713 Cork's Leadership Shake-Up: Dan Candee and Carlson Choi

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast powered by NetAlly, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. And today I've got a very interesting but fantastic show. Many of you have heard me chatting with our friend in the channel, Nick Wolfe, all about cork protection, but I had a chance to be offered an opportunity to speak with some key members of the C-Level.

So of course I said, yes. So today I'm going to be speaking with Dan Candy and, oh, what happened to my notes here? Carlson Choi of Cork.

Gentlemen, sorry for the butchering there, but how are we doing?

[Dan Candee]
Doing well. Thank you so much for having us, Marvin.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. The joy of live shows.

[Dan Candee]
It is. You said butcher and it made me think about dinner. So there we go.

It's all good.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So basically this was put together because there's, I don't want to call it a shake-up, but there's been a change of leadership over there at Cork. So Charles, let's start with you first.

[Carlson Choi]
Why don't I just call you Charles? I've been called many different names. So I would prefer the path you're going at this moment.

We'll keep it there for now.

[Uncle Marv]
Carlson, I should just think Fresh Prince and that'll work.

[Dan Candee]
Carlson has three daughters and an amazing wife. So he has been called all sorts of names this week.

[Uncle Marv]
Maybe it's a fact. So let me explain to the listeners. So this is a recording that we're doing at the end of the business day.

I have been out all day. It has been thunder storming here in Florida. Not hurricane weather.

We pushed that to the West. It's going to Louisiana. Sorry, Matt Rainey.

But I've been in the car in thunderstorms weather. So my mind's a little frazzled, but here we are.

[Carlson Choi]
Well, you can be like me, right? I'm sitting in Southern California, 100 plus degree. We have record, I think 113, which I haven't heard of.

And I got a firestorm outside, two hills ahead. There's a fire going on. So, you know, we can use some of those water on this side of the coast too.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. We'll keep trying to push it West. So Carlson, here's where we probably, let's start with this.

So you were one of the founders of Cork and you actually have kind of stepped aside. And I don't want to say that it's a lesser role, but let's start with the fact of what in the world made you decide to kind of step to the side there?

[Carlson Choi]
Well, so I'll tell you, it's like, it's funny, right? Because everyone thinks whenever a founder, CEO, you know, no longer take that role because something's gone really wrong, right? In our world, it's a little bit different because I think, you know, having three daughters, as Dan talked about, and a wife, and having been in such a great career over the past, we came to recognition at a certain point with the Cork.

When we came out a stealth a year ago, having the MSP community embracing us and where we gone, it's been a crazy year. I mean, the company grew from zero to a lot of partners on the table, a hundred plus partner that we talked to a regular basis. At that point, I recognized, you know what, to really get ourselves to that next step where Cork 2.0 needs to happen, I need to bring in some extra firepower. You know, my passion is in building product. My passion is building the right tools. I'm a geek.

I'm an engineer by nature, right? I'm sitting here. I want to build stuff.

And I want to continue to build the product, make a better product than we need. In talking to our board, I said, hey, I think it's time to bring in a leader like Dan. Dan is a seasoned, you know, operator that can build organization to the scale level.

It's been great the last, honestly, the last two, three months. It's been like three months or two months. Yeah, two and a half months, right, since Dan came on board.

We're literally joined at the hip, really taking a look at what that next step is for Cork. You know, we got to 1.0 very quickly. How do we get to 2.0?

To get to that next step, it's not just going to be Carlson or Dan alone. It's going to be the two of us to make sure we get there. That's really what drove the change.

It's not a thunderstorm, nothing crazy. It's not a heat storm, not a firestorm. We're really doing the right thing for the MSP community so we can continue to bring better product and a better community, better partner network to come and help you to be successful.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, so you're not being forced out by a board of directors.

[Carlson Choi]
Just, you know, this is how we live life, you know, as we always look at it.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, all right. And Dan, go ahead.

[Dan Candee]
Yeah, I think I would add a bit more to that as well, because our board is remarkable because they're all operators. They're all entrepreneurs with deep MSP experience, right? Gentlemen like Austin McCord or John McNeil, who was involved with Tesla and others.

