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Carlson Choi WINs with a focus on partnerships instead of transactions

May 31, 2024 Carrie Richardson
Carlson Choi WINs with a focus on partnerships instead of transactions
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Carlson Choi WINs with a focus on partnerships instead of transactions
May 31, 2024
Carrie Richardson

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In this episode of WIN, host Carrie Richardson sits down with Carson Choi, CEO of Cork, to discuss his dynamic career path from enterprise leadership to founding Cork, a company that revolutionizes cyber insurance with a unique cyber warranty product. Carson shares his insights on the MSP space, the challenges of cyber risk management, and how Cork is providing MSPs with new opportunities for revenue and enhanced client protection.

Episode Highlights:

  • Carson Choi's diverse career journey from video games and toys to the restaurant industry and MSP space.
  • The inspiration behind Cork and the problems it aims to solve in the cyber insurance market.
  • How Cork’s cyber warranty offers both preventive measures and financial recovery for MSPs and their clients.
  • The unique features of Cork's platform, including real-time alerts and integration with existing security stacks.
  • Success stories and strategies for MSPs to upsell and integrate cyber warranty into their service offerings.
  • Carson’s vision for Cork’s growth and the importance of treating MSPs as partners rather than customers.

Guest Quotes:

  • "My life has always been about looking at things differently and driving transformational approaches."
  • "We created Cork to solve a unique problem specifically for the channel business."
  • "The cyber warranty is like a bridge finance between the incident and remediation."

Guest Information: Carson Choi is the CEO of Cork, a company that provides innovative cyber warranty solutions for MSPs. With a diverse background in enterprise leadership, video games, toys, and the restaurant industry, Carson brings a unique perspective to the MSP space. He previously served as the Chief Digital Officer for Jollibee Foods and Datto.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

#CyberInsurance #MSP #CyberWarranty #DigitalTransformation #CyberSecurity #RevenueGrowth #SmallBusinessIT #CyberPrevention #CyberRecovery #Entrepreneurship


Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Show Notes Transcript

Send us a Text Message.

In this episode of WIN, host Carrie Richardson sits down with Carson Choi, CEO of Cork, to discuss his dynamic career path from enterprise leadership to founding Cork, a company that revolutionizes cyber insurance with a unique cyber warranty product. Carson shares his insights on the MSP space, the challenges of cyber risk management, and how Cork is providing MSPs with new opportunities for revenue and enhanced client protection.

Episode Highlights:

  • Carson Choi's diverse career journey from video games and toys to the restaurant industry and MSP space.
  • The inspiration behind Cork and the problems it aims to solve in the cyber insurance market.
  • How Cork’s cyber warranty offers both preventive measures and financial recovery for MSPs and their clients.
  • The unique features of Cork's platform, including real-time alerts and integration with existing security stacks.
  • Success stories and strategies for MSPs to upsell and integrate cyber warranty into their service offerings.
  • Carson’s vision for Cork’s growth and the importance of treating MSPs as partners rather than customers.

Guest Quotes:

  • "My life has always been about looking at things differently and driving transformational approaches."
  • "We created Cork to solve a unique problem specifically for the channel business."
  • "The cyber warranty is like a bridge finance between the incident and remediation."

Guest Information: Carson Choi is the CEO of Cork, a company that provides innovative cyber warranty solutions for MSPs. With a diverse background in enterprise leadership, video games, toys, and the restaurant industry, Carson brings a unique perspective to the MSP space. He previously served as the Chief Digital Officer for Jollibee Foods and Datto.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

#CyberInsurance #MSP #CyberWarranty #DigitalTransformation #CyberSecurity #RevenueGrowth #SmallBusinessIT #CyberPrevention #CyberRecovery #Entrepreneurship


Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

[00:00:00] Carrie Richardson: Thank you for joining me today on win. My name is Carrie Richardson. And with me today is Carlson Choi, who is the CEO of Cork, Carlson. Thanks for joining us today. 

[00:00:10] Carson Choi: Thank you for inviting me.

[00:00:11] Carson Choi: It's exciting to spend some time with you and your listener here. 

[00:00:15] Carrie Richardson: So we talked a little bit before we got started today about your career path. You started in enterprise . Tell us about the journey from, enterprise C space leadership into entrepreneurship. 

