 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Good morning to our brand new podcast series called Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott of Cataya, CEO of JSA. And along with me, my co-host, my friend, top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Cristel. Hey Evan. Hey, good to see you. Welcome everyone. Data Movers is where we sit down with the most influential men and women in the telecom and data center world, delivering the requirements of our modern world and the new normal. Jamie, how are you doing? How are things on the vaccine front? It's pretty exciting. I just got shot number two, Visor, yesterday, yesterday afternoons. Actually, I was sending a note around to everybody. I think I'll be totally fine for tomorrow morning, but just in case. But no, I feel good. It was actually a second shot. We're hearing that it's usually the one that comes with the food-like symptoms, but I'm feeling really good. And now the world is my oyster, right? Great. Speaking of oysters, I've just had my third shot because it's Friday and I'm drinking. But no, in all seriousness, I've had my second shot and I'm a few weeks in, so I am allegedly immune and I can go back to nightclubbing. Yeah, I was gonna say, have you done anything that? No, absolutely nothing. I'm still at home. But we do have a guest who's also at home, so I think maybe we could chat with him. Yes, let us bring in our amazing guest, our good friend, longtime friend, mine actually. So let's welcome Mr. Ben Edmund, of course the founder and CEO of Connected to Fiverr. And welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to you. I appreciate the invites and glad to be here with you and Evan today. Thanks, Ben, and we know each other actually going back a bit and both in Massachusetts. So this is gonna be the special Massachusetts edition of Data Movers, right? So what is so great about, why are we the best state in the union in Massachusetts, Ben? Share your thoughts there with us. So many reasons. Great seafood, great institutions, fantastic place to live and the sports is pretty amazing as well. And a million Dunkin' Donuts. So there you go. Every day. Every day. Wasn't Dunkin' Donuts Rhode Island? No, it was founded in Massachusetts. Oh, seeing when you're Rhode Islander, everything's founded in Rhode Island. But I did go to Tufts. So yeah, Memphis, Somerville, you know. So big, big, big heart love for our Massachusetts family. So let's talk about, you know, it's towards the end of April now, 2021. And we just passed the one year anniversary when COVID really first hit the US last year, March, March 2020 time. How has connected to fiber really managed through it all? I mean, it's profound change, the way that we do business, obviously the need to connect, the need for telecom never, never greater in many, many ways. What impact has it had on your current and future strategies as a critical resource in our network broadband buying, selling ecosystem? It's, you know, really had a pretty profound impact. I mean, from a company perspective, you know, we immediately just started a, a really a perspective around, how do we keep our employees safe? You know, let's enable them to work from home, let's get them the tools. And you know, we have an advantage over other companies. We're a software company in the connectivity industry. If we can't figure it out, you know, no one can. So, you know, right away, we had everyone working from home. We had the collaboration tools in place. We had communications. We do a weekly all hands call to keep transparent, keep people engaged, good things, bad things, just, you know, talking and being transparent and open about it really helps through any situation. And that's exactly what we did. And what we found though is, you know, this whole situation, a massive pandemic, you know, helps everyone outside the industry understand what is so important that we do on a daily basis. You know, the connected world is really this enablement engine of the whole digital, you know, way of life, you know, how we live, how we entertain, how we work, how we learn, how we govern our societies is all being impacted by this digital economy. And none of it works without connectivity. And to understand that, you know, is part of our DNA to help, you know, bring that to life. You know, the software platforms that we build, you know, we've seen a massive increase in demand, you know, on top of, you know, really strong demand that we already had, you know, that demand continues to elevate and gives us an opportunity to grow, which is exactly what we've been doing over the last 12 months. That's fantastic. And Ben, connected to Fiber, you just announced a $12 million series B round. So congratulations. Thank you. And just remember the little people on your way up like myself. So is that funding earmark for something special, maybe a company jet or a shiny new headquarters or what are you thinking? If anyone knows me, it's probably not gonna involve a company jet or fancy new headquarters. What it will involve is an investment in us as a company to support our customers and really focuses on three core elements of it. We're gonna continue the aggressive buildout of our platform. Our roadmap is, you know, aggressive and our ambitions are pretty bold. You know, we want to be that industry cloud that helps the ecosystem automate how buying and selling a connectivity happens. You know, from each of the service providers own unique perspectives. And so there's aspects of the platform that we're gonna continue to invest in, grow the capabilities and expand the use cases. The second investment's really, how do we tell that bigger story? How do we show more people? How do we expand the go-to-market efforts so we can build this ecosystem bigger and bigger and bigger? So we're gonna invest in our sales and marketing. We're gonna invest in our customer success. We're gonna invest in our implementation teams that support that bigger thought process. And then the third aspect is really, you know, investing in data science. So it's one thing to have data. It's another thing to move