SaaS Alerts’ Jim Lippie: MSPs Have ‘Been Waiting for Something Like This’

Jim Lippie is no stranger to channel partners — managed service providers, in particular. His presence among MSPs (and as an MSP himself) spans almost two decades, with names including Thrive Networks, IndependenceIT, Clarity Channel Advisors and Kaseya.

Last month, startup SaaS Alerts announced it had hired Lippie as its CEO. SaaS Alerts developed a unified platform that lets MSPs monitor for security threats in a SaaS environment — not just customers’, but also their own. That means spotting – and fixing – breaches within Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Dropbox, G Suite and other apps.

For Lippie, this ability to go beyond devices and users, and into the apps themselves, is a breakthrough. It represents the biggest puzzle piece that has been missing in the fight against hacks and data theft.

“It’s really amazing how many MSPs and other software ecosystem partners are telling us that we’re absolutely headed on the right track, that this is a problem they’ve seen it for a while, and they can’t believe no one’s done it so far,” he says.

What’s further caught Lippie off guard is the response from other vendors.

“I came in thinking that our only go-to-market was MSPs,” he says. “Now, we’re completely channel and we’re not changing. But what has surprised us is the number of other software companies that have approached us and said, ‘We think what you’re doing is a complement to what we’re doing. How would you feel about embedding your software into our platform?’”

SaaS Alerts intends to do just that — and MSPs need not fear.

SaaS Alerts’ Jim Lippie

“This doesn’t impact the channel,” Lippie says. “It just allows our MSP community to buy SaaS Alerts from more places.”

Channel Futures sat down with Lippie to learn more about his plans for SaaS Alerts and issues he wants to help partners address. This Q&A is edited for clarity.

Channel Futures: What is your five-year plan for SaaS Alerts?

Jim Lippie: We haven’t gone out five years — we’ve gone out three because things change so fast. Our goal is to create the most MSP-friendly software company in the ecosystem. And by doing that we feel great things will happen for us.

CF: What do you mean by MSP-friendly?

JL: It means we do month-long trials. Try it out, put customers on it, as many customers as you want, and capture revenue from the free month. It’s free internal use. One of the founding principles of SaaS Alerts is MSPs/MSSPs need to protect own house first if they’re going to protect their customers. As long as on you’re on a minimum monthly plan … you can use SaaS Alerts. Also, we do monthly agreements, not 36-month terms just because you saw a demo. We want to prove every single day our value to our MSP community.

Another example is we are MSP-only. When someone comes to our website and wants to sign up with us … you have to prove that you’re an MSP. … [If not,] we refer them out to one of our existing partners.

These are all principles that we hold dear, and we think collectively if by doing that and more, by acting in the best interest of the MSP community, that we will hopefully become thought of as the most friendly MSP software company.

CF: What are your more immediate plans for SaaS Alerts overall as you take the helm? Any changes readers should know?

JL: I’m not looking to change anything outside of …