Jason Moss: The Logitech MeetUp Story, Q-SYS and the Future of Connected Buildings

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What I've found out in my career is the key to upward success is not to keep all the plates spinning, but know what plates need to keep spinning and what plates can crash.
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Hello everyone, Simon Dudling here again for the before it was obvious podcast.
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You obviously know that because you wouldn't have clicked on this link otherwise.
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However, today's guest is an old friend of mine, and we'll get into how we know each other and why later.
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But welcome, Jason Moss.
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Thanks, Simon.
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Happy to be here.
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Good man.
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It's good to see you, my friend.
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So clearly you and I have known each other for more than a couple of hours, but the ladies and gentlemen aren't going to.
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So why don't we start with who are you and what do you do today?
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Okay.
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Yeah, uh Jason Moss.
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So we covered that already.
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But uh I work for Acuity Inc.
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So Acuity is a large industrial technology company that recently acquired QSE.
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And so most people in the industry would know me as leading marketing and ecosystem for QSE, which I did for about five years, and then we were acquired about 18 months ago.
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And then acuity being a large industrial technology company, they're actually the largest lighting manufacturer in North America.
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Um, but then also they have this acuity intelligence spaces division, which includes BMS, so building management system controller solutions, different uh software applications for energy, sustainability, wayfinding data applications all around the build space, plus now AV with QSE.
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So I'm doing the same job I was doing at QSE of leading marketing and ecosystem, but for the entirety of the AQD intelligence spaces portfolio.
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So that's what I'm doing today.
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Right.
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Now, anyone who's ever watched the show before will know that what we now do is we go, we're gonna guess that you didn't wake up one morning at the age of five and go, you know what, I want to be the brand manager for a large building management organization.
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You probably wanted to be a fireman or an athlete.
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Oh, my bingo card at five.
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No.
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It was it not?
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No, I'm not really surprised.
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So let's go do what we always do at this point.
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Go in back in the Wayback Machine.
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Tell us about your early life.
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How did you start?
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Where did you start?
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What was school like?
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All of those things.
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Let's keep going there.
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So I I grew up in my native California.
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So grew up in more of the rural part of California in the Central Valley, way up north, about three hours north of Sacramento.
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So not necessarily the California that most people think of who aren't very aware of it.
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And then I went to school at UC Davis, which is you know a public university outside of part of the University of California system outside of Sacramento.
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And I was a computer science engineer, was my degree mostly because I thought computers were the future and I could make money doing it.
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So it wasn't really, you know, that uh much of a passion or anything like that.
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I just liked, you know, computers.
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It wasn't an ideological, ideological decision.
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It was a you weren't a computer nerd, you were like, there's money in those hills.
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I should do that.
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No, of course, my my my parents were like, oh, you should be a doctor.
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And it's like, uh I don't know, I'm kind of squeamish.
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I don't like blood.
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Seems kind of gross.
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It's like computers is kind of cool.
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I like numbers, you know.
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That was less liquid.
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Yeah, it was more actually.
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I this probably this is the worst advice for any young person like applying to college.
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I just applied to what I thought was the best major at every university I applied to.
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It's like, oh, if I go to Davis, I should be a computer science engineer because that's the engineering is one of their best fields, like computers.
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And I applied to Rice University and it's like, oh, if I go to Rice University, I'll be an architect.
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This is the best architecture for horrible, horrible decision because then you're putting yourself in front of all the best candidates.
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And Davis was the only one who really kind of accepted me into that good major.
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And so that's how I ended up there.
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Just as an aside, am I right in saying your wife is a doctor?
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Yes, she is, so I made my parents proud that way.
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You married into the doctor.
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Yeah.
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If I can't do it, I'll find a different way to get it done.
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Yeah, that's fair enough.
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Okay, well, that's another story.
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We'll have to have to have Mrs.
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Moss on another another episode, perhaps.
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Dr.
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Moss.
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Okay.
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Dr.
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Moss.
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I'm sorry, of course, Dr.
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Moss.
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I'm sorry I'd like to reply.
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And I'd like to point out for the record that Dr.
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Moss is one, lovely, and secondly, a real doctor, not like one of these, I'm a chiropractic doctor.
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Yes.
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Like an actual MD.
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Yes.
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So, okay, so you left so this is interesting.
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You were very uh transactional, really, about the whole education system.
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Yeah.
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So I went to Davis.
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I was a computer science engineer.
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And that yeah, I had good grades in high school and did pretty well.
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And but you know, I got to college and didn't do so well and discovered, you know, wonderful world of fear and friends and partying and, you know, didn't do so well.
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But also what I realized is that I would go into the computer labs and sit with all the the programmers and stuff like that.
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And that was their social hour, right?
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You know, they they'd go in and they'd want to play around and make their own programs and their own games and stuff like that.
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And they were just in that lab and they were all together and there was this cohort.
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And I was just like, I I how do I do this as fast as possible and get out of here so I can go hang out with my other friends, right?
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And so I just observed these people and said, I cannot compete with these people, right?
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Because they they're just they had such a passion for it.
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And I just realized very early that I I I like it, I find it interesting, I understand the concepts and I appreciate it, but I just didn't have the passion for it.
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And I was like, if I don't have the passion for it, I'm not gonna be able to compete.
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So I added a business minor while I was there because I always just figured, well, well, I'll take all this knowledge that I've learned about technology and then try to apply it in more of a business setting.
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So it was like an early realization that I had in college.
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Yeah, that's interesting.
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You were actually more interested in the people uh than you were in the technology.
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Yeah, I was always kind of very observant of kind of what was going on around me and what kind of the patterns of people were, and being uh, you know, I don't know how self-aware you are between the ages of 18 and 23, but I was fairly, I think, self-aware of my strengths and weaknesses.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I think most 18 to 23 year olds think they're very self-aware.
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Which shows how unself-aware they are, perhaps.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Okay.
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So you you I did you graduate?
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I did.
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I I I was able to pull that off.
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So I ended up in a program called a Technical Sales Engineering Program, TSE.
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And this was and I worked for AMD, advanced microdevices, coming straight out of college.
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Now, this TSE program was there was other TSE programs.
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A bunch of semiconductor companies had this program, so like Texas Instruments, Motorola, which turned into Free Scale, National Instruments, and Intel.
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They all had these rotational programs where essentially they took engineers with bad grades and turned you into a salesperson.
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That was what a great line.
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An engineer with bad grades.
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Perfect.
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It was a it wasn't obviously how they positioned uh it, but it was essentially they wanted to find people that had good technical knowledge, understanding of what they were delivering, especially in the semiconductor world, as you were doing an embedded sale into these areas.
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And then what they did is they butt, you know, ones that wanted to be more social, have people skills, be able to interact with the market versus you know, maybe a traditional stereotype of an introverted engineer.
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And so you got into these programs and you would rotate through different disciplines of you know, business marketing, you know, sales and other things like that.
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And then you would graduate for these programs.
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So it was kind of a well-understood thing in the industry.
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Unfortunately, it it really doesn't exist.
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It didn't kind of make it through.
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Um, some of them got lost in the dot-com boom.
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You know, those are kind of sometimes the first things to be cut.
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And then I think the last bastions of them got cut in kind of like the Great Recession, like 2007, 2008.
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But it was an amazing program.
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And so it was like going to school for an additional year inside an organization where you did all these different things.
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I think it's interesting, you know, with like just as an aside, um, I remember an old CEO of mine once said to me, He said, I pay top dollar for these salespeople, and then they're not very good when they work for us.
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And I said to him, Isn't it interesting that these people have really good careers before they join our company, then they have a terrible time working for us, and then they go off and be successful somewhere else.
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And I said, Have you considered training any of these people?
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And he went, No, I pay top dollar, I expect to get the best.
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I said, But if you don't tell them what you want them to do, how are they meant to know?
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Yeah.
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And I feel that business is a lot like that.
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Engineers get trained.
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Commercial people, you either work it out or you don't.
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It's like learning to swim by being thrown in the pool.
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Yeah.
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You know?
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Some of you drown and some of you work it out.
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It seems a very I like what you went through.
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I but I I I find it terrible that the world doesn't do it anymore.
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Yeah, there's some things here at our organization with a leadership program that I'm trying to be involved with now as a back into a bigger corporation because I want to pay it forward.
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It was an amazing, amazing experience.
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And it was harsh too.
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Like not everybody made it through the program, right?
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Some people just didn't get a job at the end of the rotation.
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Some of them were like, Yeah, but sales isn't for you, right?
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We're gonna move you into a different role or an operations role or something like that.
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So there was like these high pressure oral boards that we would go through where we essentially had to pitch to senior level executives.
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So, as like a 23-year-old, you're you're pitching to um, you know, all these people at high levels, and they're harsh because there was actually people that were at the upper levels of the organization that came through this program.
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So they took a lot of pride in it, right?
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They're like, We're not we're not rubber stamping anybody.
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Like you, you had to make it.
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And then it was well known within the in Silicon Valley at that time, like if you came through a TSE program with one of these premier firms, that was like a that was better than having a Harvard MBA at a certain point in the Silicon Valley, and then you made it through and you know how to sell, you know how to interact with clients, stuff like that.
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So it's an important thing that I've loved to see some of these industries start to bring back in there.
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And I I want to try and actively be a part of that too.
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Yeah, me too.
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I I will say, I think perhaps 10 years or so earlier than that, maybe earlier than that, still maybe 20 years earlier, Xerox were famous.
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If you wanted to have a career in sales, go and work for Xerox for two or three years, and they trained you.
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It was like a degree in sales, and then it just fell away.
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And and all these companies then complained that the people they were hiring, you know, well, they weren't very good.
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It's like, did you train them?
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Well, no.
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What what did you expect?
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It drives me.
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I I and you say about paying it forward.
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Sure, paying it forward's part of it, but it's also just good business.
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At some point, you will retire.
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It most of us, I think, like the idea that our the companies we work for won't collapse the day that we leave.
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Although I suspect some of us quite like the idea that the companies we work for will collapse the day we leave, but that's another story.
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Yeah, definitely a little bit of a tangent, but topical to you know what we're talking about and the zeitgeist out there with AI.