These folks are very curious about where we can add the most value and then how we can work together in that. And so, you know, as Carlson indicated, there's been a rapid evolution in the first 18 months of the company, and the board and Carlson were like, what's next? How can we keep adding more and more value?

And that's where Carlson and I are able to divide and conquer with our mentality, where we have different experiences. And by leveraging those constantly throughout our day with the team, with partners, we just want to be able to go faster. And so, you know, I reflect on the last 60 days of what we've been up to.

There's been some important product launch, some important integrations that we've completed. Carlson can talk a bit more about DataStream and how much we love in our partnering and thinking about cybersecurity insurance and the wild, wild west that is so much of that world. And simultaneously, I've been able to launch our partner advisory council, right, bring forward our referral program, spend a ton of time with partners, and just as importantly, end users, so that we can really understand what's working, what's not.

And to all the credit goes to Carlson and the team for really thinking through this business continuity piece around financial coverage within the warranty, while simultaneously having this robust platform that is just dropping active insights on our partners through all of the APIs that they've created. And that's where we need more resources, not less.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So Dan, since you're chatting there about some of this stuff, before we get into the deep water, I want to ask you, and Carlson, please take this no reflection on, you know, where Cork is now. But Dan, you have a history at Amazon with AWS, you have a history with Dell.

What was it that attracted you to do this with Cork?

[Dan Candee]
Yeah, you bet. When I completed my sophomore year of college, I made the wildly popular decision within my family to drop out of college and to start a house painting business. I had been traveling in and lived in Japan for about five months.

My sophomore year, I'd been in India, living with a homestay family and studying for six months, and a lot of other travels in there. And I got to the point where, how could I possibly sit in the classroom right now when I want to be learning more about the world? And so that's when I started my first business, painting houses.

And, you know, eventually grew that up, did some other things with it, and eventually went and did some, you know, finished out education and did some grad school out on the West Coast and undergrad on the East Coast. But got to start living, breathing small business management. And I have built and scaled, I think, from architecture firms and law firms, and then eventually really got deep into tech companies and went on an incredible journey with a company called Connect First and a few others where we got to bootstrap and build and live in the channel and live in the world of solving problems for people.

From there, I have a sweet spot for following great people and learning from mentors. And I ended up going to EMC right when Dell was picking us up. And because I had the software experience, I got to help build the VMware business for Dell and did that for a few years, took it to just under a billion dollars, was always a little frustrated that I was 36 million short before being recruited over to Dell.

And then I got to AWS, and I had the amazing privilege of working under Andy Jassy and others, Mac Arman, in building the VMware cloud on AWS business. And from the early days through the pandemic and into a really substantial global business and learned a lot of lessons in the way. But what I was missing was the house painting company, right?

Getting the next house, finding the next family, understanding how I could help. And so I was eager to be back in early stage companies focused on SMB, working with IT service providers. And at the end of the day, I come from a family of police officers and nurses and sheriff and librarians.

And I love to be of service to the community. And I want to figure out how to be the champion of Main Street and do it in a secure and performant way. And so I had the privilege of working at Total for a year as CRO and CBO, and they've got an incredible platform.

They're doing some big things when this Cork opportunity was presented. And when I think of what's happening in this industry, this space, and how there's no other company in the world doing what Cork is doing, so focused on MSP success and what's happening in small business, that it was a really unique chance to do the things I wanted to do in my personal profession, you know, while simultaneously helping solve for some important problems.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Very nice. Very nice.

So, Carlson, before I get Dan talking about some more stuff, you mentioned earlier about Cork's rapid growth. And from what I've seen, it has been astronomical in a sense. So before we talk about what Dan is going to help with, what do you think some of that growth has been attributed to?

[Carlson Choi]
I'll say this, right? It's funny we get to talk about the one thing that we did right toward the end of the year of the journey. I always want to talk about the nine things that we had to adjust along the way to get to this big pop, right?

