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Jumpstart Episode 7: Drew Fassett
- Drew Passett is Vice President & General Manager at Peak 10
- Peak 10 – managed services and data center company.
- customers are tired of physical assets and servers and are excited about the cloud.
- cloud business up from 10% last year to 30 – 40 % of their business this year.
- worked for IBM for 12 years.
- Drew got an itch late in his career to break out and do something of his own.
- a mid-life entrepreneurial crisis brought on by seeing some peers doing it themselves.
- Peak 10 staff trade links internally across multiple social networking sites, news and blogs.
- he recommends you take the business seriously, but not yourselves.
- flat organizations are the best kind for setting a climate and culture.
Drew’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know
- Establish a culture and a climate.
- Surround yourself with passionate people.
- Make sure potential investors have the same vision that you do.
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Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.
TRANSCRIPT
Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart! I’m your host, Dave Delaney. My guest today is Drew Fasset, VP and General Manager at Peak 10. Hey Drew! How are you?
Drew: Good morning Dave. How are you?
Dave: I’m great man. Thank you for joining me.
Drew: Absolutely! My pleasure!
Dave: So tell me about Peak 10. What is it that you guys do?
Drew: We are a managed services and data center company, so we provide physical facilities for a lot of midmarket and SNB companies, all the way from co-location to fully-managed to cloud offerings and virtualization as well.
Dave: Yeah. That could be… The cloud stuff is huge these days that generally a lot of people are asking for those specific services around cloud stuff.
Drew: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s what used to be physical assets and stuff customers are just tired of it and want to leverage the ability to, you know, have a flexible and dynamic environment that adjusts with their business and, you know. It doesn’t have to be in their office or in their backyard. It could be anywhere. And what used to be, maybe 10% of our business is now 30 and 40%. So it’s growing dynamically.
Dave: Yeah. No doubt. I know it’s amazing that people actually, you know on the street that I talk to now, actually know what cloud computing even is.
Drew: It’s such a nebulous term, right? They’re looking up in the sky but now people are starting to get it. So it’s pretty cool.
Dave: Yeah it is… it is. And what point in your career did your, the … I’ll go back a little bit here… did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?
Drew: You know, I’m probably … There have been a lot of my peers at Jumpstart Foundry and you know, in the industry that have been serial entrepreneurs. And you know, I worked for IBM for 12 years. That is big in bureaucratic as it probably gets.
Dave: Right.
Drew: And just got an itch late in my career that I was kind of, you know, over the status quo and the big machine and… It’s a phenomenal company but I just really want to break out and do something differently and go on and run a piece of business. And about 3 years ago when that kind of hit me and left and moved all the way from Charlotte to Nashville and joined Peak 10, and I’ve been excited being a part of something a lot smaller. We’ve only got 250 employees versus the 400,000 that I’ve worked for before.
Dave: Wow…
Drew: So it’s truly cool and I’m probably just a little different than it was kind of a mid life entrepreneurial crisis if you will.
Dave: Yeah. (Laugh)
Drew: So…
Dave: Did somebody specifically inspire you or, to do that or …
Drew: You know we had a couple… I had a couple of peers in my previous capacity that left.
Dave: Right.
Drew: Every time I talked to him, to be honest with you I was somewhat jealous.
Dave: Yeah…
Drew: About the freedom and the fun they were having. I mean they’re working their tails off but they are really enjoying and seem very passionate about what was going on. So it’s just, anybody that decided to jump off that cliff and go take that challenge, you know, really got me excited.
Dave: Uh-huh. No doubt, no doubt… Are there blogs or websites that you subscribe to regularly or…
Drew: There’s so much stuff going on around. It’s almost like you can’t rely on one. You can’t, you know, tech crunch this or go do that. It’s…
Dave: Yeah.
Drew: What I really like is, you know… like a lot of guys at Jumpstart, we trade a lot of stuff.
Dave: Uh-huh….