[00:00:27] Carson Choi: It's quite interesting, 

[00:00:28] Carson Choi: if you take a look at, most people who've gotten to know me, or if you like your point, look into my profile, you'll find what is this enterprise guy doing in the MSP space? From a career journey perspective, I probably have a pretty interesting him. Fun life. And I was put it, I've been into video game space.

[00:00:43] Carson Choi: I got to make video game was really fun. I got into toys, got into a restaurant space. And then prior to this was, I got an MSP space and you're like how do you make that transition from enterprise to MSP space? It's actually pretty interesting. My life has always been [00:01:00] about how do you do look at things differently and driving transformational approach.

[00:01:04] Carson Choi: Walking the company early days video game. How do we move from disc to online play? Let that transformation building internal team drive that piece in place in the toy. Same exact thing. How do we went from physical toy played the digital toy playing video game restaurant transform online order from a restaurant ordering the online ordering and then when I went to that it was really taking a look at the transformation of how do we consolidate all the technology into one single pane of glass make it easy for MSP to use but what's really interesting what's got me into the MSP interest was when I was in the restaurant space.

[00:01:38] Carson Choi: That's 10 years ago I was actually a chief digital officer for a global organization called Jollibee foods. They own 30, what's 18 brand 6, 500 restaurant globally across 35 countries operating nonstop, and we touch probably about, I have about what, 2000 employee globally for it. [00:02:00] And we got to support these restaurants 24 seven.

[00:02:02] Carson Choi: And what's interesting doing that four year journey, I got a chance to work for MSP. As a client of the MSP. So we actually employed local MSP at different country, have them wear our jacket, train them for the protocol. We have to support our franchisee at the restaurant and the restaurant brand that you might've heard of smash burger, coffee, bean and tea, leave planet Hollywood.

[00:02:23] Carson Choi: Those are some of the brand that I own, and manage. So at that point, I was like, this is a really interesting ecosystem MSP. Then I got tapped for the chief digital officer role of Datto. I said, yeah, let's do it. Now I got to go to the MSP side and really experience what is true MSP, because I will always tell these people this story when you're in enterprise space, when people said MSP, they think of IBM.

[00:02:45] Carson Choi: They're not MSP they're large enterprise outsource support, they're not really, in my mind, I think MSP ecosystem is so unique globally that the MSP is the IT and the technology trusted partner for small meeting [00:03:00] business. So that transition to data really enabled me to, set me up nicely for this stage into finding Cork about what two years ago. 

[00:03:09] Carrie Richardson: So where did the inspiration for Cork came from? What was the problem you were trying to solve? 

[00:03:14] Carson Choi: Yeah so it's interesting if you look at a little bit about, people go where did Cork come from?

[00:03:18] Carson Choi: What problem are you trying to solve for? It's pretty simple. I think, it really came from a conversation with Austin McChord, founder of Datto. After the, the sales of Datto, austin kind of sat in the room with one of the, our other major investor, John McNeil who was a former president CEO of Tesla, but prior to that, he was in the insurer tech space.

[00:03:37] Carson Choi: The problem we're really trying to solve for is number one, as simple as that is today, when people are underwriting a insurance policy, a cyber insurance, why are we underwriting a digital Dynamic environment with a single piece of paper, a questionnaire that you do every single once a year. That makes no sense, 

[00:03:57] Carson Choi: imagine the environment is changing [00:04:00] continuously fraction of a second. And now with AI involved, the bad actors using that to, decrease the speed of the attack, driving the speed of attack, and that's changing even faster. But the underwriting of that risk is a long questionnaire form that you have to fill out, 

[00:04:17] Carson Choi: that's the core of that. Issue that we started talking about. And then as we talk more about it, these subsequent things that we're trying to solve for is how do you now potentially prevent the attack from happening before, instead of waiting until it's breached and you pay for it?

[00:04:31] Carson Choi: What do you believe we can prevent the problem happening? The most importantly, the one fundamental piece that, Austin yeah. Implanting my head with this has to be a channel only business, which make it unique. Because as you probably know, cyber insurance policy can only be sold by broker agent.

[00:04:48] Carson Choi: So we had to design a product in such a way that the MSP can resell and create net new MRR. So we came in to create a. Solve a unique problem that is placed specifically for the [00:05:00] channel business. So by design, we are, of course, a channel business and we create what we call a cyber warranty for MSP to resell to the end client to make a new MRR.