Because one of the things that, you know, the team have found at the beginning was when we came up with the concept, being able to help to provide some level of security, say, well, instead of doing the traditional way of underwriting, how do we let and leverage on the MSP's, you know, hard work of the security stack? We started with that basic concept, but, you know, it took us probably a good first half of the cycle to really hear back from the feedback from our MSP community. You know, it goes from how we price them to the way, you know, I sell by endpoint, but we sell by per tenant.

It makes it kind of like crazy for us, right? I think it, you know, we didn't get to that pop until we took a lot of those feedback and put it into play. So part of what we really adopt now going forward is making sure we continue securing it.

This is exactly why Dan is, you know, talking about this entire partner advisory board, really guiding us as principal. But what really made us successful, I think, as a team is really heeding that feedback and applying to our bottom. And what made that, you know, doubling month after month probably has all to do a couple of things.

One in our mind is I think we heard and implemented what the MSP community said. We sell by endpoint by per user. I know we can do math, but keep it simple, man.

Just help us. And we did that. And the moment we did that was like pop, right?

I think that was one of the first aha moment, even though mathematically, financially, it makes a lot of sense for Cork. But by really just matching our go to market motion with what MSPs like yourself are selling today, it helps a lot right off the bat. That's number one.

Number two, we really, we established a partner success organization at the early days, you know, later stage. And then, you know, Dan's really going to elaborate up on their job. And Gal, you might have met Zoe, her job is to make sure the partner is successful.

What I mean by that is, are you paying on time? Are you not paying? No, she's going to work with every MSP to make sure that you have the right synchronous go to market plan that fits you and your client to make sure that they can deploy Cork in conjunction with your offering.

Even sometimes it means Cork might not go in until six months later. Why? Because we absolutely believe it's what's needed to help you as MSP successful, being in the partner success aspect.

Third piece of the equation, probably most important, we're continuously taking those feedback in. By knowing those two piece, we're now adding new product offering that really going to fit your needs. Like, for example, I think Dan kind of mentioned this earlier about the DataStream partnership.

We've heard from an MSP partner says, wow, this is pretty awesome. You can underwrite cyber warranty. Now I get more of my services and my security stack to my client and fill in the gap.

But what if you can help us to underwrite cyber insurance policy and bring better pricing to our client? So we went out and found a partner, talking to multiple cyber insurance carrier broker that serve the MSP community. DataStream came out to be a great partner.

We end up establishing our first partnership. In fact, it went live early July. Now MSP in the portal, not only can you activate cyber warranty for your client around your managed service agreement, but now there's a button that you can click and say, get me cyber insurance policy.

And that policy actually acknowledge the fact that you have a secure security stack that's been validated by the core platform and continuous monitoring. Not only the fact that you also have the cyber warranty, your client has it and give you additional discount. So we now have MSP that are getting cyber insurance policies through the core platform for the client, anywhere between 20 to 50% less in annual premium for the same product.

I'm going to say it's got 20 to 50% less in annual premium. Why? Because these carrier acknowledge the fact that the core continuous monitoring platform is serving as a security blanket, holding together your security stack as an MSP and helping you to identify where the issues are and fix it before it becomes a problem.

And then if your client has a cyber warranty, apply to it, guess what happened? They're going to use that as a gap coverage in case of incidents. So therefore it really helped lower that premium.

So you look at those three elements, right? It's more the how and what we did to activate the rapid growth. But the one thing that we did right was to listen what the community has to tell us.

[Uncle Marv]
So I can go back and tell you that all of that, to put it in a short, succinct manner, explaining it to us so that we understand as MSPs is probably what I would consider the number one thing. The fact that you were able to change that pricing model and make it easy for us was great. And then the partnership with DataStream, being able to give us that partnership where we also, let me go back because I think I saw an email back in August.

Let me make sure I don't speak out of turn here. But it was a partnership package that we could get access to the discounted cyber insurance quotes for DataStream as well as warranty for our own MSP. Is that correct?

Yep. You've got it. Okay.

That was nice.

[Carlson Choi]
You didn't even explain our products. Yeah, we made it that simple. All of us explained it.

I mean, honestly, to your point, right, is that I think it's interesting, right? In the beginning of this journey as an entrepreneur, you have like, I said, I know this product. I want my baby to be this way, right?

