LabTech Software CEO: Our Team Is Built for Growth

MSPmentor stirred up some debate back in February when I suggested a market share war was brewing between LabTech Software and Kaseya in the remote monitoring and management market. MSPmentor stands by that original report. But I’m always open to additional perspectives. Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie has since weighed in with some views. Meanwhile, LabTech Software CEO Matt Nachtrab has shared some deeper background about LabTech’s growth. Here’s the update.

As MSPmentor has reported, LabTech was a relatively unknown software company until a ConnectWise Capital investment arrived in early 2010. By the time January 2011 arrived, LabTech had recruited 1,000 new MSPs to its customer base. “The money helped and ConnectWise has been supportive, but the software, my team, and our partners are the reason we have become who we are,” said Nachtrab in an early February email to MSPmentor.

LabTech has hired and brought up to speed 65 new employees in one year, he added. Key people helping to build LabTech include:

• John Walker, who has built a support, training, consulting, and implementation team in one year that has on boarded 1200 partners and is handling 2000 tickets a month.
• Adam Slutskin, who has built a professional sales team of 21.
• Drew McCallum, who has brought a dozen integration partners on board.
• John Timko, who is leading marketing efforts.
• Erinn Davis, who is leading the development of the LabTech community and running the trade show circuit. The company is attending or hosting roughly 50 events this year.
• Brett Cheloff and Greg Buerk are driving the development team forward.

Like many software CEOs, Nachtrab talks about the power, flexibility and scalability of his own product. To drive home his point, Nachtrab offers an example deployment that “ran 1,000 agents for months” on a Pentium III with 512MB of RAM.

Making the Most of An Opportunity

Nachtrab says more than 700 MSPs have shifted from rival software to LabTech in the past year, and many of the wins involve 2,500; 5,000 and 10,000 agent deployments.

My thoughts:

• On the one hand, I truly believe most of those MSP converts initially discovered LabTech because of its association with ConnectWise Capital.
• But on the other hand: We’ve all seen upstart companies that receive funding, only to squander the money and the market opportunity. So LabTech certainly deserves credit for attracting and keeping a growing base of MSPs. Most MSPs thoroughly test LabTech’s software before making a migration decision. If they didn’t see value in the tool, the would have stuck with what they had.

Concludes Nachtrab: “It is not a war with Kaseya; its not a war against any one. It is about the product and the support. That is what we focus on.  We compete with everyone equally and fairly to get as many people using our software as possible.”

Of course, I need to point out that many MSPs use multiple RMM tools in combination. And generally speaking, most of the RMM software providers continue to see their installed bases grow — especially amid signs of an economic recovery. We will strive to bring you those additional perspectives in the days ahead.

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