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So the first, so you had like one month of onboarding.
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The second month that was there, I was handed four phone books, like physical phone books with yellow pages, plopped on my desk.
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And I, you know, I'm in a bullpen of other people.
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And so our our so there's three other people in there with me, and a few other, there's two bullpens of bus trainees.
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And so I had um the phone books from for Iowa and Nebraska, you know, selling processors.
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So this was back in the days of like white box PC makers, right?
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So I had to call them up and try to convince them to use AMD processors instead of Intel processors and create leads and all that.
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So you would sit there for a month cold calling people out of physical phone books, dialing for dollars back then.
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And, you know, because you're surrounded by a bunch of other 20-year-olds, of course, they're making fun of everything you say behind your back, right?
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They're like, that was stupid, Jason.
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What were you talking about?
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And of course, like you're out later and they're making fun of you and you know, all that sort of stuff.
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But it really kind of able to get you like focus and call, endure rejection, stuff like that.
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That job is completely automated now by AI.
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All the cold calling, all the outreach, all the initial calls, stuff like that, maybe for the better.
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But that one month was an amazing forging learning experience of just how to deal with rejection and how to just modify and just get back up and do it over and over again.
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And there's something to be said in the grind of repetitive tasks, as much as we want to push it to AI and have it go away.
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There is still something to be said for that in learning young people as they come into the professional environment.
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I agree.
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I I think that one of the problems with AI, and we're getting way off topic now, but I know.
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Sorry.
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At least my podcast, we can do anything we like.
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I think one of the problems today is that the bottom rung or two of the career ladder are being replaced by AI.
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And for you and I, who were at the other reaching towards the other end of that ladder, at least I am.
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You're somewhat younger than me, one of you.
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Well, yeah, you've so you graduated what year?
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Do you mind me asking?
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2000.
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Right.
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Okay.
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So you were yeah, I started young, but you started you were quite a lot younger than me.
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And I think the problem now is that there is that those rungs have been removed.
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So how do you get onto the ladder when it's above head height at the bottom?
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I don't I don't know how we quite fixed that, but I agree with you that in my day they used to do cold calling Wednesdays, and they would scotch tape your hand to the receiver of the phone with one finger out, and they'd ask you which hand you write with, I'm left-handed.
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So they would scotch tape your hand to the my right hand to the to the phone because it doubled the number of calls you made in a day.
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Because there was nowhere else to go.
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It was sit in front of the phone and it's attached your hand.
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Going to the restroom was somewhat awkward, but they didn't let didn't let you off.
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Yeah.
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You you you took the phone, you unpropped the phone, you took it to the toilet with you.
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Yeah.
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Awful but transformative experience.
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You can't have uh you can't be a hard-nosed business person unless you've had to do hard things.
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You clearly do it.
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Yeah.
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So AMD, yeah.
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So you went through that process, you clearly succeeded, then what happened?
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Yeah, so I was at AMD for about eight years and uh did a bunch of various things there, but mostly ended up in doing kind of big account management and sales.
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Like so I ended up on like a strategic account team and you know, calling on HP back in the day before HP bought Compaq.
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So dating back to how long ago this was was there during during the merger.
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But that was kind of rare at the time because usually you had these more senior people that were on the HP account team.
00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:46.559
And I actually got onto it as a junior team because the lady who ran it, who I I learned the most I'll ever learn about from sales from from this lady, she was fantastic, realized that you got all these older folks who are like our age now, who I thought was ancient back then, calling on these big strategic accounts.
00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:56.399
But all the people that you were dealing with were like these late 20, early 30s MBA graduates who are running like product management and portfolio management.
00:15:56.480 --> 00:16:02.799
And they just there was like an a like a disconnect in the kind of age gap and working with them.
00:16:02.879 --> 00:16:04.080
And she's just like, you know what?
00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:07.519
I need somebody younger on the team that can kind of relate to them.
00:16:07.679 --> 00:16:15.679
You know, it started out by like, you know, take uh take him to this concert or you're you know, hang out with them and and do other things like that.
00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:20.000
So it it did kind of start out and just like, oh, are you just the sales entertainment guy?
00:16:20.159 --> 00:16:23.440
But you know, I wasn't satisfied with being the entertainment, right?
00:16:23.519 --> 00:16:23.919
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:24.080 --> 00:16:27.759
So I learned the business and got to hang out with a lot of very senior people.
00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:38.559
And because it was such a big account to AMD, at one point it uh when I was at the end managing it, it was over 20% of the company's revenue was through that one account.
00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:48.159
So I interacted with the C level at AMD and at HP at a very young age and had to know the business and had to know my stuff.
00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:58.240
And so that was through the foresight of this one lady who just realized, hey, there's just not a good relationship, or not as good of a relationship that is happening.
00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:02.480
It's not that it was bad, but there was a people connecting sort of a common term of reference.
00:17:02.559 --> 00:17:08.319
I mean, yeah, if you're 30, you don't want to be having dinner with a 55-year-old guy like having dinner with your dad.
00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:08.799
Yeah.
00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:10.880
The the dynamic is different, isn't it?
00:17:11.279 --> 00:17:23.119
Yeah, I have to ask, did you see, did you understand the ramifications of that at the time, or did it become obvious, as the podcast might already allude to, did it become obvious afterwards, or did you go, oh yeah, that seems reasonable?
00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:25.519
Well, kid it wasn't obvious to me.
00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:29.920
It was something this lady Annie had to fight for, right?
00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:31.440
Because there was like a pipeline.
00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:37.359
Like when you came out of sales, you started out with, well, you're gonna talk to you're gonna be in distribution sales first.
00:17:37.519 --> 00:17:42.880
Then maybe once you graduate to that, then maybe you get like a small little territory or a couple of accounts.
00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:50.559
And then there was like this pathway that you had to go all the way up until you were on a strategic account team and you had to earn your stripes.
00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:56.720
So she had to fight for it to get everybody to agree to this, but she was bucking the trend and the norm.
00:17:56.880 --> 00:18:02.000
I was just the passenger, and it was very much like, hey Jason, I'm going on a limb here.
00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:03.599
Don't don't f that up.
00:18:04.079 --> 00:18:04.400
Sure.
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:05.759
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
00:18:06.079 --> 00:18:09.839
So it was it wasn't obvious to anybody else in the organization.
00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:15.119
It was really an insight, this boss I had had that really it did make a difference.
00:18:15.279 --> 00:18:20.799
We started out that account at, I think it was like first quarter was like 17 or 18 million dollars a quarter.
00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:26.640
And the last quarter when I was moved through and managing it, it was$380 million in one quarter.
00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:27.920
It was proper money.
00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:29.200
Yeah.
00:18:29.359 --> 00:18:35.759
So I got this opportunity to see it scale from you know tens of millions of dollars to over a billion dollars in revenue.
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:38.240
That's uh an interesting place to be.
00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:38.559
Okay.
00:18:39.039 --> 00:18:42.799
So that brings us to what sorts of time scale by the time you finish IMD?
00:18:43.039 --> 00:18:44.640
Uh it took about eight years.
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:57.680
So I did that for a while, the HP account, and then I moved into marketing while I was there at AMD because I really appreciated one of the successes I had with that account was I wasn't grinding for a quarterly number.
00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:04.720
I would look at things a bit more strategically and like, well, we can set this up, and then next year it'll be even better and stuff like that.
00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:08.319
And there was like pressure from management, you know, you gotta hit that number.
00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:11.839
And I would be like, no, let's let's maintain the relationship.
00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:16.799
But I found that I wanted to get out of that quarterly grind of sales.
00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:29.119
And so I went into marketing because marketing was a bit more longer looking in kind of how you would lay out the messaging, where you're going, how you would want to talk and how you would want to speak to that.
00:19:29.279 --> 00:19:34.160
And it was just a meta much better fit for my personality than you know that quarterly grind.
00:19:34.319 --> 00:19:44.559
I did try some side accounts on the side where you would have to do like a territory and a number just you know, kind of to sharpen my skills, but that just wasn't wasn't me and what I was good at.
00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:48.400
I was more good at these bigger, longer term strategic relationships.
00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:50.880
Yeah, it's always the problem with sales, isn't it?
00:19:51.119 --> 00:19:55.599
Sales is great, you can think as long as 13 weeks in advance if you're lucky.
00:19:55.759 --> 00:19:56.240
Yeah.
00:19:56.559 --> 00:19:57.440
Four times a year.
00:19:57.599 --> 00:20:00.400
But the most of the time it's what am I doing today?
00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:01.039
Yeah.
00:20:01.279 --> 00:20:03.839
I p I've always personally found that boring.
00:20:04.079 --> 00:20:12.079
You you end up if you've only got such a short time horizon, you can't come up with interesting ideas because there's simply no time to implement them.
00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:12.480
Yeah.
00:20:12.720 --> 00:20:15.359
Marketing gives you gives you more opportunity there.
00:20:15.599 --> 00:20:16.160
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:16.319 --> 00:20:31.519
So to answer your question, how I kind of got out of there, I I ended up doing a stint in Munich, setting up marketing operations and still doing my other job of running global consumer marketing for AMD, but lived abroad for a year.
00:20:31.759 --> 00:20:46.559
When that assignment was over, kind of I was reporting to the CMO at the time, the job that they had for me was a much more finance-oriented internal role of like, how are we gonna spend our money and how are we gonna, you know, drive the margin and set up all these sort of things.
00:20:46.640 --> 00:20:48.640
And that just didn't really appeal to me.
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:53.680
And you know, living in the Bay Area, it is required at some point that you work for a startup.
00:20:53.920 --> 00:21:00.319
So I f decided I would fulfill that requirement and uh go do that.
00:21:00.559 --> 00:21:10.400
So I had a former boss, well, I didn't work for him very long at AMD because it wasn't the right fit for him, but I I really loved uh him as an individual.
00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:14.240
He went to a company called e Ink, and people are starting to see e Inc.
00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:14.960
more now.
00:21:15.119 --> 00:21:21.119
You're actually starting to see it at some of these shows, ISE and Infocom, but it's the e-paper displays.
00:21:21.279 --> 00:21:23.440
It was what was in the Amazon Kindle.
