 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Buddy, welcome to Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Cutia, founder and CEO of JSA. Along with my fabulous co-host, Mr. Evan Christel, top B2B social media influencer. Hey, Evan. Hey, Jamie and hey, everyone. Welcome to Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential men and women in today's data center and telco world, supporting the infrastructure requirements of this new normal. Hey, Jamie, so how was your Labor Day? It was really amazing. We definitely did staycation style Labor Day weekend. You know, we got to go to some outdoor restaurants in our neighborhood and look at the beach sunset. It was nice. It was really nice. Nice. I think I saw on your feed, you were making the most of Boston. Yeah, you know, museums are back open again and I love to get out and explore. We have a tremendous art scene here. And after Labor Day though, is traditionally when we really get back to work and our industry goes into high gear, the conference season begins, everyone's focused on business, but this feels a little different. How about you? Yeah, it's, you know, the whole year is almost thrown off because ITW happened later. So we all just got back from ITW for those of the locals that participated on site. And we're all a little dubious, I would say. Do people still say that we're dubious? I'm dubious in general, but specifically dubious about events. I have like four invitations to events and I'm just pretty uncertain about my desire and inclination to go running around the world at events. So let's speak to virtual for a while. Speaking of virtual, we have a great guest today. Yeah, you know it. Really excited to just go ahead and dive right in here. Today we have Scott Willis, President, CEO of Dark Points. Scott, welcome to Data Movers. Yeah, Jamie, thank you, Evan. Thank you, and certainly appreciated the opportunity to sit down and visit with you a little bit about Dark Points, about the industry and talk about just like you guys shared what's going on in our industry and looking forward to the opportunity. Well, welcome, Scott. Really nice to connect and meet you. And I was just looking at your LinkedIn bio, Scott, before I joined. And you have worked for both Nokia and Ericsson in prior lives. And I was really intrigued by that. What was it that was so attractive about Scandinavia? You know, listen. So those were first of all, let me start with. Those are world-class companies. Both of those organizations, I absolutely appreciated the opportunity to be a part of. The time I was there was really an emerging time within our industry. And so when I think about the 12 or 13 or 14 years or so that I was between those two organizations, I couldn't have been thrilled about the opportunity they gave me. We accomplished a lot and I think contributed a lot at the industry level, in particularly here in North America. And I valued my time and the people and the organizations that I was able to develop my career within. Yeah, it's an amazing places to start and grow your resume, which is incredible. And it kind of leads us all the way up to today. There's so much amazing headlines going on. Just recently, there was a Senate passing, of course, of that infrastructure bill, which places really a significant emphasis on broadband accessibility. And, you know, when you think of accessibility and digital equity, what do you see as the next steps that industry leaders need to take to make this a reality? And particularly, how does dark points play a role in bridging that digital divide? Yeah, I know, Jamie. I mean, I think that's a great question and I think it's a great topic. Listen, I'll date myself a little bit, but I started in this industry back in the mid-80s and I started it with a purpose. And to your question, this is a topic that it goes back as far as I can remember in terms of from a government-led perspective, the need to bring broadband capability out to rural communities. And so it's a topic that's been around for about 30 or 35 plus years since I've been in this industry. But I think this one feels different and it's important that it's different. You know, we're on the verge of really pivoting to where our industry is moving next, not only generationally, right? The tailwinds of that and the buzzword that everybody talks about is 5G. And there's no underestimating the tailwind strength of that. But we're at one of those pivot points where if we don't address this as an industry, we're really gonna run the risk of really leaving the rural communities even further behind. And so my hope is, it's not a new topic. My sense is it feels different this time. As I'm out and I'm talking with prospective customers and we're talking to a lot of fiber providers, whether that's local, whether that's regional or whether that's national, this time it feels real. I am seeing steps where investment is really beginning to take place and they're leveraging the funds that are available at the government level. So that's one. I hope this is the one that's gonna enable it because it's critical that as we talk about the future applications that really 5G is gonna enable, we need to be able to bring those applications both to tier one dense communities where there's hubs of center of influence where a lot of people live and we need to be able to bring that same experience out to the rural communities and give those communities opportunities to attract organizations from an economic development perspective which is really what this is all about. And that plays into our second piece. When you think about rural broadband, the first piece of that is we're a player in that but we're not an enabler in that per se, right? That's really the fiber providers that are gonna get out there and deploy the fiber. Whether it's a wireless application that enables the rural broadband or it's a physical fiber application that does it, that's an important piece. Where dark points comes in is we're the second equation to that that I talked about. That's really bringing out the digital infrastructure that's going to bring content. It's going to allow whether it's an individual or a private