Not Doug from Crexendo

Dave and Evan  discuss how Crexendo is providing new options for enterprises and service providers with Jon Brinton, CRO of Crexendo. Jon triumphantly stepped in after a last minute scheduling change. 

That was probably for the best. Evan and I have known Jon for a long time, and those conversations always go a little smoother. Turns out he knows a few things about Crexendo too. Not to mention he shed some light on Mitel and Intertel history too. 

Crexendo Inc., is a full-service cloud communications provider that delivers critical voice and data communication services to small, medium, and small enterprise markets. Crexendo made a bold move last year with its acquisition of NetSapiens. A communications platform that is rapidly growing. It powers service providers around the globe, including Crexendo. 

Jon is a seasoned technology executive with over 25 years of industry experience, and is responsible for overseeing the strategy, performance and alignment of revenue generating operations for Crexendo. 

Prior to joining Crexendo, Jon most recently served as the Vice President of North America Channel for Avaya. At Avaya, he led the Channel through an exciting time of transition from traditional Premise Based solutions to Software as a Service and Cloud delivered solutions for Unified Communications, Collaboration and Customer Experience. During his tenure, the Avaya North America Channel achieved over $1 Billion in annual sales through growth and adoption of Cloud and Software as a Service delivered solutions.

Transcript

Evan Kirstel: 0:12

Welcome to talk to him. Today we will not be talking to Doug Gaylord of Krisna. No, but we'll talk about that later. But let's go ahead and talk. Let me be the 100 and 72nd person to congratulate you on your wedding. Thank you. It was very expensive, very fun, very exciting. And I'm still hung over. So it's all good. It was a fantastic event, you did a great job. I thought for sure you weren't gonna show up. But I gotta say, looking at the guest list. And some of the celebrities who had their I was surprised that I was doing all the tweeting. But I guess when you invite a bunch of influencers, they're all competitors. They don't tweet a lot. I was surprisingly busy. I thought I'd have a lot of free time at my own wedding to kind of sit around and tweet. But I was kind of the focus of the event. So I was preoccupied. But it got me thinking like what makes a great event and it was a it was a great wedding, I must say, What do you think? What makes a great event of any kind? Whether it's a wedding or a conference or a get together? What makes it extraordinary? Well, the obvious answer is the food. And I have to say both the word diverse, which I could never spell, I can always say or diverse. No, or Jeff or Jared. That's it. I can always say Oh, jurors and just I can't say right now but but once you see it written out, I can't see it anymore. But the addresses are really good. I really liked that crab to come. And that was really good. That's the best one. But the main dish was were really good too. So I would say you definitely got high marks on the food. And so that to me is the first check on that. For me, the favorite part was actually the end. And I don't mean that as a joke. I mean, at the end of the evening, we all went out on the beach, and they had campfires and s'mores and drinks and everyone could just sit around small groups and chat and relax. And that's my superpower is relaxing. Yes, I do agree with you that score should be a required element of any event. I mean, you can't go wrong. The only way you can go wrong with scores is if you have gluten free people, but you haven't had that box checked, because you had gluten free as an option graham crackers. So you know, there's also the destination which, you know, it was a nice destination outside Boston kind of an island, which you couldn't find that I got

Dave Michels: 2:30

to disagree with you there. But that is my only complaint. I don't get to Boston very often. I've always had a pleasant experience there before. But there's something about Uber drivers in Boston that they are. Every time I call it an Uber, which was four or five times I had to cancel because the guy had a man who's watching the guy drive circles around trying to figure out how to turn around his car. I just come into conclusion that every Uber driver in Boston is literally clueless.