And even a lot of the initial input came from MSP. It took us a little bit. The voice of their community is what came through and go, wait a minute.

I'm going to listen to this and activate against it. The moment we did it is where the fire struck. And I think that's probably a good lesson to all of you who are entrepreneurs out there.

Don't hold too tight to your baby because your community that you serve are the ones going to be helping you to grow it, right? And then the moment we did that, the fire struck and then Dan arrived. So the fire struck before Dan arrived.

So he's just taking credit. Before Dan arrived, well, the reality is the fire struck and I go, we need some help here. And this is where I go, Dan, can you come in to just film the fire, right?

To get this thing going.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Because that was a question I was going to ask is how much of Cork 2.0 came before Dan and how much came after Dan?

[Dan Candee]
When you really think about where we add value every day, the foundation of that's built in the roots of what Carlson and the team have built, right? We have an agentless experience that integrates with, what is the total number? It's close to hovering almost 40 different cyber security vendors.

So that we empower the MSP to embrace their stack, right? However, you are managing your clients and whatever tools you think are most effective, we've created these APIs. The team has created these APIs so that he can be there providing the insights, right?

It allows us to really invest in the MSP and then ask questions about what's happening with all of the end users so that we can be right there, arm and arm with the MSPs. To me, that's the value that we're able to bring. That was so much of what Carlson and the team have been able to deliver in early 2024.

And that we're just trying to accelerate that.

[Uncle Marv]
Does that make sense? Okay, it does. But let me ask you this, Dan, since you've been there a couple of months now, gotten your feet a little wet, have you been able to, in a sense, define your vision or redefine Quartz's vision going forward?

[Dan Candee]
Sure. There's a couple of things that are really important. The first is, in my view, and what leadership in our businesses means, really comes down to what are some of those core values.

So for me, my framework for success is love plus performance. Performance we do every day, whether we're thinking about it in sports analogy, delivering results in the business, around the financial needs of the business. That love piece is so critical.

And so when you look at our six core values, one of them that's front and center is listen hard and be the subject matter expert. Because when we're listening, we're able to understand what's actually the problem. And usually within the challenge, right, is part of the solution.

And so a lot of my emphasis is on understanding what IT service providers are trying to solve for, how they can differentiate themselves, and how they can evolve themselves as thought leaders in this space. Because we spend all this time thinking about the various tools. And we also need to be thinking about that financial coverage, that business guarantee associated with it.

And then how we can show up day in day out with all of the clients to actually deliver on it. I think an interesting moment is how we've been able to learn when claims have been filed and how Cork can show up. We've got a success story coming out next week.

Happy to share that with you as soon as it comes live. I'll share a few tidbits. And Carlson, I'd love for you to add some sprinkles on top to it as well.

[Uncle Marv]
I was going to ask about that. Because I think one of the things is we all know adding it to our portfolio or adding it to the stack is great. But the question was going to be, has anybody had to do a claim?

And I don't know if you can spill anything at all, or...

[Dan Candee]
Happy to share the first few details with you first, all right? So when we think about the efficacy of what we've built, we've got the left of boom where we've got all of the insights and the integrations and the bring your own stack mentality. So we can help an MSP have a conversation with a client and say, look, Mary in accounting has not turned on her MFA.

You might want to go do some of those things. On the flip side is the financial backing of the warranty. And that's where the payout matters.

And that's where the mechanisms that we've built to be able to nearly instantly, like within minutes, provide a managed service provider with an electronic credit card so they can start taking action and know that things around incident response and deductibles and on and on, that those things can be covered. We have to be able to perform on that one. And so we have a recent one that's kind of fun where the MSP has a client.

It's a female owned law firm. And she clicked the wrong link. And before she knew it, that SharePoint information had been provided to a threat actor over 10,000 records could have been exposed.

And we were able to collectively to jump on that and to see the way that we were able to provide confidence to the IT service provider so that they could take the actions that they needed to that they could instantly be spending on things that they needed to spend on, say yes to solving some of the problems. Even one of the yeses was at one point, he needed to order pizza in the middle of the night. That was my favorite receipt that I got to sign off on where he's providing the sustenance for the team to be able to get stuff done.