it around with workflow. And it's a third element to really extract insights and drive automation with intent. And that's what exactly what we're going to, you know, start leveraging our capabilities around being able to predict demand so you can allocate sales and marketing resources to the most effective locations. Being able to understand optimal packages or pricing, not just automate what is, but, you know, look at the context of the data flows and enable our customers to take advantage of that. And, you know, those three things, you know, we're gonna actively invest in for our customers. And for sure, the work and the growth that you've even done to date, it's amazing. And I can just imagine what this new investment is going, the impact is going to be amazing. When I think about connected to fiber, the word ecosystem really pops into my mind a lot, you know. And yeah, in this industry, we hear a lot of ecosystem talk, right? So let's define ecosystem as it relates to partnership support that connected to fiber ecosystem. How does it work? Sure. You know, the ecosystem we operate in is fairly complex, as you guys probably already know. Lots of different layers, lots of different, you know, components to make connectivity work. And then you have data center operators, you have fiber operators, you have managed service providers, cloud companies, all these different entities orchestrating, you know, from right away up through the application layer. Where we play a role in is helping to establish digital blueprints. So if you think about connectivity, it starts with physical reality of you got to connect things together. Understanding who has what where, putting it in a digital format, associating it to a location level, whether it's your own locations, you've already physically built fiber too. It's something you could deploy capital to reach or a location that you're reaching through a third party relationship across the ecosystem. It needs a digital record. So we establish that as a starting point and help you create that network fabric from your own service provider point of view. Ultimately, those third party relationships with the service provider is a core part of our ecosystem. How do we connect through APIs, buyers and sellers within the service provider community together? So when people are trying to respond to an RFP, transact with the next price quo, they can do so not just with their internal capabilities, but reaching across their partners with real-time intelligence around, this is where I can serve, this is what products are available, and this is the pricing that I can buy that connectivity from. And what that does is when that ecosystem continues to build greater and greater, it allows us to automate more of that digital blueprint in real time, creating a better experience. And we often associate it to the cloud companies that are ultimately influencing a lot of our ecosystem and a part of it, where you can go into Azure, click a button, spin up a new VM, get a new application set up in really seconds or minutes, and then the traditional experience of waiting for connectivity to be installed 90 days later doesn't associate it. Our ecosystem is being enabled to operate in that real-time API economy, to integrate into the user experience. And when we think of ecosystem and what we're building, we're building that physical layer to operate seamlessly across the different parties and embed with the service providers consuming those resources, whether they own them or they're buying them so they can have a customer experience similar to and integrate with the cloud community. And that's really where we're building to and think that the whole market's pushing towards this seamless ecosystem where people can interoperate across cloud, across physical network, across the services that are being delivered, whether it's UCAS, security, internet, private land, doesn't matter. It's ultimately about reducing that friction and allowing people to have the best experience possible. Wow, that's phenomenal. Congratulations. Thank you. One thing that's become pretty evident through the pandemic is the digital divide. I mean, not just socioeconomically, but even between metro and suburban areas and rural America. And one of the things that proposed Biden $2 trillion infrastructure spending bill does is set aside $100 billion to really close that digital divide in rural America with broadband services. What are you guys doing to kind of think about empowering providers and really the country to extend the reach of broadband intelligently into these rural areas? Great question. And we're doing some super important things that accelerate and improve that digital divide battle that's going on today to help the reality that people everywhere need access to the right connectivity to live and thrive in today's economy. It's not just about getting Netflix at your house. It's about, I wanna work wherever I can and want to be and participate in this digital economy and they need the right connectivity to enable that environment. So our creation of a digital blueprint for service providers helps them identify a starting point. This is accurately where you physically can serve. This is where I need to deploy capital that's not being served. This is the context around the other connectivity that's currently available. So I know where I should spend my resources most effectively and that transparency of the market which is happening already in our ecosystem as service providers share with other service providers we're in a position to help those service providers share transparently back with the government. And government policy was more area based around the census tracks previously because they picked that policy. Ultimately what we enable the service providers do is to adapt the new policy around precision reporting that aligns to the deployment of more capital to expand the reach and serve the community. But in addition to that transparency it's really about enabling a digital toolkit across your organization. So the data, the analytics, the workflow that we power can be shared