Evan Kirstel: 2:57

It's more the roads. All drivers are clueless watched in their roots or were built in 1778 or something so but you really look down on the weather. You had great weather. I was afraid of a Boston snowstorm and everything I guess it doesn't happen in the middle of summer. But that outdoor wedding, we were outdoors smores campfires going on, right on the water. I mean, holy cow, we're right on the wet on the water. And that's the thing. It's the destination and no disrespect to all the people in Vegas right now doing tech events, but the idea of going to Vegas at the moment, or anytime and then hear you just saying that. It's just horrible. So what about why not more interesting destinations, smaller events, and I'll be it but more interesting. What about Portugal? I hear that's gonna be a great destination. They find that's next week. But I have to say I disagree with you. I have to say that I believe the best place to have a tech conference is probably a Kansas City Airport Hotel. And I haven't actually been doing Kansas City Airport hotels. I don't know that first. That's why they say probably. But most of the tech events I go to, you fly across the country, which is pretty far for either depending on where you're going east or west, but you fly across Kansas and kind of in the middle. And you go to a big hotel, and you go to some big room in the basement that has no windows. And it's like the fact that you're at some incredible five star resort doesn't really impress me because you're in a big room with no windows, and often a two hour ride from the airport. So just do it in an airport hotel in Kansas in the middle of the country. This is the worst idea I've ever heard from you. And I've heard some doozies but let's end on the low note and get to our guest room. Maybe agenda not Doug not. Alright, let's get to

god: 4:44

talking. It's a semi monthly podcast with interviews of the top movers and shakers and enterprise communications and collaboration. Your host are Dave Michaels and Evan Kirkstall, both of which offer extraordinary services including research analysis and so Social media marketing. You can find them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or at talking points.com. That's points with the Z and Evan kersal.com. That's Kr s t e l.

Dave Michels: 5:13

Today we have with us the one the only John Brinton Chief Revenue Officer of Chris then though I've known John for I don't know how many decades. Welcome, John.

Jon Brinton: 5:23

Thanks, Dave. It's great to be here. Great to be with Evan. also appreciate you guys having me on today.

Dave Michels: 5:27

It's exciting to have you here. It's exciting because we weren't expecting you.

Jon Brinton: 5:31

Yeah, I hope you don't mind. I don't want to be like the bridesmaid. But I am filling in for Doug gayler, president and chief operating officer today.

Evan Kirstel: 5:39

Well, let's let's talk about Doug behind his back. But before that, I mean, I've learned a lot about crescendo over the course of this year, a very strong brand. I see it all the time, but I was surprised to learn. It's been around about 15 years, that's quite a long time. So what's changed or evolved over those years?

Jon Brinton: 5:58

Yeah, crescendo. You know, I mentioned this to Dave, I'm at an event at IP Expo on monitor our CEO, Steve Mahela is here with me. So Steve's been in this business for 50 years. And it's a company that Steve took an interest in a number of years ago, and wasn't in the UK as base, they developed the UK as platform, what really was the kind of the catalysts for the big change in the business and why you've heard so much about it in the last year. And frankly, part of the reason I originally joined was because about a year ago, it's a year ago, this month, crescendo merged with netsapiens. And many people maybe are familiar with the netsapiens name, but if they're not, they're an ingredient brand with a UCaaS platform that is built into other UCaaS providers offer. So think of it as kind of like the Intel inside of UCaaS. So about a year ago, we put those two companies together, we've got over 2.5 million users now on the platform, it's grown at about twice the rate of the market, and it's just kind of an exciting time to be associated with the company. We're gonna

Dave Michels: 6:59

get to netsapiens. We got questions about netsapiens. But I got to ask you a few other questions, because I'm thinking, I don't think I knew you would enter till but I definitely knew at Mitel. And as I recall, you were the Cloud Guy at Mitel? Did you like President or something like that? Would you like to the head honcho of cloud. And Mitel is in the cloud business today, as you know, so I'm kind of thinking you're in the same job but at a different company.