enterprise and organization that makes a digital request. We're gonna be able to enable that in rural environments underserved communities, which is how we tend to coin it. And we're gonna be able to process, we're gonna be able to compute and we're gonna be able to store that request on a very local level. And so when you think about that from economic terms and you're in some of these underserved communities, you're now able to compete in a very cost-effective way and on the same level of performance as organizations, whether you're a private individual or you're a private enterprise that is in Chicago or Dallas or New York or LA, which are some of our primary hubs from a digital infrastructure perspective. So we're excited about that. And that's the role that dark points is gonna play. It's really about enabling those types of solutions into communities that in many cases have that capability today. It's just an inferior capability and it's at a higher cost point. So that's the way we look at rural broadband and that's why we're excited about it. And in my senses, we're at a different stages in industry and I see things happening that's going to address that. So I'm a total tech geek and I was just watching a video before our call on this high-density two-phase liquid immersion cooling technology that you've just deployed at all of your data centers across the portfolio. It's like something from Star Trek but it's actually real and here today. So give us a little background on this tech and why it's so groundbreaking for both enterprises and providers. Yeah, so listen, Evan, thank you for the question. We're excited about this opportunity. I mean, we pride ourselves, I think as an organization in innovation, right? We are at the very core of what we're doing. We're enabling technologies in a very, very different way and in markets that really need it, that don't have it today. This is an extension of that, right? It's really, I look at it from two perspectives. So from the fundamental perspective, it's really about enabling that capability, right? That high-dense, high-compute. So when you think about the use cases, you can pick it, telemedicine, whether you think about telehealth, whether you think about artificial intelligence, gaming, autonomous vehicles, robotics around manufacturing. The list goes on and on. We all hear all of these use cases and these applications that 5G is, again, when I talk about that tailwind that's gonna enable, this is dark points' participation in enabling that, right? These are many of those applications require highly dense environments that can deliver highly compute requirements and do it in a cost-effective and efficient way. And so when you think about our footprint and what we're actually deploying from a digital infrastructure perspective, I referenced earlier about those underserved communities. And as we target that sector of the market and really bring that capability into those underserved markets, delivering this in a footprint that we're attempting to deliver is a unique challenge and it's a unique opportunity. And that's what this liquid immersion technology is all about. It's about delivering the power of dense computing in a smaller footprint, which is what we're deploying. We're not deploying big, large, multiple megawatt data centers in these communities, right? We're deploying that capability in a much smaller footprint. So the opportunity to bring, again, that same type of solution, that same type of compute capability into these markets and do it in a way that's cost-effective and is efficient is something we're excited about. And then it also has the second piece of that. It also has an element of green initiatives that's really built around it, right? I mean, you're talking about a technology that requires the fraction of power, right? That requires the fraction of all of the equipment that supports a dense, air-cooled environment. We're able to deliver all that in a much smaller footprint, in a much more controlled power demand environment and deliver the same capability into those markets. And so those are the two drivers and that's what we're excited about. So we're in the process of finalizing that deployment across our portfolio today and we're excited about where our pipeline is taking us in terms of the conversations we're having with prospective customers. And so we're a firm believer that we've got something fairly unique here that we think is gonna deliver and really support the overall vision of what we're trying to do within our points. Yeah, very unique and so necessary, so innovative. Really the future is how I see it. And it's funny how you're talking about this tailspin 5G, but I would say COVID too has forced an explosive demand on data delivery and how are we doing this and what are the new challenges that we're facing as an industry and really how critical that need for reliable connectivity. You were talking about rural broadband earlier. Could you advise us like what actionable insights do you advise for enterprises and providers who really wanna harness all the power of edge? What can we do? Yeah, listen, this is, to me, this is all about from an enterprise perspective. It's all about competitiveness. It's all about and that's both cost-wise as well as performance. And it's about enabling whether it's internal workloads or it's external applications that are supporting your customer. It's all about enabling that at the furthest point of where that demand is being driven. And so you talked about, let's talk about the internal demand first, right? And then we'll talk about the customer use cases. You talked about COVID, right? We're an example of it, right? I'm sitting here in Dallas. You're sitting there on the West Coast in California. Evan, you're sitting on the East Coast up in Boston. And we're in our own environments, right? And listen, do I think that we're in a stage of settling in of what our work environment is going to be? No question, right? It's something we struggle with every day. It's something we talk with our employees about. We ask for feedback in terms of making sure that we understand how they wanna work, where they wanna work, how