[00:05:09] Carson Choi: That's really how we founded the company two years ago. 

[00:05:13] Carrie Richardson: So for the people listening today who aren't MSPs tell us about Cyber Warranty. What does it do that insurance doesn't? 

[00:05:21] Carson Choi: Yeah, so think of it this way. I think this is, we actually spent, if you think about the company I founded two years ago, we spent a good year to do a lot of research, put together the best team to solve the problem.

[00:05:31] Carson Choi: And it's interesting when we first encounter into it, it's heck, what is warranty versus insurance? I would put it the best way to think about it. When you go buy a car. The car comes with a warranty to make sure the drivetrain powertrain, all the engine pieces are working the way that is supposed by manufacturer specs.

[00:05:49] Carson Choi: Then you will buy car insurance on top of it. For third party damages, and I always joke about it is you drive down the street, a knucklehead runs in your car. That's what insurance picks up. Warranty picks up [00:06:00] when the powertrain fails to perform. Perspect, so now if you go to the cyber space, it's quite interesting.

[00:06:06] Carson Choi: We started with cyber insurance. Which is protected third party damages, brand damages. You got MSP community who's providing IT services to small and medium business. The gap is missing. Where's the cyber warranty comes in? Who's covering for the performance services of the MSP who's filling in the gap between the out of pocket expensive for a small medium business to insurance gap.

[00:06:32] Carson Choi: So by design, but we have done, we create the equivalent of a car warranty. The bundle into a cyber warranty for MSP for them to fill in that gap for the insurance for this, for their clients, a small, medium business. And the other piece we have also added a lot of it's interesting is that if you look at the automotive analogy, you got a dashboard.

[00:06:52] Carson Choi: Sometime you get a little check engine light that says put oil in, something is missing. Guess what? You can put oil in to prevent the engine failure so the warranty [00:07:00] doesn't have to kick in. In our case, what we also have done, we created a platform, a core platform that plugs right into this existing security technology, the MSP deployed to the client.

[00:07:11] Carson Choi: So in the case of a good example, if let's say MFA gets turned off, multi factor authentication gets turned off, we will flip a check engine light on. For the MSP to say, by the way, this client, this particular user have the MFA turn off, let's go three days career period, get it back on track. So really is an equivalent thinking about that in the cyberspace for the channel business.

[00:07:33] Carrie Richardson: So essentially a dashboard that will indicate to the MSP that they need to go review the posture of their end user clients. 

[00:07:44] Carson Choi: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, if you take a look at that warranty, that's, there's two side of it. The dashboard side of it, prevent it from happening.

[00:07:50] Carson Choi: So in the case, I would. We look at as a your favorite sweater. If you see a little thread, you pull on it, the sweater fall apart. What we do is we go back to focus on for the small [00:08:00] end client, looking for early indicator for BEC attack, ransom attack and phishing attack. And we make sure those signals are flagged early.

[00:08:10] Carson Choi: Now in the case that if it does get lead to an attack, I'll, ours warranty actually kicks in and we provide the end client and the MSP, uh, instant finance funding for them to go remediate and manage the matter before the insurance piece kicks in. So it's a really interesting product that we created in this case.

[00:08:29] Carrie Richardson: It's almost like a bridge finance between. The the incident and remediation. Now, can the MSP remediate their own incidents in this case? One of the things that I learned about cyber insurance was that they don't allow the MSP who obviously has more information about this client than anyone else to participate in the remediation when they're going to pay out an insurance claim.

[00:08:54] Carrie Richardson: How does warranty differ? 

[00:08:56] Carson Choi: Yeah, in the warranty as long as the billable hour that [00:09:00] proven that record that they've done the work. So it could be the MSP themself, or it could be one of the partner that have this, remediation skill. I think for us, that's, what's a unique, that's a warranty, 

[00:09:09] Carson Choi: if warranty versus insurance, typically the warranty is sold with the managed service agreement by the MSP as bundles. Like when you're buying a car, you get a warranty, or let's say you could buy Apple device, you can buy Apple care, so think of that, how are we thinking about it? So it does. Cover for the MSP to do the work.

[00:09:26] Carson Choi: We also have a program that we're designed to cover the MSP themselves. Cause I think when we first came to market, we actually officially opened our door just about a year ago the MSP first asked, Oh, this is great. I can make that new MR. I can then bundle it into all my managed service agreement.