Jon Brinton: 7:25

Similar Jabby, I was present in the Cloud Vision, it might tell really, from the beginning of it being incubated from 2011 to shortly before the searchlight acquisition and you know, in our public cloud business might tell since exited that now, because they formed a partnership with RingCentral. So that was over three years ago, as new owners come in, you guys know a lot of times things change. And they made a decision to kind of get out of the public cloud business and go back to maybe focusing on the traditional UC or otherwise known as the typewriter business, I guess.

Dave Michels: 7:58

The typewriter business? See, there are other acronyms that you can use. You don't always have to use facts. No, but you're the king of facts. I just can't pick it up my tell most people think that Mitel acquired Intel. I know that some people think that it's the other way around. So let me ask you, John, who bought who? And why is it confusion around this?

Jon Brinton: 8:24

Yeah. So at the time might tell acquired inter tell, inter tell was public and along with the financial partner Francisco partners might tell took inter tell private so the great thing is in North America, people were obviously probably knew the inter tell brand more, because inner toe was a much larger business in North America where my tell was a much larger business internationally going back to some of their heritage with British Telecom. And so inter tell was acquired by my tell, Steve was I said was the founder of Intel. He exited the business at that point in time and getting involved with crescendo as CEO was his opportunity to get back into a business that he loved and had been a part of since the late 60s.

Evan Kirstel: 9:07

Wow. So shows you how incestuous this industry is. There was a time that inter Talon might tell and he was short tail off at each other and competed against each other. But now, you know, they're execs with at least two of those brands on many of their resumes. So does crescendo have many, let's call them refugees from Mitel, or short tail or other brands.

Jon Brinton: 9:28

So the two most well known refugees, I guess you could say it inter tel would be myself and Doug, our president, Doug and I had worked together at Mitel. He was an inter tel than went to my tail and left is one of our senior leaders there. So So I guess that's probably where the family lineage really ends, along with our association with Steve, who's our CEO today.

Dave Michels: 9:49

Now, I think at least companies that Devon's talking about I think of them kind of geographically in the short term was the California company and Mitel is kind of a dual citizen, I guess. autoland Dallas, and I guess crescendo is Arizona, and you're in Arizona. So do you see geography as a relevant factor anymore? Or is that a pre pandemic

Jon Brinton: 10:09

thing? Yeah, I'd say it's a pre pandemic thing. We license our platform to about 200 service providers that are based around the world. So, you know, the event I met this week is in Florida. What's interesting, Evan, kind of you guys were talking about the lineage, there are partners in our partner community now at crescendo with the netsapiens platform that were inter tel partners 25 years ago, and I've, I've seen a few of them here. So we're at an opportunity where we've got great technology and people that have been in this industry for a long time recognize that and want to be a part of delivering those services to the market. So I think where you're at, we also have licensees around the world, we have operations in Europe, we have folks in Asia Pacific. So I think in today's economy, it doesn't really matter where you're at.

Evan Kirstel: 10:59

Yeah, I think that's pretty true. And so if crescendo is a cloud communications provider, do you partner with the legacy platform providers like Mike Dell? Or you frenemies, or competitors? Or how do you view the world at crescendo.

Jon Brinton: 11:15

So we would view the world as a UCAS world in a cloud world where the business is migrating to software as a service, and therefore we would be competing with them. We have partners in our family or community that have evolved their business model forward to deploying their own software as a service. And in some of the financial decisions that have been made over the last few years, the partners and the customers maybe weren't the first seat at the table, so to speak. And so some partners that used to be more involved with legacy UC providers, and others have gravitated to deploying our solution in a cloud environment. So in those environments, we would see that as a direct competition and and an opportunity for us to grow our business.

Dave Michels: 11:58

I agree with you. It seems like most organizations want one UC, or one you guys solution. So I know you probably don't want to talk about competitors, but I can't figure out if Michael and RingCentral are competitors or friends. I can't figure it out.