00:21:23.519 --> 00:21:26.000
It was a spin out from MIT Media Lab.
00:21:26.319 --> 00:21:31.920
And so he went over there and he brought me over to kind of set up their offices in the Bay Area.
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:39.519
I mean to call on Amazon, who was like the largest customer in the bulk of the revenue for that that company.
00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:41.200
Sony was like second.
00:21:41.279 --> 00:21:48.160
So it was I was there to provide adult supervision of how do you manage these large strategic accounts.
00:21:48.319 --> 00:21:53.279
And so I left AMD to go give that a shot and do the startup.
00:21:53.519 --> 00:21:57.680
The way you speak of it, I'm not I'm going to go out a limb here and say, I'm not feeling that ended over.
00:21:58.079 --> 00:21:59.519
It ended it it did.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:09.839
End well, but it was so when I got there, I think the company was about$23 million, was like the total revenue of the company, which wasn't too bad.
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:12.720
I was like, I think I was like employee 110.
00:22:12.799 --> 00:22:15.519
So it wasn't like early, early stage startup.
00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:18.559
It had some some business at that time.
00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:24.400
But it was a technology that had been around for a while and that was still trying to find its commercial footing.
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.480
And then, you know, the investors were in there long, right?
00:22:28.559 --> 00:22:31.920
And so they sold too early, honestly.
00:22:32.079 --> 00:22:40.079
And then the Kindle became like the huge hit at that it is today, and ebooks are now just like a prevalent thing in our culture.
00:22:40.319 --> 00:22:42.640
But that wasn't very obvious at the time, right?
00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:45.359
Because a lot of it wasn't just the technology of the books.
00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:59.759
It was, I spent actually a screwable amount of my time not just working with like Amazon on the other thing, but like how do you talk to the Hearst Corporation about publishing and getting them to put their content into an ebook format, right?
00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:04.960
Building the ecosystem of success around the solutions and things like that.
00:23:05.359 --> 00:23:09.759
So you're having to sell, you're having to sell an idea as much as you are a product.
00:23:10.079 --> 00:23:10.319
Yeah.
00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:12.799
I mean, Amazon was like behind it, right?
00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:14.000
They were pushing it too.
00:23:14.079 --> 00:23:17.039
But then we, you know, Amazon had their own agenda.
00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:20.319
We didn't want it just to be an Amazon solution.
00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:22.000
We were looking out for the industry, right?
00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:23.599
We wanted Sony to have ebooks.
00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:26.880
Barnes and Noble had their ebook too, right?
00:23:26.960 --> 00:23:33.599
And so we were trying to represent an industry need with that ecosystem that was there.
00:23:33.759 --> 00:23:35.359
But anyway, it did end up well.
00:23:35.519 --> 00:23:40.559
Like we we sold to a Taiwanese display manufacturer, sold a bit too early.
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:51.279
We kind of renegotiated because as the business started to grow, so the the total amount of enterprise capture for what the technology developed probably wasn't fully recognized in the the cell.
00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:54.400
And so again, like start at 23 million.
00:23:54.480 --> 00:23:56.240
I think I left my position.
00:23:56.319 --> 00:23:59.039
I was at the end after we were acquired.
00:23:59.119 --> 00:24:04.319
I stayed a year for you know to complete the acquisition, earnouts and things like that.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:14.400
But I left and we're just my territories of the Americas and Europe was about$670 million, and I forecast for over a billion dollars again in a three-year span.
00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:17.200
But I would treat that as a very successful.
00:24:17.680 --> 00:24:21.680
Sorry, when I the way you were speaking of it, it was like, oh, this isn't good, guy very well.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:23.279
Well, it was it was very good.
00:24:23.839 --> 00:24:32.000
Business success was it as successful for the people involved who created that enterprise value in what they got returned?
00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:35.920
Probably not as rewarded as much as it probably could have been.
00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:36.400
Right.
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:42.640
So business success, hundred percent, knocked it out of the park the company that bought it to you, great company.
00:24:42.720 --> 00:24:46.960
They've they've been a good steward of the product and continue to innovate in it, they've done good things.
00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:53.920
Did the people who do all that work up front and kind of make it happen get as much of the reward as they probably deserved?
00:24:54.079 --> 00:24:54.559
Probably not.
00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:55.680
No, that's fair.
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:56.960
Okay, yeah, all right.
00:24:57.039 --> 00:24:59.440
But it could have ended a lot worse and often does.
00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:00.319
Yes, yeah.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:09.920
I I mean I remember speaking to one of the VCs when I was at Life Size, and they were one of the big one of the big Silicon Valley VC firms.
00:25:10.079 --> 00:25:17.359
And I asked him about how what do they treat as success, and he said, Well, if we invest in 10 companies, we expect half of them to go nowhere at all.
00:25:17.519 --> 00:25:18.160
They'll die.
00:25:18.400 --> 00:25:18.960
We know that.
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:23.599
40% will be okay and we'll get our money back.
00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:31.200
Ten percent they'll hit it out of the park and we'll make more than our money back, and therefore the whole of the rest of the process is worth doing.
00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:33.519
And you're clearly one of the ten Yeah.
00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:34.880
Well, it was it was interesting.
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:36.559
They talk in Silicon Valley, right?
00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:40.000
They talk about this, uh they use a baseball analogy like with these startups.
00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:42.480
Like, hey, a lot of strikeouts, a lot of outs.
00:25:42.559 --> 00:25:55.119
But you get a single, you renovate your house, double, you buy a house, or it's like you buy you buy a new house, triple, you buy a new house in Palo Alto, and then a home run is generational wealth or something like that.
00:25:55.359 --> 00:25:56.319
You buy an island.
00:25:56.480 --> 00:25:56.880
Yeah.
00:25:57.119 --> 00:26:04.160
We would have all said uh created the economic value we created, it should have been home runs, and we all got doubles and singles.
00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:04.559
Right.
00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:06.720
Of course, I'm gonna respond with baseball.
00:26:06.799 --> 00:26:08.400
That's the game with the men with the hats.
00:26:08.799 --> 00:26:08.960
Yes.
00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:10.559
Because I don't really understand that baseball.
00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:13.440
Sorry for the international audience out there.
00:26:13.759 --> 00:26:14.720
That's why.
00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:16.000
I they'll work it out.
00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:16.880
Don't worry about it.
00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:17.440
All right.
00:26:17.599 --> 00:26:21.359
So you left there, yeah, you got a renovation on your house.
00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:22.240
Then what happened?
00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:28.799
Yes, I went to Logitech after that, and I joined Logitech at a at a very interesting time.
00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:34.160
There was a product that they had worked on called Google TV.
00:26:34.400 --> 00:26:34.960
I don't know.
00:26:35.119 --> 00:26:36.720
Do you recall Google TV?
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:37.279
I do.
00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:38.480
Very well.
00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:40.960
You were at Logitech, so you know this one.
00:26:41.119 --> 00:26:41.519
Yeah.
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:46.000
But it was a precursor for people who didn't know, it was like a precursor to Android TV.
00:26:46.160 --> 00:26:52.160
But it was like a set-top box that Logitech had made and then a set of peripherals that would go around it.
00:26:52.480 --> 00:27:06.079
So the the idea of that product was Google, as they built out an operating system and becoming a home entertainment hub, Logitech would then do like what they did for Windows PCs or Mac OS.
00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:08.640
It's like, oh, let's make all the peripherals that go around it.
00:27:08.799 --> 00:27:13.039
Somebody else makes the software, and people are going to make the hardware, we're going to make a bunch of different things.
00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:25.200
So we had like television cameras, and then Logitech had the Harmony remote line of products for universal remote controls, speakers, other things that were all going to be surrounding it.
00:27:25.359 --> 00:27:33.279
And then the idea was so the role that I was hired to do was to essentially run kind of like the business development of that.
00:27:33.359 --> 00:27:43.359
We were selling it to Comcast or Orange or like these other like cable companies where we would get the hardware in there and be able to like sell and outfit that.
00:27:43.599 --> 00:27:58.319
So I waited my year and one day from the startup, took a little bit of time off as I had my first child was born around that time, and then started at Logitech, and I showed up there to do that job, and they said, Why don't you just hold on for a minute?
00:27:58.400 --> 00:27:59.920
Um, we're not gonna have you do that job.
00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:00.960
And this was when?
00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:02.079
Late nine?
00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:03.440
2011.
00:28:04.079 --> 00:28:04.960
As late as that.
00:28:05.119 --> 00:28:05.279
Okay.
00:28:05.599 --> 00:28:06.400
Yeah, 2011.
00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:11.440
So what happened is that the the product was not a commercial success.
00:28:11.599 --> 00:28:17.359
Even before I got there, Logitech took about a hundred million dollar write-off right as I started.
00:28:17.599 --> 00:28:24.160
And the previous CEO who I interviewed with in the process to get this job was then fired 30 days later.
00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:29.759
Wait, was this the same CEO that had bought Life Size for$400 million?
00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:30.559
Yes.
00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:31.279
Yeah.
00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:31.920
Yeah.
00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:32.640
It's interesting.
00:28:32.799 --> 00:28:38.720
Logitech just recently for the audience recently had a get-together of all the previous CEOs.
00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:39.279
Yeah.
00:28:39.759 --> 00:28:40.799
I don't think he was invited.
00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:41.759
He wasn't there.
00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:42.240
Yeah.
00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:43.359
Not surprising.
00:28:43.680 --> 00:28:44.559
Ludley guy.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:46.480
I mean, I didn't know him that well, but yeah.
00:28:46.799 --> 00:28:50.720
I I never met the band and I can't remember his name, so probably best we don't speak further on.
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:55.200
Well, it was an interesting, what an interesting set of developments that was.
00:28:55.440 --> 00:28:55.680
Yeah.
00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:56.079
Yeah.
00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:10.480
So the the chairman of the board, the previous CEO, Green Ode Luca, came back and ran uh the organization there for the first year and before uh Brack and Daryl kind of came in in my starting my second year when I was there at Lodge Tech.
00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:11.839
So I didn't have a job.
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:12.880
I had my first kid.
00:29:12.960 --> 00:29:14.240
I was a little freaked out.