Drew: So, you know, we pass a lot of links to each other and everybody’s got their own car… a little vehicle for information… Whenever we find a real gem (Inaudible – 03:21) read it daily, we pass it around each other. So it’s more about the social sharing of what everybody else is reading and seeing and any gems that they find versus just that one in the one line or one blog for me.
Dave: That’s really smart. That’s a good idea. Gee, you guys do that through email or do you subscribe or share a Google Reader like open a mail file or …
Drew: A lot of it is sharing. A lot of us do Google.
Dave: Yeah.
Drew: They can be on Twitter, LinkedIn. We’re just kind of pass it everywhere we go.
Dave: That’s great. That’s a good way to do it because that way, you know you’re kind of curating things that are specific to your organization. So that makes a lot of sense that way.
Drew: Absolutely!
Dave: You know, there’s a lot of people out there who are getting started. Obviously they always will be, as far as… Let’s hope anyway. What 3 tips would you offer any entrepreneurs starting out today?
Drew: A couple of things. You know one is to try and establish a culture and a climate. And those are kind of interesting words.
Dave: Uh-huh…
Drew: But you know a set of culture and a tone that really identify what you stand for and what your company stands for.
Dave: Uh-huh
Drew: And try not to deviate from that. So I’m a big culture and climate guy.
Dave: That’s great.
Drew: Second, surround yourself with passionate people… It’s pretty easy to go out and find a bunch of brilliant people who are really smart people, smarter than me probably.
Dave: Uh-huh.
Drew: I like the passionate people that really care about the business that have a different agenda versus you know, bigger picture so they can enjoy coming to work. They get off on it. They get excited about it. So passion is key.
Dave: And that really fits into your number one as well. I mean setting that culture and tone, having a good climate, a good place to work, you know, a fun place to be, certainly, certainly helps drive that passion.
Drew: Absolutely. They go hand in hand. You spot on it, Dave. And then third … And this is really integral, I think. Try and make sure that any potential investors that you have…
Dave: Uh-huh.
Drew: – have the same vision that you do because they’re going to control the first strings and a good portion of your business. And if they want to steer in a different direction away from what your original intent was and what your vision was, it gets kind of cluegy. So really partnering with key investors that have the same type of vision that you do…
Dave: Right…
Drew: I think is very beneficial.
Dave: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That way, you’re not disappointing anybody and everybody’s on the same page.
Drew: It just makes life easy when you’re both headed at the same direction.
Dave: Getting back to rule number 1, what do you guys do at Peak 10 that embrace the culture and tone at your offices? Do you guys do something unique or different or…
Drew: No. We’re just… We’re very flat, right?
Dave: Yeah.
Drew: So we’re decentralized organization. There’s no real hierarchy.
Dave: Uh-huh
Drew: Now obviously, when things get tough… I’ve got to make the calls. But you know I’ll do anything from taking out the trash to pulling internet cables to cleaning the (Inaudible – 06:10) the business. So it’s… You know, we got a small team of 23 people here in Nashville and we all would do anything that anybody else would do in a company, trying… You know our philosophy is, you know, take our business seriously but not ourselves.
Dave: Yeah.
Drew: So we have a really good time at work. Work really hard but enjoy doing what we’re doing. We enjoy our customers, you know, it’s a customer focus, and just you know…. I think the flat organizations are the best kind of fit for setting a culture and a climate of, you know, we’re all here together in this thing.
Dave: Absolutely. Well, listen. I don’t want to keep you. I want to thank you so much for your time. How would people contact you?
Drew: You know any of the social media sites whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter… You can go and stop by Peak 10. I’m always there.
Dave: It sounds good. Well listen, I really do want to thank you for your time today. So, thank you.
Drew: Okay Dave. Thanks a lot.
Dave: Okay. Well, talk to you again soon.
Extro: (Music) For show notes, links discussed in today’s podcast, and much more, visit jumpstartpodcast.com. Thanks for listening (Music)
Posted on May 1, 2011
Categories: Blog, Podcast
Tags: Drew Fassett, IBM, Jumpstart podcast, Peak 10