Jon Brinton: 12:12

Yeah, I think that brings had the benefit of obviously getting the largest growth the most gravitas I would say in the UCAS market. So they've been, you know, they've done an exclusive deal now about 10 times. So the Mitel relationship for Mitel is an exclusive relationship. Avaya has a similar exclusive relationship with ring Alcatel Lucent, the ATOs unified business in some of the service providers, but obviously, they're not exclusive for ring, but they've done a similar opportunity. I just think in some cases, what financially works for investors and ownership might not be what your partners would prefer. And it might not be what your customers would prefer

Dave Michels: 12:51

an exclusive or it's like getting married, having more than one wife

Jon Brinton: 12:55

to train. I wasn't gonna go there day. But yeah, so you could call it a harem for ring

Evan Kirstel: 13:00

that's on my mind. That was just at a wedding recently. I heard about that. Who was that? Why wasn't I invited? I want to know what's going on a beautiful

Dave Michels: 13:09

bride This will leave it at that. So Kristen Bell, this is this. This confuses me. And Christina describes itself as a next generation Steelix. Isn't that kind of a an oxymoron?

Jon Brinton: 13:23

Maybe we need to update that description. You know, as you know, where you Kaz is evolved. I think the idea was with the retirement of the analog networks, the evolution of the public switched telephone network, we obviously are providing VoIP services and UCaaS services. But we're really about enabling collaboration for organizations across teams helping company support their customers, delivering a digital customer experience and helping companies communicate better wherever their employees may be based. So you're right, that's probably need a little marketing punch up on that description, huh?

Evan Kirstel: 13:56

Yeah, especially because I recall, see, Lex pretty much died off. And you're the opposite of that you're in ultra fast growth mode. But are you You know, at least a licensed carrier. You provide phone numbers and, and local access and international services like a phone company would?

Jon Brinton: 14:13

Yeah, I think that's why that's in the description is different than a lot of folks in the vertical. We are licensed and regulated in all of the US markets and provide some of those other services. But the business has really evolved again, especially over the last year post the acquisition of netsapiens to really be delivering UCAS and Seacat services to businesses of all sizes through primarily a channel fulfilled or a channel delivered

Dave Michels: 14:37

model. So you mentioned earlier already in this podcast, de la Halo, I guess you're traveling with him right now. He is the founder of Krishna Ando. He's the CEO. Is that right?

Jon Brinton: 14:50

Yes, Steve actually is a large shareholder in the business. He's still our CEO. The management team runs the majority of the day to day but Steve's actively involved In the business, the thing I like and Steve is probably like you guys have mentors. He's been one of my business mentors. I sold a company I owned to Steve at Intertoto in 1999.

Dave Michels: 15:10

Well, I guess that's kind of my question is, I mean, intercell Evans always making fun of me being too old. But it was, like a 30 year lifespan. He thought he was like one of the original or seniors there. And now crescendo. I

Evan Kirstel: 15:24

mean, how are you being? This is a pot calling the kettle black. He's actively involved in Christianity. What does that mean?

Jon Brinton: 15:33

I mean, he's our CEO. And he's the chairman of the board. And he's actively involved in the business. He comes into the office regularly when he's in Phoenix. And the great thing I like you, Steve's been a if you know much about him, he's always invested in education and mentorship. And so he's a mentor to sales employees and other people we have but yeah, he started into retail in his garage in Glendale, Arizona in 1969. So you know, I don't know if I could even pour my own bowl of Cheerios at that point in time. But Steve was active in the business. And the nice thing is today, we've got a strong management team with the combined team from netsapiens, and crescendo that really do a lot of run the day to day operations of the business, but he's very actively involved in its proud part of our legacy.

Evan Kirstel: 16:16

lower power to I'll have what he's having. That's right. Yeah, that let's talk about acquisitions. Speaking of which, you acquired netsapiens. And I'm generally not a fan of acquisitions that I've seen so many gone bad, but you seem to have done well, here, you've kept the brand, you've kept the people, you're growing the team. So what's been the secret of your success there? And how are you leveraging that Sapiens as part of the business now?