to other systems, other GIS systems engineering systems, provisioning systems making the whole process more efficient to actually get that network bill delivered for the customer. And then the third aspect where we have an impact is in rural America where that digital divide exists it's not just about direct selling and supporting the local community. That's important, but it's also about enabling the wholesale ecosystem because we need each other to execute. So if there's a Walmart or a Starbucks in that rural community, more than likely the local infrastructure provider whether it's a municipal network, a broadband provider, telephone company, a cable company they're not gonna sell it directly. They're gonna sell that connectivity back up through the ecosystem to the service providers that have the national relationships. And unlocking the friction there improves the return on capital, accelerates project deployment and improves the actual facilitation and more connectivity in and around those locations. I just love it. Love it, makes total sense. And I'm just so glad someone with your expertise is on it to do this because it needs to be done and talking about your expertise. I've been friends with you for many years and to watch you go as we grew together up in this industry has been wonderful. Now you founded Connected to Fiber about six years ago and worked with other companies like Frontier, MCI, Time Warner, Telecom, of course FiberLite. What caused you to branch out and develop what's now the industry crowd for connectivity? It was really a passion to solve something for the industry. I've lived in this industry since I walked out of undergraduate school. MCI recruited me. I went to work there and I've never left the industry. And what I've recognized along that journey is a lot of friction points, a lot of challenges that we've had to manually overcome. We've had to piece the solutions together to try to help the service providers that I was part of grow effectively. And it didn't always create a optimal customer experience in the process either. So even if we could get the job done, it wasn't a beautiful masterpiece of instant answers and reduced friction. And what I wanted to do is solve for that. I believe that there was a need. The industry needed transparency because it relied on each other. And building Fiber at FiberLite gave me that perspective of location matters, that infrastructure and capital intensity. The experience at global capacity or MCI gave me that broad perspective of needing other people to finish the end result for multi-location customers. And the experience at Expedious and Time Warner Telecom really shined a light of this infrastructure plus ecosystem at the lack level. I mean, it all matters. And there was friction across every one of those steps. So I wanted to invest and really take the opportunity to go and solve something that I thought could really transform the industry. Indeed, and it needs transforming because in my humble opinion, the Telecom broadband business market does a terrible job at understanding its business customers locations and network. So my words, not yours, but that's my perspective. And now you're really helping and supporting really who's who in the industry, the top MSOs, the top fiber providers. You've gotten very high satisfaction and retention rates. I'm reading here on G2 Crowd, you have five stars, which is no small achievement. You've even grown 108% over the past year in particular. So what's your secret sauce? Like what's been your secret to success, particularly lately? Yeah, I think three things stand out. One is a culture of customer centricity. I mean, ultimately we're here for a particular industry that we know we've lived in it, we've walked in these shoes and every step of the software, the data, the process, the engagement is thinking about how do we get our customers to value? And just that mindset is not gonna change has been with us from day one. And I think that brings a certain amount of execution to the table instead of us trying to be a location system for everyone or being a pricing engine for everyone. That's not our mission. Our mission is to really help the service provider community transform and create value. I think number two is hiring great people. Ultimately the code doesn't build itself, the data doesn't curate itself, the customers don't get implemented or sold themselves. You gotta have the right people and the team in place and create that culture for success. And we've been fortunate to build a great culture, have the right people that care, that want to deliver quality and want to take the vision to the next step. And I think third is this element of, we're actually solving something that needed to be solved. The need was clearly there. Early on we've identified fit that we're solving something that the largest providers in the world are our customers today for a reason because they needed something solved and we're actually solving it in a way that reduces friction, adds value, creates a better customer experience. And it allows us to continue to extend that. That serves as a platform that we then continue to introduce new ways to add value to. And by delivering it, we ultimately get to keep winning. So knowing what you know now, if you could take a time machine back into time and go and whisper to Ben Edmond, fresh out of college, about to be recruited into MCI, what would you tell yourself? What piece of advice would you give yourself? Oh, that's a good question. I think I would tell myself to become a product manager earlier than I did. I think that was transformative to my personal career, to think about the customer, but in terms of how things work and what the economics of making money and the cost drivers of it, that gave me a different lens as I left that role into leading sales and marketing organizations to really think through. It's not just about the cost. It's not just about the price. It's not just about the customer. It's the orchestration of all three of those things to create value in the marketplace and for yourself. I think the second thing I