: More than $250 million in annual bookings in 2018
Recent Acquisitions: Unitrends, Spanning Cloud Apps, RapidFire Tools, IT Glue and ID Agent (all in less than 18 months)
Website: https://www.kaseya.com/
Verticals: Managed Services Providers, Healthcare, Financial Services, IT, Education