[00:09:42] Carson Choi: Then they go, about three months in, I get this question. Hey, can I buy this for myself? And, at the time we never thought about. But the MSP told us like, look, we have a hard time even getting insurance, but having this as a gap fillers for us would be great. And then we went back to the drawing board, design a warranty product [00:10:00] that MSP can buy for themselves.

[00:10:01] Carson Choi: So now we have both warranty cut, cyber warranty coverage for the MSP and cyber warranty coverage that MSP can buy and resell to the end client. So it was pretty interesting, world. 

[00:10:13] Carrie Richardson: It gives a really interesting opportunity for an MSP to go back and revisit clients and upsell them for a product that provides some more MRR.

[00:10:23] Carrie Richardson: Are you recommending that companies go and use Cyber Warranty as a land and expand opportunity for new prospects? Or are you looking at adding it to current clients? Or do you only sell it along with a new managed agreement? 

[00:10:38] Carson Choi: Yeah, it's interesting. I think the last year being officially in market, it took us almost like six months to iterate, work with different early adopter MSP, in fact, I think what we end up finding that a year, a year into it now, 

[00:10:52] Carson Choi: what probably works best is the answer is actually both. One in that all of MSP, when they come on board, we always recommend them. They want [00:11:00] embed our warranty into your managed service agreement. Mhm. Use that as a differentiation against other competition. And we've actually had early adopted MSP last year that says, Hey, Carlson, we actually won deal at a higher premium because the client says, wow, you actually put your money where your mouth is.

[00:11:18] Carson Choi: It come with the warranty that I feel like. I know I can use this as a way to cover it to be zero out of pocket. So I think that's one methodology. The other piece is the, and is the upsell as a drive, additional conversation, being able to go back to the end client to say, Hey, by the way, we're now starting to add this into all the new client.

[00:11:36] Carson Choi: With this program is the opportunity for them to upsell. So in that particular case we actually have, work a couple of minutes and a lot of them have found success that pretty much says starting June 1st, we'll be increasing our price, but part of the value is we now including a financial coverage for you in this case, plus an ongoing, active loss prevention to help you to reduce the chances of being attacked.

[00:11:59] Carson Choi: So [00:12:00] we're seeing success in both pillars. So now that when MSC come on board, we suggest. Start bundling the new packages for new prospect and deploy a either a what we call it op out campaign or op in as needed. The op out tends to be more successful because you end up finding probably about less than 10 percent client will say no to it because nobody will go, this sounds crazy, but the reality is that this makes a lot of sense for them.

[00:12:25] Carrie Richardson: Is there a partner sales enablement for MSPs to show them how to approach their clients and talk to them about cyber warranty? 

[00:12:34] Carson Choi: Yeah, it's interesting. I think this is the piece that we've, done quite a bit of work, having my early, first taste of the MSP vendor, the equation side of the Datto days.

[00:12:44] Carson Choi: We take a lot of what worked as Datto treating MSP as a partner, not customer. I always put it right. Partners are is a two way relationship. Customer tends to be a more transactional base. So when we use that mindset, MSP as our partner, we also took [00:13:00] a book and say, okay, what really helped MSP look?

[00:13:02] Carson Choi: We know MSP are busy. A lot of them are one, two, maybe up to 10 people shop. Everybody got to do everything. They don't have time to, even they see as a great opportunity. They need time and help. So what we do is, the first 30 days is typically sales enablement. We have a team that focus on partner success.

[00:13:19] Carson Choi: We actually even created the point. We create all the marketing material from one sheet to PowerPoint deck. And in fact, we go out and pitch with them. It brings back in a lot of I think Austin sure. It's like early days of data where we're out on the field with the MSP side by side co selling with them.

[00:13:33] Carson Choi: So it's been fun, being able to see that. Side of the equation. But at the same time, getting a lot of great feedback from them. Here's the material. Like I mentioned about the op out op in campaign, we have the entire campaign built and we'll help the MSP to help them to put the logo in if that's what's needed to help them to get into market as soon as we can.

[00:13:50] Carson Choi: So that's how we'll be looking at the first 30 days, been helping them with P to get the success of the program. 

[00:13:57] Carrie Richardson: So what's been the biggest change between selling something [00:14:00] that you can hold in your hands, like a. 