00:29:14.400 --> 00:29:16.640
It's like, well, this isn't good, you know.
00:29:16.799 --> 00:29:18.799
But uh they they seemed to like me at LogTech.
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:20.799
They're like, okay, well, we'll give you something else to do.
00:29:20.960 --> 00:29:28.000
And so I ended up running global strategic accounts, which really was a euphemism for the OEM team at the time, right?
00:29:28.079 --> 00:29:36.240
So how do we we make keyboards and mice rebranded and sold to HB and Dell and those organizations?
00:29:36.559 --> 00:29:42.319
And so I did that, but then of course, it was like that's that's a losing proposition, right?
00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:51.359
You have a Swiss manufacturer trying to compete with low-cost manufacturers and ODMs in Asia, you know, that had a a very short self-life.
00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:54.960
And so Guerino tasked myself and three other people.
00:29:55.119 --> 00:29:56.799
There's four of us in a cohort.
00:29:57.039 --> 00:30:02.480
I was kind of a sales business person, there was a strategic person, there was a finance person, and there was a product person.
00:30:02.640 --> 00:30:04.559
Like, what can you do with this business?
00:30:04.799 --> 00:30:05.920
Like, should we keep it?
00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:06.960
Should we get rid of it?
00:30:07.119 --> 00:30:08.799
What do what do what do you do with it?
00:30:08.960 --> 00:30:19.279
And so remember, we worked on this for a few months, came back and actually found the business was quite profitable if you looked at it overall because it was generating the the volume for for Logitech.
00:30:19.519 --> 00:30:26.640
Like almost 40% of the volume was doing this because you sell millions and millions of mice to HP or Dell or stuff like that.
00:30:27.119 --> 00:30:27.440
Right, right.
00:30:27.599 --> 00:30:29.440
So it kept the factory opening and stuff like that.
00:30:29.519 --> 00:30:35.359
And so once you actually looked at the enterprise value of what the organization did, it was uh really healthy for the business.
00:30:35.440 --> 00:30:39.920
So we term was like, okay, it's good to keep it, but we have to diversify, we have to do other things.
00:30:40.160 --> 00:30:47.680
There was a one small little customer that we had, which was Cisco, who is you know sourcing, we were doing some OEM business with our webcams.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:31:09.680
And so developed a relationship with Cisco to actually start to build some unified communications products with them that they needed for their virtual desktop implementation of keyboards and mice and different telephony and stuff in the UC space, and actually successfully kind of helped build out a portfolio that was co-branded with with Logitech and Cisco.
00:31:09.759 --> 00:31:18.400
And so that was kind of a little bit of a change of what we're doing in the organization to try and get away from just being a low-cost keyboard and mouse provider.
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:19.920
Just try to find these other things.
00:31:20.240 --> 00:31:22.960
And whatever happened to Cisco, do they did they go anywhere?
00:31:23.119 --> 00:31:23.839
Oh, that's right.
00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:25.440
That's right.
00:31:25.519 --> 00:31:26.240
Now I remember.
00:31:26.559 --> 00:31:26.720
Yeah.
00:31:27.039 --> 00:31:28.880
One of the biggest players in UC there is.
00:31:29.039 --> 00:31:29.200
Okay.
00:31:29.599 --> 00:31:30.000
Interesting.
00:31:30.079 --> 00:31:33.119
We're we're rushing up for those the audience won't know this.
00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:36.720
We're rushing up on the moment where Jason and I met.
00:31:36.799 --> 00:31:36.880
Yeah.
00:31:37.119 --> 00:31:39.279
And I'm I'm excited to see where we go next.
00:31:39.359 --> 00:31:41.200
So the obvious next question, then what happened?
00:31:41.440 --> 00:31:42.319
Yeah, then what happened?
00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:49.920
So as we did that, Logitech had looked at their business and you know, the dominant amount of revenue was coming from the consumer market.
00:31:50.079 --> 00:31:56.240
I think it was about 90% consumer, 10% was this OEM business, even though it was much more of volumes.
00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:02.160
It was like, oh, we need a if you want to grow in this industry, we need to have a B2B business, you know.
00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:14.240
So the the first instance instanation uh instantiation of the Logitech for Business moniker kind of happened around 2014-ish, 2013, 2014.
00:32:14.640 --> 00:32:15.200
Yeah.
00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:30.480
And that group got formed, and then it was doing okay, but then really Logitech determined like, oh, there's something more specific and unique around unified communications with headsets and webcams, and maybe let's let's go after the unified communications.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:36.160
So the original Logitech for business kind of faded away and they focused on unified communications.
00:32:36.319 --> 00:32:48.400
Me being one of the only people in the organization that even knew a little bit about unified communications because of this relationship with Cisco, and they knew I didn't want to do this OEM strategic accounts job longer term.
00:32:48.640 --> 00:32:54.160
Said, hey, can you let's let's have you move over and help start up our enterprise sales group?
00:32:54.240 --> 00:33:04.640
And so that's how I got into this industry that we're in today was through that transition, um, just because of this relationship Logitech had with Cisco, and I knew a little about it.
00:33:04.880 --> 00:33:05.839
Isn't it interesting?
00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:33.440
Just as an aside, this is a really interesting moment because Logitech had owned LifeSize, which was a B2B Unified Comms video collab player, and they bought them in 2009, and no one noticed because neither Logitech ever kind of admitted their own uh life size, and LifeSize certainly never wanted to admit they were owned by Logitech, for reasons that we might at some point find out in another episode.
00:33:33.599 --> 00:33:35.039
It was a crazy time.
00:33:35.279 --> 00:33:35.519
Yeah.
00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:51.279
And just when you're doing the let's go and build a B2B business for Logitech, which they didn't involve life size in at all, I was at Life Size looking at products like the BCC950, which for those of you who can't know what that is, it's the eyeball on a stick.
00:33:51.359 --> 00:34:05.599
It was a little webcam with a PTZ mechanism built in at the top, and suddenly computers like like an Intel NUC or a Mac Mini could actually start running codecs on, which previously they couldn't.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:29.199
So suddenly you could look at a a little$500 Intel NUC with a$300 webcam on a stick with a little speakerphone on it, and you go, why do I need I remember saying to Logitech to LifeSize's senior leadership team, why do I need to spend$10,000 on dedicated hardware when I could buy a Logitech PTZ camera and a NUC for a thousand?
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:30.320
Why do I need that?
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:33.280
And they went, because we don't know how to make money selling that.
00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:37.519
And I decided to leave Life Size and join Logitech at all places.
00:34:37.679 --> 00:34:37.920
Yeah.
00:34:38.079 --> 00:34:41.679
And so you and I ended up at the same spot at completely different angles.
00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:42.400
How strange.
00:34:42.559 --> 00:34:43.440
Yeah, it's funny.
00:34:43.599 --> 00:34:48.639
That product was called uh the codename of that product, the little eyeballness stick.
00:34:48.719 --> 00:34:52.559
There was a little eyeballing stick, we sold it a lot, it was called the orbit.
00:34:52.719 --> 00:34:59.119
And then one of our engineering leaders named Ali said we could stick a speakerphone on the bottom, right?
00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:01.440
And so the codename of it was called the Orbit Ali.
00:35:02.000 --> 00:35:04.639
That was like the and it everybody was just like, okay.
00:35:04.800 --> 00:35:10.880
And then we had one product manager, she had the foresight to support Oli and said, Yeah, I'll take this to the market.
00:35:11.039 --> 00:35:16.719
But it was not like a real strategic, like somebody have this foresight that this is going to be a thing.
00:35:16.880 --> 00:35:21.360
It was just more one of the engineering people just said, Hey, I could stick a speakerphone on it.
00:35:21.440 --> 00:35:24.320
And one of the product managers, she went, Yeah, that sounds cool.
00:35:24.400 --> 00:35:25.119
I'll support it.
00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:30.639
And then that was probably a product on its own that helped kind of change an industry, right?
00:35:30.719 --> 00:35:38.159
And it wasn't through a strategic whiteboarding session with lots of post-it sticky notes moved around and stuff like that.
00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:42.880
It was just an engineer and a product manager getting together and saying, Hey, there's something cool I can do here.
00:35:43.119 --> 00:35:48.239
And it's really interesting that that you were doing that at Lodgy without understanding what you were doing.
00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:55.119
And I was on the other side of the fence looking at it from the hardware world, going, that's what the future looks like.
00:35:55.360 --> 00:36:04.559
Where most of that industry either didn't understand that, or maybe, perhaps more importantly, maybe they did see it, but didn't want to accept it.
00:36:04.639 --> 00:36:08.000
Because if they did, it was going to revolutionize their world.
00:36:08.239 --> 00:36:17.679
There's an interesting angle there that one of the problems with innovation is sometimes you innovate your existing business model out of existence, and you then have a choice.
00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:24.320
You can either you can either destroy your own business model with a new one, or you sit back and wait for somebody else to do it for you.
00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:25.360
What's the answer?
00:36:25.599 --> 00:36:25.840
Yeah.
00:36:26.719 --> 00:36:27.519
It's a tough one.
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:30.320
It's really tough in these organizations, right?
00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:42.079
Because people and it's not just the individual, and it's not them being selfish about them protecting their own revenue, but they're also protecting the people, the jobs, the organization is built around this business model, right?
00:36:42.159 --> 00:36:48.880
And it's hard to take those risky decisions because you care about the your your friends and colleagues that are around you too.
00:36:49.039 --> 00:36:53.920
Because if you make those decisions, you don't know instantly what to do with the people that are already in those roles.
00:36:54.239 --> 00:36:54.400
Yes.
00:36:54.559 --> 00:37:06.639
And you've also got the issue of you go, well, I could come a lot, I I can see the future and it may look like this, but I've destroyed everything I presently, all the people I work around and live among and the industry that I'm in.
00:37:06.800 --> 00:37:12.480
And somebody else might so if I ignore it, a lot of companies will play that I'll ignore it and hope it goes away game.
00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:15.599
I've certainly explored that with a number of guests, and it rarely does.
00:37:15.760 --> 00:37:21.039
But you could also say, ah, but we can carry on for a couple more years because no one else is in a position to do it.
