Ability to Execute: Why I Joined Nasuni

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Steve Martin

“We know a thing or two, because we’ve seen a thing or two.” — Annoying insurance commercial
 

It’s impossible for insurance company taglines not to be imprinted in your brain, because they spend an obnoxious percentage of their revenue on consumer advertising. And while the Farmers Insurance company doesn’t inspire me, this catchphrase does resonate with me. I’ve been fortunate in my career to have worked with some incredible people at generational, category-defining companies. I’ve had some successes and I’ve encountered challenges. My career has charted a course that has put me at the stage where “I know a thing or two, because I’ve seen thing or two.” I most recently joined Nasuni as Chief Revenue Officer, and I wanted to share some perspective as to why I’m thrilled to join this team on their incredible journey to elevate and enhance cloud file services for enterprises around the world.
 

The Company & The Market

If you are going to be in sales or are trying to go-to-market, it’s a really good idea to represent the best solution. And, if you want to build a significant company, the solution should be in a large market in transition. Nasuni checks both of those boxes. In our economy, an organization’s data and its ability to analyze, share, protect, and utilize it forms the basis of its competitive position. That fact has been embraced and has led to a well-documented exponential growth of volume. As capacity needs grew exponentially, deep innovation emerged in multiple technology disciplines that combined to become a cloud operating model. The cloud operating model provides incredible efficiency and automation in data management, solving many of the issues created by the volume growth.

However, organizations that want to leverage cloud efficiencies are made up of people that use existing applications and workflows. Nasuni’s cloud-native file data platform enables organizations to leverage cloud efficiencies while using their existing workflows and processes. Nasuni Ransomware Protection leverages our native architecture to provide limitless immutable data copies, and Nasuni Access Anywhere provides seamless integration for a fully distributed workforce.

The innovation Nasuni has brought to the market has been embraced by almost 1,000 global customers — which has allowed us to build a company with over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). As Bessemer’s Kent Bennet has opined: “SaaS is the greatest business model in the history of the planet” and “the new benchmark for SaaS relevance we call a Centaur; a company that has reached the $100 million ARR milestone.” While the market has recognized Nasuni’s core innovation, we’ve built this business while delighting our customers as evidenced by our incredible Net Promoter Score (NPS) score of 88! That is a level which rivals the greatest of brands worldwide. Full stop.
 

Ability to Execute: Leadership/Discipline/Grit/Leverage.

In the early, formative part of my career at Cisco, I learned what inspirational leadership looks like and the incredible compounding effect of inspiration on performance. I saw the market strength of a well-oiled go-to-market execution team and was proud to work at the industry-defining company through the hyper-growth years. At Alliance Bernstein, I learned the discipline required to stay committed to being the best at what you do and to not dilute your core differentiation. Through two startup stops at Skyport Systems and LookingGlass Cyber, I learned what grit looks like firsthand and the type of effort required to go from zero to one. And finally, at Pure Storage I learned how culture is a competitive differentiation, and how partnerships create leverage that is exponential.

When I considered joining Nasuni, I saw all these attributes inherent in the team. This is a group that is fully aligned around the vision — from the founder, the board, the CEO, the president, and executive leadership team through every function and role on the team. A common vision is needed, but as Steve Case once said, “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute is probably a hallucination.” Nasuni has built a highly transparent culture that is focused on continued innovation and accountability to flat-out over deliver the best cloud file services to our customers. The entire team has already proven that we can execute. Now, it’s time to scale.

Thank you to my many friends, customers, partners, and teammates who have been part of my journey. Please reach out if you are interested in learning more or just re-connecting. I will keep you posted on our progress. Until then, onwards!