[00:14:02] Carson Choi: Yeah, 

[00:14:02] Carrie Richardson: a Cirrus or an Alto and a Concept. 

[00:14:07] Carson Choi: Yeah, it's interesting, what we end up finding when we first came to market we knew we had something unique and different.

[00:14:14] Carson Choi: Because if you take a look at landscape of cyber insurance, cyber warranty, similar product there, they're purely what I call recovery product, it's a post attack, post breach as Ryan Weeks and I, we're talking about our, security advisor. He's a writer boom. Yeah. When attack already occurred, everybody's upset.

[00:14:32] Carson Choi: They're freaked out what I need to do, most insurance and warranty product recovery. Then you got the side of what we call prevention side, you buy a lot of tech tools, a tax surface management tools to prevent it from happening, but it doesn't guarantee from that happening at all, 

[00:14:48] Carson Choi: so you take a look at that. I think what we found also in such a unique place is we're both. Preventive and recovery equation. So when you put those two together, we've become so unique from that [00:15:00] standpoint in the last year, what we've learned is we came to market just purely on the recovery side. And it was almost a full transparency.

[00:15:07] Carson Choi: The first six months, it was a nightmare because our MSP community are very much used to selling technology was primarily preventive. side of the equation. The second you talk to a recovery tool, risk management. 

[00:15:19] Carrie Richardson: Whoa! 

[00:15:20] Carson Choi: All of a sudden it's wait, you need to talk to my CFO. Right now they went from talking to CTO, CIO, to the CFO, which is a complete different set of conversation.

[00:15:30] Carson Choi: So midway through, like six months in, we got a lot of feedback from our MSP team community. We went out for co selling. We realized, okay, we need to probably adjust the position slightly. So now we let's focus more on the preventive side that comes with a financial guarantee. So the moment we shifted that, that's when we saw a huge influx of MSP going, Oh, I get this.

[00:15:53] Carson Choi: Let's move this. It's interesting. The products say the same. There's a preventive element, it's better to [00:16:00] prevent that from happening than having it. And it happens. But if you lead with the recovery side. It became a CFO conversation, which makes it very difficult. Very few, The MSP is like this different, it's hard, it's toggle risk versus let's lead with the technology, the prevention side that has to warrant financial coverage.

[00:16:21] Carson Choi: So when you leave with that, the compensation stay with the technology, the CTO, the CIO, CFO just comes in, Oh, this is a nice addition to what we already have, a compliment on cyber insurance policy. Also become a much faster sell through. So that's what probably one of the major learning for us is start with what we know, 

[00:16:38] Carson Choi: what our community are comfortable with, but giving that extra edge to open up a deeper conversation with the end client. 

[00:16:45] Carrie Richardson: I don't think your end clients want to have a conversation about worst case scenario during the sales process anyway. So starting the conversation with, oh, and if it doesn't work out, 

[00:16:56] Carson Choi: What is interesting is that our early days and client that works out we always [00:17:00] suggest MSP is that go to a client that have been attacked somewhere along the way.

[00:17:05] Carson Choi: Let it Mostly before they came on board with them, typically you find in client switching MSP after an attack. So I said, go start with those client and 10 time, it'll be a no brainer. Nobody talked about pricing. They said, yup, I get it. That's great. Let's go. Versus if to your point, if they had to present the end client with a what if scenario, most incline would say, that's not me.

[00:17:32] Carson Choi: That's, that's carried down the street. It's not going to happen to me. And I always said, look, it's not an if it's a when. The question is, can they recover from that? So I think that a lot of that we're still in the learning process, but definitely for those clients that have been attacked in the past is a no brainer is for those who have to get a 

[00:17:49] Carrie Richardson: backup.

[00:17:50] Carrie Richardson: If you think about selling backup, it's really easy to sell backup in a community where there's been a natural disaster, for example. And if somebody, was impacted by that, even if your business [00:18:00] wasn't, you're probably thinking more about it. Then you would have been previously. I would say you've got a nice little pocket where if somebody in your peer group or somebody in your community has suffered from a, an incident.

[00:18:14] Carrie Richardson: The odds on you inquiring with your MSP on how you can prevent it become significantly higher. 

[00:18:20] Carson Choi: Yep, it is definitely that, I think the prevention's always spent more time with that for those who hasn't been attacked. Being able to help them to understand that this is what's unique about the fact is your MSP's already doing a great job of what they do on the prevention.

