BrightGauge is a company founded by brothers Eric and Brian Dosal that provides a top-of-the-line business intelligence platform for managed service providers (MSPs) all over the globe. Recently, Eric Dosal transferred to being the CEO of Compuquip Cybersecurity, leaving Brian to step up as the CEO for BrightGauge.
This move was significant for the two companies. So, both Eric and Brian decided to host a podcast reviewing the histories of the two companies and their future plans to commemorate how Compuquip and BrightGauge have grown—and will continue to grow.
Here are a few highlights from the podcast:
How Compuquip Fueled Its Growth
After discussing Eric’s transfer to the CEO position of Compuquip (the family business that was started by their parents more than 30 years prior), the brothers started to talk about the company’s history and future plans for growth. This included a discussion of how Compuquip acquired the capital to expand its cybersecurity services.
In 2012, Compuquip had two main divisions:
- The Internet Security Division; and
- The Infrastructure Division.
That year, the decision was made to focus on the security division and grow the company’s monthly recurring revenue. To fuel that growth, Compuquip’s leadership decided to sell the infrastructure division to a strategic buyer named All Covered. As Eric recalls in the podcast:
“We ended up at some point deciding to invest in that business, to take it from the $8-9 million revenue that it was. To take it to the $15 million would require another major layer of investment and we felt that there was this opportunity at BrightGauge, you had already left from running sales at Compuquip to running all of BrightGauge, and so I was with sales, service, operation, the whole package. And we just saw it as an opportunity that we said let's take this time now that we found a strategic buyer, which was All Covered, that wanted a Florida operation—no one was going to get fired, and they were really going to invest and expand on it, and they were going to do what we didn't really want to do. And then we could focus on where we had our passion, which was in software and in BrightGauge.”
Eric would spend the next eight months after the sale helping All Covered make the transition to integrate systems, clients, and people as smoothly as possible. Additionally, a part of the agreement was that since Eric had been the CEO of the division that was sold, he was restricted from performing any client-facing activities as part of a non-compete clause. During this time, Eric worked at BrightGauge as a back-office manager due to the restriction.
Improving Collaboration
The time limit on the non-compete agreement expired in August 2017, freeing up Eric to take over as the CEO of Compuquip. When he took over, Eric launched a change initiative to help the company be more effective.
As Eric stated in the podcast:
“The engineers in particular, which are out in the field—one of the things that they all... the common theme was they didn't have a way to do a real proper training centrally that we owned and that was our own. And number two, there wasn't a ton of collaborations because they were out doing projects and so they never got a chance to see each other. And so within the first 90 days, I implemented a mandatory team meeting, brought everyone in, we had happy hour together. Some people had been working together for over two years and never met each other, so we brought them in. We have our next one in a couple weeks. And then we are about to launch our own internal training lab environment. The two engineers that were the most outspoken I told them, ‘Great. You got the approval, run with it.’ So they feel empowered, they are excited, they see the changes, the communication, and I'm actually delivering on these things, so it builds that momentum and trust.”
These changes helped the company improve collaboration, build momentum, and create trust—not just between Eric and the team, but between all of the members of the Compuquip team by having people actually meet and bond with one another.
Compuquip also added new collaboration tools, such as Basecamp, which is now the central communication/collaboration tool for the company. This allows everyone to have one place to check for important updates—avoiding the miscommunications and confusion that comes with having to check five or more networking channels for information.
Another change that Eric made was to alter the company’s name. Previously, the company was Compuquip Technologies—a name that was tied to the company’s identity as a managed services provider. To help the company move forward, and to really focus on the new cybersecurity priority, Eric had the name changed to Compuquip Cybersecurity, which was officially announced in January 2018.
Now, Eric’s goal is to: “invest, and I want to triple the size of the business in the next seven years, so in 2025 my goal is to be three times the size we are now, and we just need to... we have the basic building blocks and what we need to do to get there.” Another goal is to turn Compuquip into the premier MSSP—managed security service provider.
About BrightGauge
The second half of the podcast was concerned with BrightGauge—which has seen significant growth in the course of the last few years.
Brian Dosal started with a summary of BrightGauge’s current status and growth over the course of 2017, noting that, “Every possible metric that we have for ourselves, whether it's growth, pace of growth, employee count, revenue, profit—everything has gone up, everything is in the right direction, even churn, all of the metrics we had in 2017 were absolutely amazingly in the right direction.”
Over the course of the year, BrightGauge added around 400-500 net new customers—growing to more than 1,400 customers total. To help meet demand, Brian added more members to the development team, fueling more growth and speed for their features and integrations. This growth in integrations helped to get more data in front of BrightGauge’s customers. As Brian said in the podcast, “One of the things that continues to clarify when we talk to customers is the more data ended, the better. So the more data sources, whether big or small, that we can get integrated, the better—not only for our customers but for prospective customers.”
Beyond simply providing more data, Brian spent a bunch of time going around talking to customers to get a first-hand perspective on what their challenges were in using BrightGauge’s product. This is a perspective that Brian is using to guide the development of the product and make it easier to use.
These are just a few of the points that Eric and Brian covered in their 50-minute discussion on the podcast. If you want to catch the podcast in its entirety, please visit the BrightGauge blog. To learn more about Compuquip Cybersecurity, please contact us!