00:37:21.119 --> 00:37:22.880
Now, Logic was a good example.
00:37:23.039 --> 00:37:25.440
The BCC 950, the Orbit R lead.
00:37:25.679 --> 00:37:27.119
Who else had one of those?
00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:33.440
No, but nobody else had one of those, and no one looked like likely to go and invent one of those either.
00:37:33.599 --> 00:37:34.960
It wasn't an obvious choice.
00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:42.079
So, you know, perhaps the industry could have lasted another three or four years with the old model, ending up not doing so.
00:37:42.239 --> 00:37:44.719
But it's an interesting counterfactual, isn't it?
00:37:44.960 --> 00:38:02.079
Yeah, there's there's something that's interesting that was very this interesting systemic advantage that Logitech had with its video technology that I think the AV industry or just the industry didn't quite understand, but also changed the unit economics of the game.
00:38:02.400 --> 00:38:07.760
Because the Logitech had an OEM business, we were selling keyboards and mice and other things like that.
00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:13.280
One of the other things, and Logitech continued to sell webcams and it spiked when Skype came out, right?
00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:15.119
You know, the original one, stuff like that.
00:38:15.199 --> 00:38:18.079
But webcam sales were were sort of following falling.
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:22.400
Logitech actually OEMed the camera modules that were in the laptops.
00:38:22.559 --> 00:38:26.239
So if your laptop opened, there's a little camera that's in there in the top.
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:30.960
And to be in that OEM business, you had to like really drive down costs, right?
00:38:31.119 --> 00:38:37.440
And then you had to pick like specific components, what you're trying to do, you're trying to do things that were just good enough, right?
00:38:37.599 --> 00:38:41.199
Just, hey, I just need a camera in the lid of the laptop.
00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:49.679
Now the business went away, but a lot of that technology or mindset made it into the webcams, which made it the webcams actually really profitable.
00:38:49.840 --> 00:38:57.039
But then the sensors and the things that we were making for the webcams, what also rose during that time was the launch of smartphones.
00:38:57.360 --> 00:38:59.920
And then you started to put cameras into smartphones.
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:05.920
And so the unit economics of the cameras just dropped through the bottom of the floor, right?
00:39:06.079 --> 00:39:08.559
It just became ridiculously inexpensive.
00:39:08.719 --> 00:39:21.920
And so a lot of the technology and the sensors and the planning of what was in the Logitech camera technology was derived from the cell phone market, whereas AV was still using camera technology from broadcast markets.
00:39:22.239 --> 00:39:25.679
So then all of a sudden you had this wide disparity of cost.
00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:32.000
But because the cell phone market was moving so fast, the quality was coming up so quickly.
00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:32.559
Yes.
00:39:32.719 --> 00:39:39.599
And also the size of the market opportunity increased by a factor of a hundred or a ten, a hundred, a thousand.
00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:47.360
I mean, it wasn't it was in the 2010 range that you would look at a at a customer and go, they're gonna buy 10 systems.
00:39:47.519 --> 00:39:51.920
Woo! You know, within five years, you didn't look up if it wasn't a thousand.
00:39:52.320 --> 00:39:54.880
So everything about the economics changed.
00:39:54.960 --> 00:40:07.840
It it that and Skype and then Zoom changed the the basic economics and the network effect of customers were no longer just ringing each other London to New York, which was the traditional video conferencing market.
00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:11.519
It suddenly explodes to everyone in every office globally.
00:40:11.679 --> 00:40:15.840
And that really tried and Logitech was in a brilliant position to make that happen.
00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:17.280
I I think it's fascinating.
00:40:17.519 --> 00:40:17.760
Yeah.
00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:21.440
And so that that kind of goes into a period of time when we met.
00:40:21.599 --> 00:40:35.599
So as I started in sales and doing stuff in there, and then you know, through an unfortunate set of circumstances, the the business leader, you know, got ill and I took over general management of of the group for a while.
00:40:35.760 --> 00:40:39.760
We found that the A V industry hated us, absolutely hated us, right?
00:40:39.920 --> 00:40:44.960
Because we were the cheap keyboard and mouse company that's coming in and ruining everybody's margins, right?
00:40:45.119 --> 00:40:50.559
And so there was a considerable effort that we thought of we're like, well, we don't want to be hated, right?
00:40:50.639 --> 00:40:52.239
We want people to accept us, right?
00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:58.239
So there was like a specific outreach that I did to different people in the industry.
00:40:58.400 --> 00:41:04.320
I tried to show up at A-B user groups and you know, that you were involved with.
00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:13.519
I can't remember if that's the first way we met, but I know at a certain point, but we I think we met when you were at Life Size, though, but first time we were like really engaged was maybe through that.
00:41:13.679 --> 00:41:21.760
It's how I met Joe Fam, who was the Q the president of QSE or CEO of QSE, is he was the chairman of Avixa.
00:41:21.840 --> 00:41:23.840
I was like, well, he must be an important guy.
00:41:23.920 --> 00:41:26.800
He's the president of the whole A V organization.
00:41:26.880 --> 00:41:28.800
I should go be friends with him, right?
00:41:29.039 --> 00:41:40.639
So, like we made a concerted effort to, you know, kind of talk about ourselves in the industry and not be this hated, you know, kind of bottom feeder that was just gonna come in and disrupt everybody's margins.
00:41:40.800 --> 00:41:46.320
We said, no, no, no, we're here to play, we're here to make the industry better, we're here to be involved in it.
00:41:46.480 --> 00:41:52.960
And so we made this very intentional outreach to try and ingratiate ourselves into the industry.
00:41:53.199 --> 00:41:54.400
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:54.639 --> 00:41:56.480
And then and then meetup.
00:41:56.880 --> 00:42:03.599
I mean, I think that if if any product changed the market more than meetup, I'm struggling to remember one that did.
00:42:03.920 --> 00:42:13.599
Because suddenly clients could walk into a meeting room and have a proper meeting room solution for a tenth the price of the next nearest device.
00:42:13.679 --> 00:42:16.960
I mean, sure, you had to bring your laptop to to run the call, but so what?
00:42:17.039 --> 00:42:21.119
You brought the laptop to the meeting anyway, and I think that that that changed the market.
00:42:21.199 --> 00:42:35.119
And I I think it's public domain, and I'll say anyway, it sells well over a million of those devices, where most of the rest of the market, the the traditional videocracy market, would treat 15 to 20,000 units as a lot over the lifespan of a product.
00:42:35.199 --> 00:42:40.400
And suddenly Logitech turned the world on its head with uh with a$900 product.
00:42:40.639 --> 00:42:52.719
I mean, I joined Logitech because of Meetup because Scott Wharton, who ended up being both of our bosses, told me about it on the phone, and I walked into my wife's office and said to her, I've got to join Logitech.
00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:55.519
They've got the most exciting thing in the world about to happen.
00:42:55.679 --> 00:42:58.480
So I kind of I suppose I did see it coming.
00:42:58.719 --> 00:42:59.360
Great for me.
00:42:59.679 --> 00:43:02.880
There's a million other things I didn't see coming, by the way, but that one I did.
00:43:03.199 --> 00:43:05.360
Did you see the importance of Mintel?
00:43:05.760 --> 00:43:12.000
Yeah, so we were there, I mean, as heavily involved in the creation of that product, and where was that?
00:43:12.159 --> 00:43:24.320
So this is an interesting thing, and I I know we're gonna talk about a question of this is one of those typical things of you have to listen to customers, but not take them literally, right?
00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:25.840
In in what they're asking for.
00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:36.320
So we had a previous product to it, which kind of helped establish this, which was the conference cam three, the CC 3000 E, which rolls off the tongue, right?
00:43:36.400 --> 00:43:48.000
It was like this PTZ camera at one end and then a round speakerphone at the other end, with like this nest of cables that you had to plug in and and get from one end to the other, right?
00:43:48.159 --> 00:43:54.320
And so that was kind of like the the big brother to the Orbitali, the BCC 950 product that we talked about.
00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:58.159
And that actually really started to raise it up, and you know, people are taking us seriously.
00:43:58.320 --> 00:43:59.760
And then all as we heard from the sales team.
00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:03.199
Over and over and over again was I need longer cables.
00:44:03.360 --> 00:44:04.400
I need longer cables.
00:44:04.559 --> 00:44:06.719
They're like, what do you mean you need longer cables?
00:44:07.119 --> 00:44:09.039
Well, you know, the cables aren't long enough.
00:44:09.119 --> 00:44:14.159
You can't get a USB from the center of the table to over here, and all that sort of stuff.
00:44:14.239 --> 00:44:23.199
And so I remember going on this sales trip, one of the one of my favorite sales guys who's based in New York who would like load me up with like three to four meetings per day.
00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:24.559
You're just like subway.
00:44:25.199 --> 00:44:28.079
And you you see like 12 people in a week, right?
00:44:28.239 --> 00:44:36.079
And all of them were these CC 3000 E customers or considering to be customers, but they're like, oh yeah, it needs longer cables, it needs longer cables.
00:44:36.239 --> 00:44:38.719
Like this guy was just like, Why do you need longer cables?
00:44:38.880 --> 00:44:41.199
Like, like, tell me what like what are you trying to solve?
00:44:41.360 --> 00:44:43.360
Like, well, I've I gotta get it from here to here.
00:44:43.519 --> 00:44:56.400
And I think one of the guys, I think he was the leader at one of the big law firms, Gadden Arps, who was swinging it, is just like, look, we're spending more money on this mahogany table in the chairs than we are on this equipment.
00:44:56.639 --> 00:45:02.320
I can't stick a piece of equipment in this really nice boardroom and have cable showing and everything like that.
00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:06.079
And so, really, the inside insight was that they didn't want longer cables.
00:45:06.159 --> 00:45:10.559
They wanted a clean install and they wanted it to look nice, right?
00:45:10.800 --> 00:45:34.079
And so that was actually really the thought behind Meetup is like, well, can you build it all in one in a simple install in one place where the sound comes from the the uh built more for not the old world where there was always a a polycom starfish sitting on the table where everybody was staring at the phone, and then you would get like the side view of somebody's ear from the video camera.