And so we've got a few of these moments where we're there right at that moment when things go sideways. And as the recovery happens and the insurance conversations happen, we're able to provide some tidbits as well.

[Carlson Choi]
All right. Yeah. And I'll add some sprinkle to that, right?

Because what you heard there is actually our vision coming live. Because I think when we first put this thing together, right, I mean, I think you saw some earlier concept when we launched the market, we said, you know, let's face it. When we came out of the gate, we were going hard after our friends in cyber insurance side.

Now later, we became the partner. But one thing that really kept all the MSP up when we talked about it, when you hear the word insurance in general, you kind of go, oh, oh, I got to file a claim. Claim just like it's a bad word, right?

And then when that happens, you're not happy. Your client's not happy. In fact, one of the MSPs who helped us to build all the concepts says, hey, when something goes wrong, I'm obligated to help my client to be successful.

But guess what? Somebody's flipping the bill. It's either me or my client's going to go, I might pay you sometime down the road.

So when we took that away, I said to my team, I go, we got to create some really freaking cool feature that just says the moment the MSP hit the button that's a claim, a credit card just shows up. Like literally that was the concept of virtual credit card in some payout. You don't need to wait for payout because we want you as MSP to be able to go, I'm relieved I can pay my staff to go help my client to save and solve the problem.

And it is kind of like, it's weird because when we first got this claim that came in, I'm like, people go, why are you happy? You got a claim. You didn't like lose money.

I go, no, I'm happy to pay it. This is so cool because it's a feature that works. And you see the MSP partner that was in this call.

He goes, wait, is that it? That's pretty freaking cool, man. I like, I just, he filed claim, three button click, boom, there is the credit card.

And the virtual credit, now it's loaded with some limited amount, but it really helps him to go, all right, now I don't have to worry about the financial part. There's enough to worry about how to help my client to get back up on their feet. That to me was exactly why we built Qualcomm Daymond.

[Dan Candee]
Marvin, how long have you been in this business?

[Uncle Marv]
A long time, probably. Well, I'm not going to say as long as you've been alive because that probably isn't correct. But it's been a while.

So I've had this business, this is year 27 for me.

[Dan Candee]
Amazing, congratulations. And in the 27 years that you've been in the business, I imagine that one of the only ways that you have stayed so successful and brought so much joy, security, and insight to your clients is because you're trying to be thought leader, be thoughtful, leverage your experience to bear on behalf of the benefit of your client. And in a way, you're selling that when you're landing a new client.

And simultaneously, you know you have to deliver on that, right. Am I narrowing in on your sweet spot?

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Dan Candee]
I love the confidence that that requires, while simultaneously the mandatory performance to be there when it matters most. And to me, that's the Cork business model where nobody wants to be constantly attacked. Nobody wants to have to be paying money out on these types of hits.

And so the platform is designed to provide the MSP, the insights to minimize the attack zone. Like our interest, our business interest is tied back to how MSPs can do their job better. And together, we're constantly thinking about what clients, what attorneys or schools or whatever it might be, what their mission is and how we can show up together.

So the better we do with our technology, the less I have to pay out, right? Now, that's the right type of energy going into the right thing. We're there when it's needed, but just as importantly, perhaps more importantly, we're looking around corners together with all of our managed service providers.

[Uncle Marv]
Does that make sense? Yeah, I was going to try to explain it. I see it more as a comfort, almost like a security blanket, because we're in this period right now where we're scaring the heck out of them by saying attacks are happening every day.

You're going to get hit. It's a matter of when, not if. But being able to say, look, if we have this in place, it's going to make it a lot easier to deal with.

We don't have to worry about certain things. We don't have to worry about, if my bank account gets hit and my payroll is gone for the next three months, how am I going to be able to afford to get back on my feet during this time? This is where I think Cork comes right in and says, look, this is all part of taking care of you during this time.

It was weird because trying to explain to them the concept of security blanket as Cork warranty protection as opposed to insurance was kind of confusing to them. They're like, well, it sounds like insurance, but it isn't.

[Dan Candee]
The whole fear piece is an interesting one. And we don't want to be in that business. We want to be there to protect and comfort.