would probably tell myself is do it faster. I should have started this company five years before I did it. There was a need then. There was a need in the 90s. There was need in the 2000s. There's a need now. And ultimately, it just took the courage to stop my nice job and go for it. And that's what I did. Amazing. That's great. I would tell my younger self to buy Bitcoin. But that's not what's coming. Buy Amazon, buy Bitcoin, buy Microsoft, buy Apple, yeah. Exactly. Stupid. I was so stupid. But in all seriousness, so we were returning in the US at least to some kind of new normal. We don't know what that will look like. But we know that the trend towards digital transformation won't slow up. We know the hunger for broadband is incessant. So what will the industry look like from your perspective in a year or two out? I think the industry is going through massive change right now. And that trend is going to continue over the next couple of years where new actors are going to be participating in our industry for the first time. There will be significant consolidation that continues in the industry to counterbalance those new actors. The access medium will become somewhat blurred, meaning that 5G with wireless, the access to fiber, and even the advances of Coax will create this broader spectrum of ubiquitous connectivity infrastructure that is being leveraged to deliver the experiences that we care about across all aspects of our life. I think the reality that will set in my humble view in a couple of years, though, is that purposefulness in that connectivity will matter more than everything. So the move to the edge is being done for a reason. Latency, control, the private SLAs associated with that in tomorrow's reality of use cases, of augmented reality driverless cars. Driverless cars, just think about it. If it's relying on connectivity to stop your car, you want to make sure that that happens. And our infrastructure and our connectivity fabric is not perfectly aligned to that today. Over the next few years, you're going to see that execute and is going to transform not just the driverless cars, but it's how we access Salesforce and Azure and all the different things that power the productivity of the business from an office, from home, from a mobile place, seamlessly. And that seamless nature with the analytics to make sure it's executing is going to change our economy. For sure. I wrote down purposefulness and connectivity because I think that's a whole nother blog, that's a whole nother interview because it's critical. And you're right. It's economical, changing, shifting. It is. It's everything. It's tomorrow. And you have a great seat, my friend, right in that driver's seat for sure. All right, so we come to the rapid fire section of our podcast, which I love. It's kind of fun. So tell us the very first thing that comes to your mind when we ask you these wacky questions. My question first, if you could have a lunch with a famous person in history, who would it be in line? Oh, jeez. I guess I would have lunch with Thomas Edison. And just because of his creative desire to build, invent, and change the world on a constant basis, whether he failed or succeeded, pretty inspiring of what he did and what he created. But he would probably make you buy lunch, too, so that would be interesting. He probably would, that's direct. And I'd be happy to. Dunk of Donuts is serving. Yeah, what's on your iPhone home screen or your Android home screen? What are your top apps? Maybe you can hold the phone up and show us. It is an Android, not an iPhone. I am a Samsung fan, and I love it. I have a Slack is one of those. I live and interact constantly with it from my phone. Outlook, of course, email still rules the day and is an important part of the tool. Ring Central is my unified communication, so that's right up there. Google to search and find and all work no play. Come on, this is a pretty boring guy when it comes to that. I love what I do, so that tends to dominate my world. And there's a picture of Susie and the boys, so that rounds it out for me. Oh, nice. And Ring Central, by the way, I feel like we should get them to advertise here. Yeah, there you go. Thank you for the job for me. And what is your favorite hobby or class time when you're able to break away from getting all this work? Yeah, so spending time with my family, so whether that means it's a trip somewhere or just in the backyard or going to the lake. But two boys, 13 and almost 15, and my wife, she's going on 24 years now. We love to spend time together and happy to do it anywhere we go and where it can. Love that answer. Nice. Now, besides data movers, what's your favorite podcast? Tough question. Or a book or a movie if you're not a big podcast junkie. Yeah, I'm an espionage, mind candy, audible listener that allows me to enjoy. So anything with a born, Jason Bourne-like theme, I will listen to and love. I have a couple of suggestions. I'll send you on audio listening, interviews, CIA spies, and Cold War stories and that kind of thing. It's a good listen. And that wraps up our fabulous session here with our amazing Ben Edmund, CEO and founder, again, of Connected to Fiverr. Thank you so much for your insight and perspective and just being you, being you, and all that you're doing for our industry. We really greatly appreciate you, Ben. Thank you very much. I appreciate the time today. And guys, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast as much as I did, please be sure to check us out at jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes releasing every other Wednesday morning. So check us out there as well. Yeah, and just a footnote. It was so great to hear an entrepreneur story that wasn't about some app from Silicon Valley or some hype, a practical, useful, utilitarian sort of startup. And it just goes to show, entrepreneurism is alive and well in every industry, every facet of what we do. So yeah, great, great to hear Ben's story. And be sure to continue the discussion on Twitter at Evan Kerstel and Jay Scotto. And we'll carry on there. And as always, guys, stay safe and happy networking.