Jon Brinton: 16:42

Well, I think the secret is, we realized that they had a great platform that was an awesome ingredient brand that their partners were really invested in. So people are very enthusiastic about the netsapiens platform, about the brand about being in the channel community, it probably reminded me of the channel partners that we would have at events at Inter toe even back in the day where you had, you know, you had a large moat around your channel community, they were fully invested in you, they were focused on selling your platform. So I think from our experience, we recognize what a loyal community they had. And then obviously, what we've tried to do is not screw it up. I mean, invest in that community continue to bring out new software releases, bring new services to them, give them new opportunities to grow with us, and to have them be a real part of our success. And in that part of the business, if you go back a few years, we were talking about some of the other folks in the UC space. But for cloud platform vendors, a couple of the largest ones have been acquired in recent years. And those acquisitions and being incorporated into much larger companies were at the point where we have partners seeking us out because they're looking for more of a pure play alternative on a business that's really focused on delivering exceptional communications experiences for customers.

Dave Michels: 18:05

Now, you say that, with the benefit of hindsight, and apparently the acquisition has worked well for you. But it was about a year ago, as I recall, how would the leadership of netsapiens talk about this acquisition Lee, what do you think they would have to say?

Jon Brinton: 18:19

I think they would say the same thing, and so on, and Bush, who's one of the founders of netsapiens, he's actually here at this event with me. And we've got several members of the team that are kind of more from the platform side of the business. So in ears, part of the reason why it worked guys is that if you look at the math, the founders of netsapiens, they took about 80% of the transaction in stock and about 20% in cash. So our interest is a public company is like extremely aligned, and just wanting to continue to grow the business and have it continue to be successful. And they're all still here. All of them have senior roles with the organization. And they're part of our senior leadership team. So we've really tried to incorporate the good things that they had in their community, and maybe just bring them for more of a private the public type of ownership experience

Evan Kirstel: 19:08

would be money. And he gave me about 20% in cash and the rest of the watches. Yeah, the watches have held up the cash. Everything else is not so much. I had all my money in crypto. So I'm in rebuilding mode. So tell us about a year I said so tell us how it's done.

Jon Brinton: 19:29

Things are going well, like I said we're adding it's interesting because we're at you know, over a decade into really the UCAS component of the migration of this industry. But we're still selling new platforms, the new partners that want to launch their own UCAS offers and deliver those to market. We're selling quite a few where people have have platforms that are not getting the investment that they need to continue to be competitive. So they're migrating to us. And we're kind of just focused on being that ingredient brand that's powering some really great solutions where we have partners that they go after verticals, they go after different degrees of specialty or different routes to market. Some of them with white label offers. Some of them with Agent offers, some of them with direct sales. And they kind of plot their own success. We're just along with them for the ride as they grow their business with us.

Evan Kirstel: 20:20

Nice. So when I listen to these super smart analysts like Dave Michaels, and other fancy ones from Gartner and Forrester, and they just say everyone's buying teams, you know, Microsoft is going to rule the world and collaboration. So how and why is netsapiens growing so fast,

Jon Brinton: 20:37

I don't think anybody gets out of bed in the morning wanting to buy one more product from Microsoft. But I mean, after that we've really built in the UCaaS space, a really robust feature set that does all of the things that your PBX or your UC system would do. But with the capabilities that come with IP and in mobility and work from anywhere. And so what I think people miss when you see Gartner is and others, I think two things, I think some customers are being counted twice in some of the market share data, because I may have had a premise UC platform, but I sent people home. So I enabled teams calling in my application, or I deployed zoom phone. But the second thing is that those applications Yes, you can add additional licensing and a calling plan in you can make and receive calls from the public switched telephone network. But it's not the same capabilities that you get in a robust UCAS offer when you talking about interactive voice response auto attendance, you know, some of the AI capabilities we have today, the omni channel, customer experience capabilities, these things. So those solutions, they don't fill out the full feature set that companies want to deploy. And then what we're finding is we do get quite a few customers that we integrate into teams. So if people want to use teams for their video meeting experience, they can do that. They can use our video platform. But we provide that layer below that which is really around rich communications in the enterprise. And customers that maybe try the team's calling, many of them end up coming to us or somebody like ourselves, because they realize they're not getting the balance of the capabilities that they'd like to have from that solution.