A mentor of mine always said, a bruised leg is better than a busted skull. And in our case, we're here to make sure that if and when you get hit, it's a bruise and not a head wound. And Cork can build, I think that's the foundation of why so many partners are coming to us.

The other interesting thing is, as we've adjusted the business model in the last 60 days, we're really focused on securing the IT service provider first with our Insight 500 package where here's our platform for you. And here is 500K in business guarantee across 15 different elements. And what we find is that within 30, 60 days of people beginning to do this, now they're drinking their own champagne and understanding where the comfort in the IT is helping.

And then it's much easier for MSPs to turn around and actually extend the next level of the Cork warranty and platform to the clients.

[Uncle Marv]
So Dan, I read somewhere that you were planning to spend the next 12 months meeting with partners. Is this all going to be inside of this partner advisory council? Or are you guys going to be adding different methods for MSPs to give feedback?

[Dan Candee]
Yeah, great question. As a business practice, I try to spend eight hours a week on the front lines. So with our partner success team on onboarding calls, on our sales calls, working with our business development representatives, working with marketing at shows, really just focus on listening.

And so we've been interviewing MSPs as we've been doing success stories together to be able to articulate that. So I shared early on one of the six core values for Cork. And that listen hard thing is really important.

How can a business possibly make resourcing decisions on engineering or sales or marketing or HR and on and on without knowing what the biggest needs are of our partners and customers, right? So that's where that listen first and be the subject matter expert comes from. I think the other thing is we want to be human first.

I already used the word love. I don't know how many people come on your show and talk about love, but the foundation of all of this is trust and respect and security and commitment to one another. That also means accountability.

I have accountability to every single person in this business, to all of our partners and their clients. And so when I look across the, however many hundreds of thousands of endpoints we're up to as of this morning, that's a lot of people that the team and I are accountable to. And I think there's great pleasure and nobility in that type of accountability.

[Uncle Marv]
So I'll be honest with you. You've probably mentioned the word love more than it's ever been mentioned on a show before. So I will start with that.

And I'll say you've also mentioned the word accountability probably more than anybody has ever mentioned it because accountability is not what is being preached in the channel right now. We're so busy being focused on margin and price and get to a million dollars and all of that stuff. That's where the focus is.

But you're right. There should be another focus on what is it that we're really doing here, folks?

[Dan Candee]
Yeah, there was a... I'll never forget my first big meeting at Amazon. I was at AWS running the VMC business.

And we have these quarterly business reviews. And at that point, Andy Jassy was the CEO of AWS, not Amazon. So I reported into him and my business partner reported into Pat Gelsinger, who was the CEO.

And we walk in, there's about 30-ish people in the room. It was right before the pandemic. And Amazon style is you write this six-page narrative that has 40-ish or more pages of appendices.

And we sit around the table and we read for 45 minutes. And then the discussion ensues. And in that document, I had talked about the love that our joint customers had for our solution and why love was an important piece of this.

And one of the senior AWS individuals started by saying, huh, this is the first narrative I've ever read where love is front and center. And it's kind of refreshing. And you can tell that it was also very, very awkward for a lot of these engineering types to be reading that type of thing.

So look, there's a place for it. And it makes it more fun for us to build businesses together and for us to deliver on behalf of the clients. Because I think that's the other piece where we are 100% focused on MSP success.

But I always want to know, what are your clients doing? What are your clients asking? How are your clients reacting to cybersecurity insurance requests?

What are the pressures that they're reading about in the news as the Fed and various regulations are forcing some of these things upon parts of the business? And so then those are the questions coming to MSPs. And the better that my team and I understand what some of those questions are, the more agile we can build the right thing at the right time.

So you've got the answer. Hence the data stream value. When some of our partners, I did one recently, we had one of our partners at our offsite a couple of weeks ago.

And the partner showed up and he's talking about how he approaches new business. And he will always ask them, do you have cybersecurity insurance? And less than 50% of the time, the answer is yes.

And when the answer is no, he says, well, I happen to have a double-edged sword for you. Where we can, within an hour, provide you quotes and you can see if this is the right type of thing for your business. Or whenever you decide it is, we can have that quote for you.