[00:18:35] Carson Choi: But we have put in place, look, if we can refer to this, say, How are you different from attack surface management? We look at the 1 percent that matters, as Ryan Weeks and I spent a lot of time in the initial, incubation phase to look at. If we purely look at ransom attack, business email compromise, and phishing attack, those three contribute about 80 85 percent of small to medium business.

[00:18:59] Carson Choi: If you pull [00:19:00] the threat all the way back, there's probably about typically six to 12 months ahead of it. The hundreds of indicator of switches that flips on what we do uniquely is look at those where those are coming from by the integration of the existing security stack. When we see those signal kicks in, we'll flip the switch on to get the MSP to get the end client to close a loop before it becomes a problem.

[00:19:21] Carson Choi: So it's such a unique different way of thinking about it than just being, waiting until it happens. Yeah. And then go, okay, now go talk to the insurance company. In our case, we incentivize not to have the attack from happening because that's what we strive for. So it's such a, it's still, we're still learning.

[00:19:36] Carson Choi: It's just that, we're bridging two very different businesses together, industry together. 

[00:19:41] Carrie Richardson: So you just passed your year anniversary. 

[00:19:43] Carson Choi: Yeah. 

[00:19:44] Carrie Richardson: Sounds like you you started. Looking at other data alumni, when you started building up the team, how big is the team now? And how are you recreating the look, the field, the culture that data was famous for?[00:20:00] 

[00:20:00] Carson Choi: Yeah, it was interesting. I think when we first started sitting down to look at this concept, they're going to go 1 of the things that. I remember asking Austin was like, what do you see success look like? He's look, I really think we need to recreate the data culture in place.

[00:20:14] Carson Choi: So fundamentally, if you take a look at that, I think you can probably hear a lot of word. I keep using partner versus customer. I think to us, I think that's what makes data unique, the data treated every MSP as partner. So in our onboarding in my team and that and at Cork was folks. MSP or partner, when you use the word customer or client, it means the MSP client and customer.

[00:20:39] Carson Choi: You never call an MSP a client because I absolutely, I have a strong feeling with that is that customer and client are typically treated as a one way transactional piece. Versus a partner is a two way working together. The leading. So I think that one of the core thing we start second is probably what we take away from what we started.

[00:20:57] Carson Choi: There is about product. The product got [00:21:00] it is I'll take it from Austin's, whatever it is, the product cannot suck. The product got to be great. It got to be really well built. If you create a great product and you treat MSP as your partner, the revenue will come. And I think third is listening to your partner.

[00:21:17] Carson Choi: We have a pretty active program now for all the active selling partner. We do these monthly, we call it core connect is an almost imagining internal peer group where we bring all the partners, whoever's available, come in a group, having a direct feedback to the product team. I'm going to say what's working, what's not working.

[00:21:35] Carson Choi: What's it go to market like we need more of these type of tools and the great part of being a, early stage, agile organization. We can run fast and respond to those. So we're using all those three of the, pillar that really what made that was battle right to leading the Cork.

[00:21:50] Carson Choi: Now, the only difference is that color is different. We're not blue. We're not black. We're not great. We went from the. Both orange color. That's what do something unique from that same way. So that's, taking on [00:22:00] that as part of DNA is, you end up finding a lot of Datto alum, I would say the initial team that we put together with Ryan Weekes, Rob Rae, Urvish these folks are all, I call it the Avengers of of data, 

[00:22:12] Carson Choi: folks that who just knew the community and every decision that we make, is this the right thing for the community? Is it what the community want? And then you're getting the feedback. Yeah. From the early stage, like we had early access program last summer when we first started, we had over 400 MSP sign on to that.

[00:22:28] Carson Choi: I was like, okay, that's a little bit too much. We're so early stage, but we took all the feedback in to continue to evolve the product. So a year later, now we're on a page. So I think we're onboarding yesterday reports, like two new MSP a day. I'm like, okay, this is crazy. This is not, this is awesome, 

[00:22:45] Carson Choi: but what really give us the most energy is getting hearing feedback. We literally have it's interesting. We set up direct Slack and Teams channel with each of the partner MSP. So they have a direct line to myself, head of engineering, to head of [00:23:00] sales, head of marketing. Why? Because we want that real time feedback.