can they be efficient, right? How can they be productive, right? Those are ongoing challenges. But the environment we're in is not going away, right? We're not all gonna go back one day and COVID snaps and it's behind us and we're all sitting in dense offices anymore. That is not going to happen or I don't believe it's going to happen. And so there's no doubt that from an employee perspective, this has accelerated the model that we're talking about. So as a company is looking internally, right? And it's number one asset, which is its employees and trying to figure out how do they retain those employees, right? How do they deliver an environment where they can have the life balance that they're looking for? They can be efficient. They can be productive, right? All of those tools. The ability to push that out at the edge where those employees exist, right? Wherever they choose to exist is going to be critical. And so regardless of the internal workload as an enterprise that you're looking at, this is about delivering in a cost-effective, high-performing way those solutions at the edge. So that's the internal piece from an enterprise perspective. The external piece is clearly, it's all about delivering whatever applications that an enterprise is looking to deliver to meet and serve the needs of their customers. That's what this is all about. I mean, if you look historically backwards in our industry, most organizations had to plant themselves around, I've already mentioned it. It's the major hubs and industries. It's Dallas, it's Chicago, it's New York, it's LA, right? You get into some of the secondary markets of Atlanta, right? Certainly let me add Northern Virginia. That's a critical one for the tier one market. Generally, when you look at the architecture, right? And how are at an industry level, we distribute data today, it's in a very concentrated environment. And so for enterprises to harness the capability and optimize the capability that they needed to, they needed to put themselves in proximity to those locations. Well, that changes now, right? As DartPoint comes out and we start deploying digital infrastructure in a much more distributed way, in a way where it's meeting the needs of these underserved communities, enterprises now can drive workloads and applications to the point of where their customers need it. And that's the full benefit of how enterprises should be looking at what a DartPoint solutions delivers into the market. And that's what they should be excited about because it's going to increase their competitiveness, it's going to lower their cost and it's going to improve both their internal as well as their external customer engagements as they look to operate and optimize their business. Fantastic. So Scott, you've had a very long and storied career in our industry, to say the least, which is a nice way of saying you're old. I'm okay with that, I'm okay with that. Me too, me too, I'm getting comfortable with that idea. But tell us about your journey to DartPoints. I mean, how did you come to the company and give us some insights into some of the recent acquisitions that you've made? Yeah, listen, you'll see, I will admit, I am older, but you can see I equally as have as much passion today as I did when I was younger. I love, I didn't accidentally enter this industry. I sought this industry out when I came out of school and this is, I just, I think we are so blessed and so fortunate to be part of the industry that we're in. It's an industry that, from my perspective, it's hard to, and when I say industry, I'm talking about our collective industry. It's hard to point, there's certainly other industries that you can, but it's hard to point to one that has had more of a global impact on society than the communications industry. And I mean that collectively, when you think about where we were, when I came out of school, my roommate, he was a computer science undergraduate and he had a Commodore 64 computer that largely we played games on and most people that are listening to this probably aren't even gonna know what that is. It is classic and my introduction to communications at that time was I had a class right on campus and I literally did the coding in my room and sent it across a telephone line to a central fax on campus and printed it out and took it to class. That was my introduction to- Oh, you are old. I am very much dating myself. So when I think about that, I'm just thrilled to be a part of that because we as an industry have had such an impact on people's lives in terms of just overall improving the way people live and society in general. So that's one. And then two, listen, I kind of look at my career in three stages, right? Me being in the third stage. I mean, if I look at kind of my early days, it was really on the carrier side, right? And it was about telecommunications, I sprint just under about 10 years at Sprint, which is where I started. And that was all about deploying fiber. That was all about deploying a long distance network, right? Where we competed with MCI and AT&T and WorldCom and others, right? That was kind of the first stage. The second stage was really about some of the companies that you mentioned. And that's really where I transitioned from there into the wireless sector and had a great opportunity to really participate, I think at a high level and contribute in the deployment of that side. I started out back when I was with Nokia and they didn't really have much presence in North America and Singular was really the driver and they were going from TDMA to GSM and really kind of their first deployment of 2G. And I rode that all the way through those years with Nokia and Ericsson where I finished up with 4G. So had a great opportunity from the wireless side to have a real impact there and really build out some what is going to be the foundation for what we're ultimately going to realize economically from the full deployment of 5G today. And I feel good about participating in that. So when I came out of that process, it was really about, as you said, I'm older and you start reflecting and I certainly have more years behind me professionally than I've got in front of me. And so