And by the way, it's discounted over 30% of what your traditional rates would be. In the meantime, for very little money, we can provide you a business guarantee. I myself leverage the same business guarantee.

And if I know that he's asking that question every day, I have to make sure I have an answer to be part of that solution.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting.

[Dan Candee]
There was another quote that he had shared with us. Carlson, I hope it's okay that I share this. One of his clients looked at him and said, well, this whole cork warranty thing, does it cover stupid if my team or I do something stupid?

And he said, yes, yes, it does. It's at the end of the day, we're all human, right? So you got to be human faced.

We all make mistakes.

[Uncle Marv]
Very nice. Very nice. Carlson, let me ask you this, because we've talked about vision.

We've talked about strategic alliance. We've talked about listing to the MSPs. In your transition, and I believe the official title is what?

Chief Product and Technology Officer?

[Carlson Choi]
It's the co-founder and CPTO. I actually wanted to be like C3PO because I'm a big Star Wars fan, but I think he has a more appropriate one. So big Star Wars fan.

So co-founder and Chief Product Technology Officer. So more than anything else, right? Really be able to make sure that what Dan here back and working with the partner like yourself are getting translated to the product that you get by the time you get it, right?

A lot of time in the early stage company, you don't have the luxury to have a Dan and a Carlson together to deliver the product, right? So you either have Carlson going, oh, I can do this. I run back and put my product hat on, engineering hat on, backing the sales hat.

Now we really have the ability to really listen strategically where this thing's fit and then be able how do we translate that to the actual product role memory requirements. So by the time that product gets delivered to you, it is what you bought, right? I think that's really what's so unique about the stage we're at in place.

So that's the job title.

[Uncle Marv]
So there was a big part of that that went into the Cork 2.0 and it sounds like you're going to have fun now being able to go back and look at some of the things that you can do in terms of the innovation cycle, enhancing the offerings and stuff like that. Was part of the change because you had some things in mind that you're like, man, if I had the time, I would do this and this. Do you have anything already lined up?

[Carlson Choi]
Plenty of something lined up. I think we spend; I think the first month that Dan was here, I couldn't wait until like, okay, Dan, you get all this stuff here right there and then. And then we did a week off site where we really sat down and gone back to what is our core value, right?

Cause you know, the first year you just run and like crazy, right? You know, you started your own business many years ago. The first year you're like, here I'm fine, let's go, right?

Well, having Dan here has really helped us to kind of refocus, okay, what is that? And how do we get this engine more systematically so we can really get this flywheel moving? So a lot of what the ideas in my head would be able to put them into a pretty good, solid roadmap.

And it really is going to start feeding that back again through the partner diversity console feedback from them really coming back into us to continue making it better, right? Today, we already, if you look at the platform alone, we're already covering about 90% of the RMM solutions in the market. That's more than you can ever see.

80% EDR stack out there. Our goal is to really continue to allow the MSP yourself out there to offer their belief of the best security solution stack with their service team to their client. I will tell you that to this point, I have not seen two solutions stacked out of the identically same between two MSP.

It just doesn't exist. So therefore, we are there to provide a variety to support that. So to support that, somebody got to keep watching that and make sure we have the maximum compatibility and that will trust the maximum security and notification so that we help you to have the alarm and notification before things does happen, right?

That's really where the roadmap begins to see. You can see a lot more, in fact, this morning, what's going through with our engineering team this morning. There'll be some new great features that's coming out.

In fact, I think it's already, if it's not live already, it should be. It's BEC reporting, compliance report. MSP tell me, give me an overview, a nice report.

I can push a button. Tell me where all the compliance issues that can lead to a business email compromise attack. That is already, if it's not in the portal by now, it will be end of day thing, right?

That's going to get out there. By the time the listener hear it, it will be live there. Why do we have that?

Because MSP tell me, give me a one sheet that I can go where to get this thing fixed and I can give it to my client. Look what I have done for you. So now we make you the superhero in that equation.

All that is because it wasn't this transition. You wouldn't see that thing accelerate for another six months. It's just because there's so many work to be done.