00:45:34.239 --> 00:45:42.480
But how do you just create the aesthetics of the room where everybody should be looking up at the the screen and make it nice, easy, seamless?
00:45:42.639 --> 00:45:50.960
And I remember it was it it started with that conversation of constantly hearing this feedback of we need longer cables, but that's not what they needed.
00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:53.920
You had to take like a moment to go deeper.
00:45:54.159 --> 00:45:56.480
Isn't it interesting though how the world works?
00:45:56.719 --> 00:46:01.840
In hindsight, the whole video bar market, which I would argue meet up, started.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:05.679
It didn't have compute in it, but that's just a a detail, really.
00:46:05.840 --> 00:46:12.159
But that whole bar market, which has become a multi-billion dollar market and really dominates the video collab space today.
00:46:12.320 --> 00:46:13.599
From here, it looks obvious.
00:46:13.679 --> 00:46:15.119
Well, of course that's what we should have done.
00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:19.360
But as sure as Dickens didn't look obvious when we were doing it, yeah.
00:46:19.679 --> 00:46:27.199
I was at I was at large size before that at Polycom and and any one of us, any one of those companies could have built a video bar.
00:46:27.280 --> 00:46:32.159
I mean, it would have been bigger and clunkier and all of those things, and more certainly a lot more expensive.
00:46:32.320 --> 00:46:34.480
But no one thought about building one.
00:46:34.719 --> 00:46:37.599
I think a company called Telelabs had a little device.
00:46:37.920 --> 00:46:41.599
But again, everyone looked at that stuff and didn't see it.
00:46:41.679 --> 00:46:46.960
It's very interesting to see how you and others back stuff out.
00:46:47.199 --> 00:46:48.000
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:46:48.159 --> 00:46:57.119
So if you think about a lot of the people who became like the director of UC for the IT department or something like that, most of them had telephony backgrounds, right?
00:46:57.199 --> 00:46:58.960
And most of the people were there were all worried about.
00:46:59.199 --> 00:47:03.760
And so they were just so oriented around I have to have a phone on the table.
00:47:03.920 --> 00:47:05.599
I have to have a speakerphone on the table.
00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:09.679
And that was just like the primary consideration, phone on the table.
00:47:09.840 --> 00:47:19.119
And you couldn't get people's mindset to shift away from having this round thing, or in Polycom's case, a starfish-looking thing, on the middle of the table.
00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:21.519
Well, what how do I how do I talk to it?
00:47:21.599 --> 00:47:23.039
How do I how do I dial?
00:47:23.280 --> 00:47:23.599
Right?
00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:31.599
You know, that was just it was just so ingrained in everybody's thinking that that's just what locked people into the current situation.
00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:34.639
So you did a lot of important things at Loggy.
00:47:34.800 --> 00:47:36.880
You and I were peers for for many years.
00:47:37.039 --> 00:47:44.480
And there was tons of products that we did together, and there was you know, Rally Bar, Rally Bar Mini, two of the most successful products in history.
00:47:44.559 --> 00:47:50.159
I think only beaten by Meetup, which was perhaps the most successful video collab solution in history.
00:47:50.400 --> 00:47:58.639
And then at some point, and I can't actually now remember how long ago it was, you left Logitech and went off and did something else entirely.
00:47:58.800 --> 00:47:59.119
Yeah.
00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:00.719
When did you leave?
00:48:00.880 --> 00:48:04.079
And why did you think, I know, I'm gonna go and join Q.
00:48:04.400 --> 00:48:06.159
Well, you were QSC at the time.
00:48:06.320 --> 00:48:06.639
Yeah.
00:48:06.719 --> 00:48:06.960
Yeah.
00:48:07.199 --> 00:48:08.800
So what attracted you to them?
00:48:08.960 --> 00:48:10.960
And when when was that transition?
00:48:11.039 --> 00:48:12.320
I've truly now forgotten.
00:48:12.559 --> 00:48:13.280
Yeah, yeah.
00:48:13.440 --> 00:48:18.559
So the transition was January 2020, right before the world got weird.
00:48:20.719 --> 00:48:22.719
Literally like 10 minutes before the world got weird.
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:23.119
Yeah, yeah.
00:48:23.360 --> 00:48:25.039
I had maybe like a month of normalcy.
00:48:25.280 --> 00:48:34.320
I remember going to my first ISC in that this last one in Amsterdam at the uh beginning of February, where it was a little eerie, and you're like, do we wear masks?
00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:35.519
Do we hug people?
00:48:35.599 --> 00:48:36.480
Do we even shake hands?
00:48:36.639 --> 00:48:44.400
Do we like I remember like the the section of the the the show that was like a lot of the Chinese manufacturers was like a ghost town.
00:48:44.480 --> 00:48:45.679
Like they just didn't show up.
00:48:45.760 --> 00:48:46.400
So it was like right.
00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:56.480
Over a hundred Chinese companies just failed to show up, and there was all this talk of this killer disease that everyone was like it's just a flu, or yeah, it's the end of the world.
00:48:56.639 --> 00:48:58.079
No one really knew which it would be.
00:48:58.320 --> 00:49:01.440
Yeah, it was it was it was an odd, it was an odd time.
00:49:01.599 --> 00:49:03.920
But that's that's honestly right when I joined.
00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:12.960
I and the reason I I I left, uh Joe Fam called me up, who I'd made a relationship with before, just trying to know the A V industry.
00:49:13.039 --> 00:49:17.440
And I really liked Joe, and I got a chance to meet the QSE team over the course of time.
00:49:17.599 --> 00:49:23.760
And I got introduced to QSIS and I thought it was just super compelling technology, and I was like, oh, this is the future, right?
00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:29.039
This is uh there's probably a limit to you know, maybe some of the things at Logitech or something like that.
00:49:29.119 --> 00:49:39.920
But I I kind of view things in kind of like three stages of business maturity of there's the architect phase, the contractor phase, and the facilities management phase, right?
00:49:40.079 --> 00:49:43.679
And I I kind of prefer to be in the architect and contractor phase.
00:49:43.840 --> 00:49:50.400
And I kind of felt where Logitech was going was more hey, we've got a good thing going here.
00:49:50.559 --> 00:49:52.800
It's operational, we're growing, we're incremental.
00:49:53.360 --> 00:49:56.159
So there's no animosity or anything like that.
00:49:56.320 --> 00:49:57.599
It was great.
00:49:57.679 --> 00:50:02.880
Uh Scott, our former boss, I don't know if you remember this, he gave me uh a the little going away party.
00:50:02.960 --> 00:50:06.719
They gave me a chairman advisor emeritus for the business group.
00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:08.559
I still have like the little thing.
00:50:08.719 --> 00:50:09.360
So it was great.
00:50:09.440 --> 00:50:22.559
I I left on such good terms with with everyone at Lodestack, but I just like there's something over there with that QSC team and this QSIS thing that's ready to be built that people don't enough people knew about it, right?
00:50:22.719 --> 00:50:38.239
And I think uh when I got over there, I was like reviewing a bunch of the surveys and brand surveys, and I thought one of them spoke to me really well because they asked a question of all the customers and partners and said, give me your 30-second elevator pitch on QSIS.
00:50:38.480 --> 00:50:46.079
And one person's response was, I can't give you a 30-second elevator pitch of QSIS, but you give me 30 minutes, I'll give you a customer for life.
00:50:46.159 --> 00:50:49.599
And that was amazing praise yet damning at the same time, right?
00:50:49.920 --> 00:50:51.039
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:50:51.199 --> 00:50:51.679
Both.
00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:54.320
But so I was like, Oh, there's opportunity here.
00:50:54.480 --> 00:50:59.360
Now, it did not look like a good decision at the time because then the global pandemic hit.
00:50:59.519 --> 00:51:12.400
Logitech sold out of every video camera in the past, and then most of QSE's revenue came from cruise ships, theme parks, stadiums, cinemas, convention centers.
00:51:12.639 --> 00:51:18.159
Name a place you don't want to be during a global pandemic, and that's where the revenue came from.
00:51:18.320 --> 00:51:21.039
And then I'm and then Logitech just like skyrocketing.
00:51:21.119 --> 00:51:25.440
And then so my wife's like, well, that was the dumbest career decision you've ever made.
00:51:25.519 --> 00:51:30.159
So it was uh it was a rough few first few months over there, right?
00:51:30.320 --> 00:51:32.719
It was just like, yeah, what did I just do?
00:51:32.960 --> 00:51:36.559
But you know, QSE did some amazing things during the pandemic.
00:51:36.719 --> 00:51:49.840
They made decisions in three months that probably would have taken the organization three years to make and really set it up for success and really focused in on well, what are the things that makes that has really big future potential at QSE?
00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:56.079
And QSIS was essentially it was QSIS and our portable pro audio line of of speakers.
00:51:56.400 --> 00:51:58.559
Like at the end of the day, these are the two things.
00:51:58.719 --> 00:52:08.559
And I think a master class in executive management from the team over there at QSE on how they handled the pandemic, how they restructured the organization, and how they got focused.
00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:18.400
And even though maybe the top line of the QSE revenue dipped, and because it was a privately held company, it wasn't publicly stated, the QCys business never dipped.
00:52:18.480 --> 00:52:21.519
And the QSIS business only grew during that time.
00:52:21.760 --> 00:52:27.840
But it was just immensely impressive how everybody there just rallied around that focus.
00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:35.199
And so I was I'm super happy to be there during that time, and I learned so much from just the team and how they managed that through that situation.
00:52:35.440 --> 00:52:44.559
Yeah, and and and I think something worth noting here for the audience is that during tough times, like a global pandemic, is a good example, right?
00:52:44.719 --> 00:52:46.079
Completely unprecedented.
00:52:46.239 --> 00:52:50.559
Yeah, you may have a dip in your revenues over a period of time, but so do your competitors.
00:52:50.719 --> 00:52:58.000
And therefore, the decisions you make at that time are really important because all of the time scales are compressed.
00:52:58.079 --> 00:53:01.360
It's sort of the analogy I would use is a bit like sailing, right?
00:53:01.440 --> 00:53:07.760
If you're racing in a sailboat and it's a steady wind and a calm sea, well, everyone can go fast then.