you start thinking about what do you wanna do? And that's really where the idea incubated, right? I got introduced through some colleagues that I'd had some past relationships with into Astra Capital. Astra Capital is the private equity firm that owns Star Points. And we really built the investment thesis around this emerging market around Edge as the industry was really at a stage where this very centralized dense distribution model was not sustainable, right? As you look at data growth trajectory that's been happening for years in our industry. When you look at all of these future applications that are a little more latency sensitive, when you take a look at the true economic benefit that 5G is going to deliver our economy, right? None of that's going to be realized unless that digital infrastructure architecture and fabric is what I like to call it is deployed, right? That's the first enabler that allows all of that to be achieved. And so that's really what Dark Points is all about. It's about understanding what's going on in our industry. It's understanding where we are pivoting from a very centralized distribution model. When I talk about distribution, I'm talking about digital distribution into a much more distributed environment and it's bringing use cases and applications out to the edge where customers demand that and we can deliver compute, we can process it and we can store it at the edge and deliver that same experience at the edge that we get in some of these more centralized markets. So that's what the Dark Points business model is all about. And so when I think about my career and I think about what I wanted to do next, it's not a far stretch, right? It's in a different part of our industry, right? It's, am I connected into the wireless sector? Yes, am I directly connected? No, but there are certainly correlations. Probably the biggest connection you can draw from is it's about deployment, right? It's about enabling next generation technology and I've certainly done a lot of that. And most recently, if you wanna look at the last decade or decade and a half in the wireless side, that was about enabling early on on cell sites and building cell towers and putting technology on cell towers. The latter part certainly involves some small cells and in building deployment. So data center isn't a far cry from that, right? It is about deployment. It is about enabling an architecture layer that will create a new business model and will allow us to deliver use cases and applications and the ability to take advantage of the technology that is an industry that we're deploying. And so that's the way I think about it. So this is where I'm gonna spend kind of that third, if I break my career into three pieces, that third piece and I'm excited about it. It's one, when I draw back upon what we previously said that kind of drove me into this industry, this is one that really feeds into that. And it's about enabling a digital fabric that's just going to change the way that we as users, whether you're an individual user sitting in your home or whether you're an enterprise user driving applications down to your customer, it's gonna dramatically change how we do business. And that's what I'm excited about. And tell us about, if I could, that you recently acquired a median and Metro data centers. How did those support your vision and go to market? Yeah, that's an important piece of the strategy, right? When I talked about the original investment thesis, it was built on really two pieces. It was built on deployment where we're physically going out and we're identifying markets where we have need, where we see demand, we're gonna deploy physical data centers. The other piece of it is acquisition. It's looking, the way we think about acquisitions at dark points is we've done quite a bit of data analytics or data modeling in terms of trying to determine where we feel we see need in the market, in particular in the US domestic US market, which is where we're focused today. If we identify an acquisition candidate that also matches down with the markets where we see need, that becomes an acquisition candidate, right? It accelerates us into a market. It accelerates us from a scale perspective and it gives us a customer base that we can build around and we can deploy quickly on top of the environment that they've already created and really develop a hub and spoke strategy as you think about bringing interconnect and peering into those underserved markets, acquisitions gives us the footprint and the scale to be able to create that in a more accelerated way than if we tried to build it directly ourselves. And that's how we think about it. So we're excited about our first acquisition, which was Dark Points. We did that in March of 2020. That was the platform. And then in October of last year, we acquired Metro data centers. We call it internally MDC. And then we've recently acquired a midion which we're really excited about. So today we're targeted really in a Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Southwest footprint. And what does that mean? That's about 32 of the 50 states, at least initially. If you look out West and you look up to the Northeast, it's not that there's not demand, but those are a little more competitive. And we feel like we can generate and demonstrate scale within that initial four region footprint. And so that's how we think about targeting acquisition candidates. So we're excited about it. It's, you're at an emerging stage within our industry. So having enough scale to be able to go out and talk to content and CDN providers is important, right? Because one or two sites doesn't get them excited, right? Today we're 11 sites in five markets. And I don't see an environment where our deployment strategy as well as our acquisition strategy is gonna slow down. And we want, dark points is all about enabling the solution that I've talked about. And we wanna be a market leader. And like everything else in our industry, it's timing is important, right? And being able to deliver that digital fabric in a scalable way is important if you wanna be a successful and you wanna be a leader in this industry. And we're very focused on