So we're blessed to have this, I would say, improvement. The organization and really the growth of our organization.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, I hope that it's out there because it came up as part of my research that that business email compromised compliance reporting was there. The import price, the endpoint pricing, the enhanced smart cyber warranty solutions.

And we've talked about the partnership with DataStream. So yeah, all out there. Great.

All right, gentlemen. Well, I know I asked you a lot of questions. I took you off base a couple of times.

Is there anything else you would like for MSPs and solution providers to know that Cork is out there? Big changes, big news is coming. Is there anything like that we did not cover?

[Dan Candee]
I think we covered quite a few elements. And if we can ever be of service to you or this community, know that we will show up as fast and as hard as we can so that we can help out. I really appreciate your leadership, Marvin, and the questions you're asking and the types of people that you're interviewing and the way that you're focused on being a truth-seeking heat missile about what matters and where there's value and skipping some of the rest.

So appreciate the time, sir.

[Uncle Marv]
Thank you for that. One last question I'll ask you is Nick Wolfe still going to be your man out in the field attending conferences and stuff? Or is this new person that got a new role going to be the person out in the field?

[Dan Candee]
We've got a pretty robust team with Nick and many others that are out and about. I think some of our team is in Charlotte, North Carolina right now to show. Rebecca's promotion, we've got some incredible women in our business and Rebecca is one of them.

So she's driving a lot of the field marketing and her expanded role is to be front and center in a lot of those engagements. All right. Sounds great.

I don't think you can hold Nick back, right? Isn't that...

[Uncle Marv]
I wasn't going to say that because if I put a microphone near Nick, he'll talk. So that's how that is.

[Carlson Choi]
By the way, just on record, I did not say that. It was Marvin that said that. That was a Marvin Boyce about you, Nick.

We all love you, Nick. I didn't say I didn't love him. Wasn't it?

I'll say this for sure. Like to Dan's point, one of the things that for us, we love the community so much. We encourage everyone of our members to get in the field.

In fact, we bring our engineer to share with us because we're a small team at the end. But when an engineer sits on the show floor, hear what the MSP has to say about you and then, wow, that was a great feature. You added what was like, I can make it better.

They get right back to the desk and go; I love what I'm doing. Every line of code matters. So you will see us in the field.

I'll be out there. Dan will be out there. You can find us anywhere.

I mean, it's pretty straightforward. You know, we are going to be out there.

[Uncle Marv]
And yes, the both of you in the field. All right. We'll look forward to seeing you guys out on the road.

I've got a few more conferences, so if I see you, I'll say hello. Otherwise, I'll call you guys if I see anything big out there to get you back on the show. All right.

[Dan Candee]
Thank you, Mark.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Dan Candee]
Good luck staying dry.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm going to try. You guys pray for rain. Do a rain dance.

Who was that? What was the movie? It was.

Oh, it was with Sandra Bullock and Ryan. What's the Ryan Reynolds and the lady from the Golden Girls, Betty, Betty White. She did the rain dance.

Do you know the movie I'm talking about?

[Carlson Choi]
Ryan Reynolds to me is just Deadpool right now. Far from him and Sandra Bullock in the same movie, right? Speed and Deadpool in one movie.

[Dan Candee]
I thought you were going to go singing in the rain, which my nine year old daughter can dance her tootsies off onto that one.

[Uncle Marv]
No, it was the I found it here. I could Google search. The proposal was the movie.

OK, with Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock and Betty White was out in the woods doing this little rain dance thing. So that was a poor way to end the show. But that's what happens, folks.

So Dan Carlson, thank you guys very much for hopping on the show. And thank you for pushing forward the message of Cork and look forward to doing business with you guys soon. OK.

All right, folks, that's going to do it. We'll be back with more shows of the IT Business Podcast. If you haven't subscribed to this show, you should do that now.

Head over to ITbusinesspodcast.com. Hit follow. Click your pod catcher and you'll be alerted whenever these episodes come out.

And of course, look for my friends out on the road, Dan and Carlson from Cork. That's it, folks. We'll see you next time.

And until then, holla.