Evan Kirstel: 22:20

Got it. So you're saying VoIP doesn't really work at the end of the day. Just kidding. That's an old. That's an old joke. But we got it fixed maybe 10 years ago,

Jon Brinton: 22:28

it's about more than just making calls to and from the telephone network and being able to take a call on your laptop or your team's client. It's about the rich capabilities that you have from enterprise communication solution.

Evan Kirstel: 22:39

Awesome. So I'm still curious about the branding, well, netsapiens remain a brand in our space? Or will that be sort of a sub brand within crescendo or phased out? Or what should we expect? That question, though?

Jon Brinton: 22:53

We had a few since they're both made up words, you know, because who spells crescendo with an X we do. Since they're both made up words, we had a few of those. But I think what you'll see over time is people know the netsapiens platform and the brand. And so with that, we'll migrate to more of a product naming to designate our UCaaS platform, and then crescendo, where the corporate parents, so we're the Public Company Entity, so we're going to continue to leverage that brand and use it. It's just that within the business, we operate in two divisions with our telecom services and software solutions in the primary brand for the company going forward will be crescendo, but that'll be migration over time.

Evan Kirstel: 23:33

What about positioning because crescendo is a cloud communications platform provider, as we discussed and acylic slash Nazi LEC, but you're also powering service providers. So this isn't that needed to compete with your customers in some way or not? Yeah, actually,

Jon Brinton: 23:49

I do get asked about that. And it both at Mitel. And inter tel we had what we call the company store, which was our own offer under our own brand.

Evan Kirstel: 24:01

Of course, we had a company store was

Jon Brinton: 24:04

there you go, that one's a little bit more interesting. But it allows us to take our solutions directly to market ourselves and get that customer feedback and customer experience. And I think because both Doug and I have successfully run organizations like this in the past, the point is not having channel conflict and managing it so to our community, the top five or so retail players that are taking a lot of seats out of the market every month or every quarter. That's the real competition. And it's not the crescendo brand versus one of our licensees. In fact, some of our licensees in specific verticals. They've built amazing solutions for specific industries, whether it's pest control, or the auto dealerships in a medical setting or whatever to where they have taken using our API's, leveraged our platform to really build an ecosystem around it specifically focused on vertical so it's a different approach but it gives us A we're gonna favor our partner always. But the, our market presence is not to the point. I mean, if I have a discussion with a partner about this, we're not over distributed. I mean, there's like five, or six or eight different versions of RingCentral, that you can buy specifically to call out one competitor through various channels. And often they'll have multiple partners, competing with a slightly different flavor of their same solution in that opportunity. That's not what we're about, we're not doing that we just use the company store as a way to be closer to the customer and make sure we stay real with our channel, right? If I have to support customers who have actually in customers who have actually bought our solution from us, I get a whole lot of data that I otherwise wouldn't get about the customer experience and how well we're doing. And so to me, that's a great part of the feedback cycle that we have with our community.

Dave Michels: 25:50

I can actually validate that I got to attend the essential user customer conference, I guess it was a lot of the next APNS dealers were a million people was in that sentence conference. I don't know which conference it was. But anyway, it was a grinder that one way or another. And a lot of them seemed pretty happy with the acquisition that seemed okay, so I can validate what you're saying there. What I can't figure out is, what is the bigger part of the business? What percentage of the company is traditional crescendo? And what percentage is netsapiens? Either in terms of people or revenue or whatever?