that. And so that's how we think about acquisitions and that's how we think about the market and that's how we think about as we deploy our own data center. So we're excited about that opportunity to continue to execute on that vision. It's great vision. And you certainly have the team in place to make it happen. Very exciting time for you. And last question before we get to the rapid fire section which I know our listeners love. But clearly you're a global leader in our communications industry. Do you have any senior level advice for leaders and executives like yourself who are really leading teams to success? Yeah, I mean, listen, I've got, we could take a lot of time on advice but I listen, here's something that I say regularly. Those that know me, those that work with me and you could certainly talk to my daughter and she'd tell you I've repeated this. Be purpose driven in what you do because when you're purpose driven, everything else falls into place. Whether you're talking about passion, whether you're talking about the courage to take risk, whether you're talking about being that leader that people are drawn to, that people wanna work for, that people want to come in and join what it is you're wanting to do and bring that into the market. If you're purpose driven, all the other things fall into place and I've tried to be that and I talked a little bit about why I got into this industry and it was really about being part of something that was greater than the industry and really impacting society in a different way. And that's where that's where mine comes from and that's what it's about being purpose driven and everything you do. And listen, like I said, I've said this to my daughter and others many times, life is a journey and your professional career is a journey, right? It's you've gotta look at it that way and that can be a very satisfying journey or it can be a very unsatisfying journey. And if to me, the lesson that I've learned and what I would share with others is if you're purpose driven, you're well down the path of that being a very successful and satisfactory driven journey. And to me, that's part of what it's all about. We spend a lot of time at work and we spend a lot of time at what we do. So you might as well have a purpose behind what you're doing that drives you every day. Love that. I wrote it all down for my team column in two hours from now. I just... All right, so now we're onto our rapid fire section. So we're gonna just give you some quick, fast questions and go ahead and say whatever comes to mind first. Yeah, yeah, I have to, this is fun for me too. I'm good. Yeah, so what's the favorite way to start your day, Scott? What's your favorite way? That's easy. So I start out quickly, I'm like a lot of the people I'm addicted to a cup of coffee and then I love to jump on my Peloton and start my day with that. To me, it's part of the industry that we're talking about some of the use cases. I love Peloton. I love all the data coming at me and so that's the way I like to start my day. Awesome. My Peloton holds my clothes a lot of times more than I told me. There you go, it serves multiple purposes, right? All right, and when travel is back to being a thing, favorite place to travel? Mine's always the mountains. I love to ski in the winter and I love the outdoors in the summer. So if you pick a favorite place to me, if it's got mountains, I'm all in. And are you an early bird or a night owl? Oh, no, I'm definitely an early bird. I'm out fairly early at night so I'm definitely more of a morning person. I've always been that way. I don't know why, but that's how it's worked for me. And what sport were you involved with in high school? I'm gonna guess captain of the football team kind of thing. Okay, so you're close. Yeah, I was very active in all sports growing up, but you're dead on my, we've talked about passion a couple of times. I love football. I started when I was seven. I started when I was five. I knew it, Dallas. And Friday night lights. That's it, exactly. Right here in Texas, home of Friday night lights. So yeah, I love playing that all the way through high school. All right, so I got to ask, what was your favorite car? Like I'm watching you in this like football uniform. What were you driving? So my first car, yeah, so you're going way back. So it was a 1968 Ford F-100 short bed was my first car. It actually had a three-speed shift on the column. So you're going way back, but that was my very first vehicle. Who's your inspiration and why? Yeah, so listen, I've like so many, I've been blessed. I mean, I've had so many mentors. I've had so many people throughout my career that have influenced me. But certainly today, I would point to my son. So he's not as advantaged as a lot of children today. And just when you look at him and the amount of courage and the way that he doesn't even know it and the way he approaches life every day is very inspiring to me. So it's something that I draw a lot on personally. Oh wow, I'm not crying. But yeah, thanks so much Scott for joining us. It really was interesting to learn how closing the digital divide is a lot more than fiber and base stations. It's about the whole network and congratulations on all the success onwards and upwards. Yeah, yeah, thank you. So Evan, listen, I've enjoyed the conversation. I appreciate the time and follow us on our journey. So I know Jamie and her team will. So they're doing a great job helping us along the way. And I'm excited about the opportunities in front of us in the future for Dark Points. We are so appreciative of you and your team and you really are impacting society. Talk about purpose driven, and you're delivering on that purpose. And we appreciate you. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Evan. And guys, if you've enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, as I did, please go ahead and check us out, jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes. We release every other week on Wednesday. So go ahead and listen in. And Evan. Yeah, follow us on Twitter, J Scotto and Evan Kerstel. We'll continue the conversation. Thanks, everyone. And as always, guys, stay safe and happy networking.