00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:08.800
That's easy.
00:53:09.039 --> 00:53:17.599
It shows the difference between the quality of leadership when it's rough and when it's blustery, and when the chips are down as to who does well and who doesn't.
00:53:17.679 --> 00:53:25.199
And without naming names, some of your competitors stumbled very badly during that period of time and and QSD didn't.
00:53:25.280 --> 00:53:35.519
And it would have taken you a lot, lot longer to have that transformation in the market that you did have because the time can the time scales were so compressed.
00:53:35.679 --> 00:53:40.639
You would I think it would have taken you ten years to overtake some of your competitors if everything had been calm.
00:53:40.800 --> 00:53:43.679
So, in many respects, the pandemic worked brilliantly for QC.
00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:44.159
Yeah.
00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:47.360
Sounds awful to say that the pandemic was a good thing, but it was.
00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:57.840
And I mean, obviously on a personal level, tragic for millions of people and all of those it almost seems surless to have to say that, but of course those are things true.
00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:03.679
But from a business point of view, you came out enormously stronger than you went in to that scenario.
00:54:03.920 --> 00:54:04.559
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:04.719 --> 00:54:07.840
You know, luck has a lot to do with these things, right?
00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:14.559
And but you know, success is based on you know luck and being prepared and then turning that into opportunity.
00:54:14.880 --> 00:54:15.920
Getting in luck's way.
00:54:16.079 --> 00:54:16.800
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:17.039 --> 00:54:17.360
Okay.
00:54:17.599 --> 00:54:20.480
So so QSIS, you went through it.
00:54:20.559 --> 00:54:21.440
I think many companies did.
00:54:21.519 --> 00:54:26.800
I mean, at Logitech, we just if if it if it had a webcam capability, we couldn't keep it in stock.
00:54:26.880 --> 00:54:28.320
It went completely bonkers.
00:54:28.559 --> 00:54:29.039
Yeah.
00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:30.159
Little different for you.
00:54:30.239 --> 00:54:33.039
And obviously, QSIS was then transformed by that.
00:54:33.199 --> 00:54:43.199
You I'm sure they're still in cruise ships and and stadiums and all of those things, but you also then got pretty involved and have now got very involved in the UC space.
00:54:43.280 --> 00:54:48.639
So, do you want to bring us a bit more up to speed of where you are now with this and and what that transformation has looked like?
00:54:48.880 --> 00:55:02.159
Yeah, so like QSIS got its got its start in those bigger infrastructure solutions and projects, and I would say even mission critical solutions where it just has to work and it had to have redundancy.
00:55:02.320 --> 00:55:08.159
Like, you know, if your Super Bowl halftime show, you know, it's gotta work then.
00:55:08.400 --> 00:55:11.440
Otherwise, you're you're disappointing a global audience, right?
00:55:11.519 --> 00:55:19.679
If you're bringing your kids, families bringing their kids to Disneyland, something shuts down, you know, you're disappointing a bunch of people's revenue and you're not getting that revenue back, right?
00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:23.679
You don't have a tolerance for error, right?
00:55:23.920 --> 00:55:27.519
I I'll tell you we did uh for one of the recent Super Bowls.
00:55:27.599 --> 00:55:38.320
I won't name this stadium, but one of the stadiums had one of our competitor solutions in there, found out it wasn't working, contracted us to redo it all ahead of the Super Bowl.
00:55:38.639 --> 00:55:44.480
And everybody at the Super Bowl party I was at was like, Jason, you're so like tense and nervous.
00:55:44.639 --> 00:55:49.360
Like, and I was just like, I'm like, Do you have money on the game or like are you really rooting for this thing?
00:55:49.519 --> 00:55:52.880
I was just like, I just need the halftime show to go really well.
00:55:54.480 --> 00:55:59.440
I do not want to answer if something goes wrong, but work brilliantly, but that's like the pressure you're under.
00:55:59.599 --> 00:56:03.039
But anyway, you start from that, and then this is kind of what QSIS does.
00:56:03.119 --> 00:56:05.679
We always kind of start at the high end and then bring things down.
00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:13.519
And because everything we're doing was based on x86 Intel processors at the time, we got to take advantage of Moore's Law.
00:56:13.599 --> 00:56:20.960
So where you started QSIS, it started with you know big Xeon servers, but then we were able to get stuff down to an atom-based processor.
00:56:21.039 --> 00:56:26.400
And because we're just using commodity hardware, because all the magic of QSIS is in the software and how we do it.
00:56:26.559 --> 00:56:32.880
So as long as the compute costs continue to come down, we can then take that software and apply it to anything.
00:56:33.039 --> 00:56:44.480
And so the unit economics got good enough for QSE to start to be relevant in the corporate market and to get into more and more of these uh different spaces that are in the corporate market.
00:56:44.559 --> 00:56:49.599
So we started at, well, we helped coin the term with Ross and Sullivan of high impact spaces.
00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:56.079
That was actually an interesting thing, which is kind of a ubiquitous term now that people kind of refer to these high impact spaces.
00:56:56.239 --> 00:57:11.119
But that was in sticking with the theme of the podcast, a not obvious thing, because I remember when you and I are at Lodge Tech, we would talk about those high-end spaces and they were the complex spaces, the expensive spaces, the spaces you needed to hire one person to just manage the executive space.
00:57:11.199 --> 00:57:13.840
They had all these negative connotations to those spaces.
00:57:14.559 --> 00:57:19.440
And we purposely at QSC said, no, no, no, these are really important spaces.
00:57:19.519 --> 00:57:20.639
They make big impacts.
00:57:20.800 --> 00:57:25.840
Even though it's like one or two spaces in an organization, they're really impactful, right?
00:57:25.920 --> 00:57:29.679
Because you're all hands beating is there and the executives need to look good.
00:57:29.840 --> 00:57:33.599
You're putting it into the spaces that you're bringing your most important clients to.
00:57:33.760 --> 00:57:35.840
So it was all about making the right impact.
00:57:35.920 --> 00:57:54.639
And so we really focused on being a trusted provider for those high impact spaces and really saying, yeah, I know these spaces are annoying and expensive and they take a lot, but if we just focus on the outcomes and the delivery of the impact that we're trying to deliver with these spaces, they're much more relevant.
00:57:54.719 --> 00:58:00.880
And it became much more relevant after the pandemic because everybody went hybrid or was working from home.
00:58:00.960 --> 00:58:05.440
And so the only time you went into the office was when you need to have a big important meeting.
00:58:05.599 --> 00:58:09.760
And so there was also a reinvestment into these spaces at that same time.
00:58:09.920 --> 00:58:16.960
But that wasn't an obvious thing at the time because everybody was focused on the volume of how many huddle rooms can I get out, right?
00:58:17.119 --> 00:58:26.079
And we kind of went the opposite way and we said, no, there's these other spaces that are really important, and I think we can play a really important role and deliver a really good outcome for you.
00:58:26.239 --> 00:58:36.000
But you needed both because if you own if all you have is really important rooms and there's no one to call and there's nothing to interact with, then it doesn't actually help you very much.
00:58:36.159 --> 00:58:46.960
You need to have the network effect, which means that things like video become ubiquitous, which then means that the high impact spaces are actually really important now, which means that you flourish.
00:58:47.119 --> 00:58:50.159
So you I would argue that you actually need both the angles.
00:58:50.320 --> 00:58:59.840
Uh you need to have a reason you need to have a really useful room, but you also need to have a really useful room that's got to be able to communicate with and be part of a much larger whole.
00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:02.159
And that requires mass deployment.
00:59:02.320 --> 00:59:05.119
It's it's it's a very interesting yin and yang, isn't it?
00:59:05.360 --> 00:59:08.159
They're both they're both required for the thing to be useful.
00:59:08.400 --> 00:59:08.800
Yeah.
00:59:09.119 --> 00:59:22.960
So exactly the same thoughts that that we had over here is that as we established ourselves in this category of space, we had more and more people come to us and say, like, hey, we like what C Sys is doing.
00:59:23.039 --> 00:59:27.599
We like the flexibility, we like the management, the visibility, we want to in the more spaces.
00:59:27.679 --> 00:59:30.960
And by the way, it wasn't just high-impact boardrooms and all hand spaces.
00:59:31.119 --> 00:59:36.480
We have paging throughout the systems, we're in the cafeterias, we're in the other spaces in the environment.
00:59:36.719 --> 00:59:43.840
The only place we weren't playing was kind of like the smaller meeting rooms, or maybe you would say some of like the hot desking scenarios.
00:59:44.079 --> 00:59:47.440
But most people want to be able to have a total view of their workplace.
00:59:47.599 --> 00:59:52.639
And we're heavily focused in this discussion because this is our background on the workplace.
00:59:52.800 --> 00:59:55.840
But that same conversation goes to hospitality.
00:59:55.920 --> 00:59:59.679
You know, if you think of like a large casino, right?
00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:09.199
You know, what is the system you're running in the sports book versus the restaurants versus the gaming area versus you know the lobby areas, the entertainment places?
01:00:09.360 --> 01:00:13.440
You don't want to be managing all these different various A V systems.
01:00:13.599 --> 01:00:26.719
I remember talking to one of the larger co-working outfits, and just in a co-working business environment, they were running seven different A V systems to be able to satisfy what they needed.
01:00:26.880 --> 01:00:29.199
They're like, I don't want to run that many systems.
01:00:29.360 --> 01:00:40.960
I want to be able to know background music, maybe my signage in the location, but then have insight into my collaboration spaces, what's happening in the lobby area, all that sort of stuff.
01:00:41.039 --> 01:00:42.719
Like, why does it have to be seven things?
01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:43.039
Right.
01:00:43.199 --> 01:00:45.280
And so that's what QSIS provides.
01:00:45.360 --> 01:00:51.519
And that was the early opportunity I saw why I came to QSE is I saw that potential in QSIS.
01:00:51.679 --> 01:00:54.719
And now we're at the point, you know, six years out from that.
01:00:54.800 --> 01:01:08.480
Or we're and it was really kind of about a year, a little over a year ago with our QSIS Designer 10.0 launch, where we really finally developed that full stack capability that really enables that ability to deliver on that promise.