Jon Brinton: 26:25

Yeah, so we break that out in our public filings. Our telecom services division is a traditional crescendo part in our software solutions, isn't it Sapiens part, and we're probably 60%, crescendo and about 40% netsapiens. One of the things that we're looking at with the Software Solutions Division, is how do we grow our ARPU, our average revenue per user at the base user level by adding new capabilities and additional value to those bundles, like offering a full omni channel CCAP solution. So we think there's a lot of opportunity to grow revenue in that part of the business over time by expanding our share of wallet with our licensees.

Dave Michels: 27:04

So here in 2022 years 60 4060 question, though. What do you think it'll be in, say, 2026?

Jon Brinton: 27:13

Well, I think one of the things is we publicly said, we will acquire more companies. So I think we'll continue to grow through acquisition and through organic growth. And you know, that formula is similar to the formula that we use very successfully, it might tell what's different about that might tell strategy to ours, is our acquisitions are all going to be basically revolve around one technology stack or one platform. If you think about with Mitel. You know, we acquired Astra, which had been a roll up of five or six different premise PBX vendors, we acquired short tail, we acquired prairie fire, there was a lot of different UC platforms, so you don't really get to the economies of scale. So in our case, we're going to continue to acquire more around our one platform. So we call it a stock fishing pond with partners that are already deployed our solution that are interested in potentially being acquired and being part of another business. So it's hard to tell you that percentage, Dave, because we may do a six or eight or $10 million acquisition and have one side of the business get a little bit bigger than the other while we look for what we're doing next. We think there's great opportunity to consolidate I just think as somebody who has a lot of experience in a consolidation model before, what's critically important is we standardize and we acquire people that have solutions deployed on our technology stack. So we ultimately have one code base that we're writing to and we're spending our development efforts on.

Evan Kirstel: 28:41

Once again, John, I will decline your $10 million offer to acquire talk. I appreciate your ongoing interest. I really do.

Jon Brinton: 28:50

I have some stablecoin, that I'll trade you for that.

Evan Kirstel: 28:53

Yeah, absolutely. There. It's going cheap. So you mentioned a nod came over from netsapiens as your chief strategy officer, what about the rest of the team? And they're going to keep their netsapiens LinkedIn profiles? Or did some others come join the mothership? Or did you send them back to shore tail? Like, what should we expect?

Jon Brinton: 29:11

We're operating as one company one management team. So David Wang is our Chief Technical Officer Jim Murphy's executive vice president of product. So we're integrated from management capability. Here at this event. We're at it Expo, we have our crescendo channel managers and our netsapiens platform channel managers side by side in our booth, and there is good opportunity because you guys understand it's a pretty significant financial investment for somebody to build and deploy their own UCaaS platform. I mean, forget about just what we get for our software or the cost of the software. It's the data center, the infrastructure, the management. So we have some opportunities with partners where they may not be a great platform partner today, but they may be a great agent or they may be a great white label. We'll partner for one of our licensees. So we're taking whatever route to market the channel partners are focused on, and figuring out how to optimize our relationship with them.

Evan Kirstel: 30:10

Awesome. So Dave, I think you're a great agent, right? Weren't you a value added reseller at one day? Right? Whatever endeavor I pursue, that was great. Right? Well, speaking of a diverse I was reading in Dave Michaels talking points newsletter, the free one, not the paid one, I can't afford the paid one. But you mentioned crescendo is working with Matt veneer. And as a 5g infrastructure company, I was surprised. So tell us about that partnership.