[00:23:03] Carson Choi: We know when they have a question, we want them to answer. So our goal right now is continue to maintain that type of pace. And who knows, a year from now, maybe totally different. But right now we're having a lot of fun. You a lot of great numbers. As we start bringing on new resources, like I think what last month we brought Nick Wolf, him in the space.

[00:23:20] He's now new partnership development. So we're going to continue to bring in MSPs always talking this way. I said, I'm better off to bring in a vet in the MSP space than somebody who just got into this space. Especially between this early stage it's important for us.

[00:23:38] Carson Choi: What does year two look like? 

[00:23:41] Carson Choi: Year two? I don't know. I'll tell you, I we've gotten feedback from MSP. For example, one of the things was folks want to just get access to our platform. We evolved from just purely a cyber warranty that MSP can bundle and resell, make MR.

[00:23:56] Carson Choi: Now they go, hey, can I also get access just to MSP? Some of you might [00:24:00] just prefer having the our platform access because we've done such a great job looking for compliance related those three type of attack that we're talking about us. We're taking a look at that path. Second one that has the most demand that we've been asking was, Hey, by the way, this is so great.

[00:24:14] Carson Choi: There's no form to fill out. I don't need to feel like I have to talk to my legal firm to make sure that am I filling in this form correctly? Because we connect right to the security stack and we use those data to underwrite. So the question being, and then the main, I would say. The highest request next stage for the product from people is, can I actually somehow help my client to buy cyber insurance using the platform instead of filling out forms?

[00:24:38] Carson Choi: So there's been a lot of interesting conversation, we'll see how that, pan out to be, but I think we mostly look at MSP space partner, take their feedback and put them right in the product development cycle. 

[00:24:49] Carrie Richardson: If an MSP wants to see the product in action, where can we find you in the next quarter?

[00:24:54] Carrie Richardson: What shows will you be at? 

[00:24:56] Carson Choi: We are, so here's the interesting thing. One is, I always [00:25:00] suggest people come to corkinc. com, C O R K I N C dot com. In there, we got an event trade show that we can be at. We're pretty much at one community trade show per month. We hold our own webinar once per month. And we also got these local road show that we actually go and with one of our existing partner we go to the local in person.

[00:25:19] Carson Choi: I know everything's virtual now. We do in person roadshow. Do a great nice lunch and learn. I think our next show will be at is actually PAX and Beyond. We're going to be there. I think a lot of community will be there. So those of course is our, one of our key advisor, Rob is there. So we're going to be part of that show and supporting what he's doing there.

[00:25:39] Carrie Richardson: Who has Rob Rae's old credit card? 

[00:25:41] Carson Choi: His credit card is one of the ones with the the unusual unlimited cap if you think about it, 

[00:25:47] Carrie Richardson: the numbers have worn off of it by now. 

[00:25:49] Carson Choi: Yeah, the numbers have worn off enough to swipe, but that's the end point.

[00:25:51] Carson Choi: The good part is now that he got tap and pay, 

[00:25:56] Carrie Richardson: is there anything else you want to share with us about what's going on what we can [00:26:00] expect, or is there anything, any surprises this year? 

[00:26:02] Carson Choi: There's always surprises, I think for us, it's if anything, it's like I always look to the, we are going to continue to evolve based on what our partner has, 

[00:26:10] Carson Choi: and I think at the end of the day is, we go back to the core fundamental is. Partner comes first, then the product, and then comes back to what the partners, treat the partner like your family get the product right and then take the feedback and continue to evolve. To us, those are the three fundamentals I tell the teams.

[00:26:27] Carson Choi: So if any partners out there interested, reach out to us. Feedback is more than welcome. Those feedback we're all taking in in building a product and building essentially, helping the MSP community to build more revenue. 

[00:26:40] Carrie Richardson: I can't think of a better place to stop than that. So thanks very much for sharing a little bit with us today.

[00:26:45] Carrie Richardson: I appreciate your time and I will look forward to seeing you at PAX 8 Beyond. I'm hoping to listen to Malcolm Gladwell's keynote this year. 

[00:26:52] Carson Choi: Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it. We'll definitely love to see you and also your community there. 

[00:26:57] Carrie Richardson: All right, have a great afternoon. Thanks for joining [00:27:00] us.

[00:27:00] Carson Choi: Thank you.