01:01:08.800 --> 01:01:09.679
Very interesting.
01:01:09.840 --> 01:01:11.199
Tell me about acuity.
01:01:11.519 --> 01:01:11.760
Yeah.
01:01:12.000 --> 01:01:13.199
Talk talk me through that.
01:01:13.440 --> 01:01:20.239
Acuity, acuity now owned QSC and QSIS, and but a bunch of other brands as well.
01:01:20.320 --> 01:01:22.559
We don't need to go into what all the other brands are.
01:01:22.719 --> 01:01:27.599
But what are they trying to achieve and what what's their what's their future look like?
01:01:27.679 --> 01:01:32.320
And and I suppose ultimately, what is your what do you perceive as your future within that?
01:01:32.639 --> 01:01:41.440
Yeah, well, I think it's it's very much the same mindset of what I just talked about, with, you know, people just kind of want one system.
01:01:41.519 --> 01:01:47.840
So if you take yourself out of just the A V IT mindset, and then you start to think about other building systems.
01:01:48.000 --> 01:01:56.000
There's the lighting system, there's the BMS system, there's access control, there's fire, there's all sorts of these other build building systems.
01:01:56.159 --> 01:01:58.079
And people don't want to manage that, right?
01:01:58.159 --> 01:02:00.719
And or they want a more seamless way to do it.
01:02:00.880 --> 01:02:07.199
And real estate is one of the biggest line items in any balance sheet of any corporation.
01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:18.400
Like how much am I paying in rent or for this facility, and not just the facility itself, but the systems to keep it up to date, your electricity, the people you employ to keep it clean and stuff like that.
01:02:18.559 --> 01:02:22.400
It is a massive outlay of the finances.
01:02:23.360 --> 01:02:27.920
And nobody will come and tell you works really well today.
01:02:28.079 --> 01:02:33.599
If you start to get into that space, as it's fragmented, does the facilities department talk to the IT department?
01:02:33.679 --> 01:02:35.679
Do they talk to the AV people over here?
01:02:35.840 --> 01:02:37.119
Or are they talking to the HR?
01:02:37.199 --> 01:02:47.599
And like, and then it's all like different individual silos and fiefdoms and stuff like that at organizations, not only in the corporate market, but anywhere you go, right?
01:02:47.760 --> 01:02:53.840
There are, you know, some progressive organizations who think about it more holistically, but there are few and far between.
01:02:54.000 --> 01:03:06.239
So it's that same kind of concept where acuity with the lighting systems, the BMS systems, now the A-B systems, you can start to think about there's the operations of the building, and then there's the experience the building provides, right?
01:03:06.320 --> 01:03:08.400
If you really think about it in two ways.
01:03:08.480 --> 01:03:16.559
And so if you start to own and control these different systems, you can really focus on how do we make this building operate better?
01:03:16.800 --> 01:03:29.840
And then how do I deliver a better experience for the people inside the building, whether they're there to work and be productive, or whether you're a retail shop and your indicator of performance is revenue per square foot of what I'm selling, right?
01:03:30.079 --> 01:03:33.119
Performance can mean different things to different verticals and stuff like that.
01:03:33.199 --> 01:03:34.400
But that's the basic idea.
01:03:34.480 --> 01:03:37.119
They saw, hey, we're doing it with lighting and BMS.
01:03:37.280 --> 01:03:42.719
A V is a really important part to bring that experience to the get to the party.
01:03:42.960 --> 01:03:52.079
Yeah, and I guess the however long I've been in industry, there's this idea that telecoms became part of IT probably about the turn of the millennium, right?
01:03:53.119 --> 01:03:57.199
It varied, but it at that point telecoms got folded into IT.
01:03:57.519 --> 01:04:02.880
A V got folded into IT over the last 20 years, perhaps.
01:04:03.119 --> 01:04:06.559
Some people still say they're separate, but they're not separate anymore.
01:04:06.719 --> 01:04:11.199
And now IT is becoming an element within the whole facilities world.
01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:18.960
And it seems to me that you've got what acuity gives you is a bridge between that AVIT world and the and the facilities world.
01:04:19.039 --> 01:04:25.360
And facilities, of course, own the entire workflow ultimately, and IT is part of that.
01:04:25.440 --> 01:04:27.199
So it's logical that that works.
01:04:27.440 --> 01:04:32.639
Do you see that that's where acuity's and or where you are going to be going in the next few years?
01:04:32.880 --> 01:04:33.760
Yeah, absolutely.
01:04:33.840 --> 01:04:42.239
I think there's it's interesting, there's different trades, right, and different channels of like, you know, here's the lighting channel, and they they sell at one point in time.
01:04:42.320 --> 01:04:49.119
There's the BMS channel that they sell at another point in time, and then the A V channel sells at another point in time, IT goes through there.
01:04:49.280 --> 01:04:54.960
And so you can't really disrupt the systemic structure of all these businesses that are out there.
01:04:55.199 --> 01:05:14.159
But if you the the moniker we use internally here, connect the unconnected, you get those devices connected up through IP and up into the cloud, and you can start to pull data from those systems and start to get a unified view across all these different building systems, then you can start to get better insights into what's actually happening.
01:05:14.239 --> 01:05:18.719
And then once you you have people connected, you can see what's happening.
01:05:18.800 --> 01:05:25.760
And then once you see what's happening, you can then adjust the operations or adjust the experience to start to improve those items.
01:05:25.920 --> 01:05:26.159
Right.
01:05:26.239 --> 01:05:37.199
And so that's like a linear progression of connect people, allow you to see what's happening and then deliver an experience, whether that's for the operation sides or actual like people experience in there.
01:05:37.360 --> 01:05:44.000
And you do that through getting people connected through IP and up into the cloud and getting the data sets.
01:05:44.159 --> 01:05:46.320
And once you do that, who's in charge of that?
01:05:46.480 --> 01:05:47.199
Always IT.
01:05:47.679 --> 01:05:48.320
Always IT.
01:05:48.559 --> 01:05:49.440
Always IT.
01:05:49.599 --> 01:05:52.559
So you say, like Mark Andreessen says software eats the world.
01:05:52.719 --> 01:05:54.000
Well, who runs the software?
01:05:54.239 --> 01:05:56.079
IT runs the software, right?
01:05:56.239 --> 01:06:09.199
So there's a natural way where you need to get into that and there's going to be even more of a importance on it because of the levels of risk and cybersecurity in these systems as you connect things to the network.
01:06:09.360 --> 01:06:20.000
How do you make sure that's safe and secure and manageable over the course of time with especially with the capabilities that AI bring to the table with the ability to hack systems and other things like that.
01:06:20.159 --> 01:06:22.880
So IT is just IT is going to be in charge.
01:06:23.119 --> 01:06:25.679
I mean that's a very strongly held opinion by me.
01:06:26.079 --> 01:06:26.880
Strongly held opinion.
01:06:27.119 --> 01:06:36.480
I think my add to that, yes and is and facilities owns the workflow and IT ultimately support the workflow.
01:06:36.559 --> 01:06:38.239
They don't define the workflow.
01:06:38.400 --> 01:06:40.719
They define they they support it.
01:06:40.880 --> 01:06:45.840
So it's a very you're you're in a very acuity and you are clearly in a very interesting position.
01:06:46.079 --> 01:07:00.320
Yeah yeah all roads lead to IT but IT as a backbone for you know the facilities people or the A B people or the business line people that are you know making the stores or the experiences or you know the venues or stuff like that.
01:07:00.480 --> 01:07:07.199
But all things will have to converge at some point with IT approving these systems and solutions that go into these spaces.
01:07:07.519 --> 01:07:15.440
Jason when before before for the audience before we started this conversation I said Jason we'll do the history bit in about 45 minutes.
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Because I'm trying to keep our conversations a little shorter than they have been and this one has been close to two hours.
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Have we got that one?
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Literally an hour and 51 minutes of recording so far.
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I'm going to edit this down a little bit Mr Audience it'll actually be less than that if you're still listening to us but I hope you are because this has been a fascinating conversation.
01:07:36.400 --> 01:07:38.239
But we have to draw it to a close.
01:07:38.480 --> 01:07:38.639
Yeah.
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So Jason are there any other final thoughts that you want to give us before I let you get on with your life and let our audience get on with their lives as well.
01:07:47.760 --> 01:07:48.159
Yeah.
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I think this is as we've gone through my back history there's been a a pattern when I was at AMD I saw a changing of the industry the structural industry where AMD was actually introduced the sub-1000 PC and helped make PCs more accessible to people because we were undercutting where Intel was at the time.
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I then saw the publishing industry change at the startup with this e ink e-paper thing, which now we just take for granted that the industry has changed.
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You and I were around in the same time where we saw this A V collaboration UC industry change from what it was of these big expensive systems or high-end things to ubiquitously deployed across there and converged of A V telephony all into one.
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And so I've I've seen those three patterns the same pattern is going to happen again with these building systems.
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I firmly believe that that is the next big collapse of industries that they can no longer be separated.
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When you talk about your physical space and we get into conversations around physical AI and how these things are happening, people are going to expect that you're going to be able to see across all these different systems and be able to make incremental improvements.
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And that is the next big disruption I do think that disruption will be slower than those other disruptions we talked about just because of the nature of these physical systems that are in buildings and this sheer amount of capital to actually replace them.
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But there's also so much more money and investment in there.
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And I think kind of at the tail end of my career here, that is the next big industry transformation I'm really excited to be a part of and hopefully be a good catalyst for for having us all get out on the other end in a better better spot than we are today.
01:09:31.359 --> 01:09:32.960
Jason I couldn't agree with you more.
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I think it's a fascinating moment in our in our lives and in in our industry and I wanted to thank you very much for the last however long this interview's going to be once it's published.
01:09:43.920 --> 01:09:44.319
Thank you.
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A year from now let's let's reconvene and we will do this again and we will look at how the last year went because I think you're in a really really interesting spot.
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So everyone thanks for watching the show I really appreciate you getting this far assuming that you have and with that Jason Moss thank you for being my guest on Before It was obvious we'll see you all next week