Jon Brinton: 30:37

Yeah, it's really exciting. So many people don't know mavenir has an awesome omni channel seek has offer. They also power the 250 largest, as you said, a mobile network operator networks around the world. So their customers are the largest of the largest carriers globally, I think some of these numbers are staggering. It's somewhere between 50 and 60% of text messages that are sent globally, are sent across networks powered by mavenir. And it's like, I think 100% In North America, they have a lot of the components that go into the mobile service providers. So this is an opportunity for us that we can leverage a mobile first seek as experience and seek as offer from them has some really cool bots and AI capabilities within your messaging in your Android or iOS operating system. So just native capabilities there. And we can work with them to help introduce our UCAS platform to the mobile network operators that they do business with globally. So they actually had a product that they had built the end of life that product, they've replaced it with our platform as their UCAS offer that they're delivering through mobile carriers. And, you know, it's the early days of that relationship. But we think it's a, it's a great opportunity for us because our platform didn't really have a play before in the mobile network operator space. And as you guys know that the mobile device is the device of choice that everybody has with them 100% of the time, right, you realize you lost your phone before you realize you lost your wallet. So we're excited to be partnering with them. So it's a joint relationship where we're both using each other's technology and taking it through our various routes to market.

Evan Kirstel: 32:23

You're not kidding about the seat back pocket on the airplane. And I've learned never to put anything in there because I'm sure to lose it. But I actually have no problem putting my phone in there. Because I know that I'm not getting off that plane without a without my phone. So well, you know why you shouldn't put your phone in there is because that's where baby diapers are kept after they've been used by your fellow passengers. So don't do that either. But switching to a nicer topic, even announced 2.5 million users on the platform growing at twice the you know the industry norm. Congratulations, first of all, and what? Onwards and upwards? I guess that's a tough curve to continue. It looks like you're on track.

Jon Brinton: 33:02

Yeah, I think it was a year ago, September, before the acquisition, they announced the million users last September, we announced 2 million we announced 2.5 a month or so ago. So again, we're growing and compounding at a rate at about twice the market. And we just have some great partners who've really built substantial offers of their own around our platform, and they're having a lot of success in the market. So our job is to keep giving them technology that I like to say it's powerful, but it's simple to manage. And it's easy to use. And if you can keep that user experience to where people can adapt it readily deploy it readily and be successful for the long term we feel will just continue to leverage that growth.

Dave Michels: 33:45

And then when these partners use netsapiens, to make their own solution, they branded as netsapiens. Or what have they branded as

Jon Brinton: 33:51

a very few of them probably leveraged the name most of them branded as their own source solutions fully brandable. So if you go to a lot of very large UCAS providers, and even small to medium sized ones that really have a niche, it's their company store or their offer so it's got their branding on it. We're like I said the Intel inside where the operating system or the UCAS platform, but many times people don't even realize that it's netsapiens powered solution.

Dave Michels: 34:21

So acquiring this APNS is good. And if you learn anything that might kill you would acquire malware and then spit it back out again.

Jon Brinton: 34:30

I have math me I know I wouldn't do that. I think we took a little beating on that one day, but they're about 15 times bigger than we are now. Pardeep and the team there have just done a tremendous job of growing that business over the last few years.

Evan Kirstel: 34:43

Well, everyone but Dave uses 5g So I can see the upside potential there. But thanks so much for joining us and sharing your insights. And as Buzz Lightyear says To infinity and beyond. We're gonna go see the movie, I think next week, so I'm looking forward to that. All right, well, he's As we he's referring to him and his wife, not me. Yeah, yeah. So

Jon Brinton: 35:03

I'm moving back at you and say it was awesome to be on with two top guns like Dave and Evan today, too. I

Evan Kirstel: 35:09

appreciate it. Yeah, he's just a goose. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you guys appreciate it. Well, I always liked chatting with John Britton, and he is such an experienced business leader in this space. So it wasn't the first time we had a last minute cancellation. But I think that next time when happens, we should just ask John. Yeah, I think he could be like a pinch hitter for talking heads. And you know, he's actually been in the industry longer than us something like maybe 50 years. So tremendous insights, unlike myself, so yeah, looking forward to actually re listening to that one. All right. Well, that was a fantastic conversation. Thanks for crescendo and Ellen Until next month, until next month. You may say conversation we're

god: 36:03

never gonna get out of the phone. Don't don't read nomming knows me