 Hey everybody welcome welcome welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott Okutaya of JSA and I am so excited about our fabulous guest here today Mr. Scott Willis president and CEO of Dark Points. Scott welcome to JSA TV. Thanks Jamie I appreciate it always good to always good to have a chance to visit and talk with you. Well we are super excited because we've got breaking news, big news to discuss. Can you tell us a little bit about Dark Points acquisition? Yeah we do so it's been it's been an exciting week on this past Monday so we announced it came out I think in the public domain on Tuesday but we announced the acquisition of venue and we are excited about the opportunity to to bring the venue team their customers and their their data centers into the into the Dark Points portfolio so a lot of work a lot of a lot of energy but ultimately really excited about that team joining the Dark Points portfolio and joining us on our journey is we're as we're continuing to build build out our our edge strategy and vision for for Dark Points. And let's go ahead and talk about how this partnership really does expand that Dark Points footprint into Louisiana. Why do you feel Louisiana is the next best fit for Dark Points portfolio? Yeah I mean this this what one of the things that there's a lot of things that we're really excited about as we as we assess the venue business as a as a strong candidate to add to the Dark Points portfolio but certainly one of them that you talked about is is geographical expansion on the Dark Point side. Historically we've been where we are today is is in the Midwest and the Southeast. This allows us to add another geography in the South Central region so we're excited about that just just purely from an expansion perspective. When you when you really look at at the venue business the the type of customer segments that are in their data centers in their portfolio it lays down very nicely very strategically with with the Dark Points portfolio. The markets right we're picking up three data centers two of those are in Baton Rouge one of one of them is in Shreveport Louisiana as well. So when you think about our strategy of what you know what what are definition of edge is and how we're building out the Dark Points business within those edge markets you know Baton Rouge and Shreveport very nicely fit within within how we're building this business. So you know Dark Points I've I've said it in the past you know edge means a lot of things to a lot of people but in in our world how we define it today it's really those smaller tier two tier threes and some of the larger tier fours and so when you think about where workloads are moving and and where customer demand is really growing at the edge these cities make a lot of sense and fit very nicely within our strategy our vision and our portfolio as I said earlier as we continue to grow Dark Points. So a lot a lot of good strategic value data points within all of that that really makes a lot of sense on on why venues a nice acquisition for Dark Points. Oh so exciting so exciting and you know you touched on it the word vision I have to ask when I have a CEO in the hot seat so where do you see Dark Points over the next year what can we expect. Yeah I mean much much of the same I mean we this is our this is our fourth acquisition that that we've completed since March of 2020 M&A will continue to be a very strategic pillar of growth for us we we feel we feel like we've got a really strong fit on potential candidates out there that would fit nicely into our portfolio and and we want to continue to aggressively pursue that as a strategy. Secondly I've talked about it before kind of the second pillar of growth beyond M&A is we want to put success-based capital to work in the business right we want to invest in the portfolio we want to we want to invest in the business we want to really identify opportunities and meet the customer needs out there and deploy capital and and get an attractive return on that capital deployed and then and then you know the really the third part of our vision and our strategy or in this case kind of our pillar of growth as we like to talk within Dark Points is is organically right our objective is to grow at or above the market and when we identify these these organizations that we're acquiring we overlay the Dark Points way of working we overlay our go-to-market strategy and our objective out of that is to change the legacy growth organic growth trajectory of that business and line it up with with with our goals and ambitions from an organic growth perspective for Dark Points so those are really the three pillars of growth or value creation that we really focus on within the leadership team and within the Dark Points organization as we look to grow and scale and really build Dark Points to become a leading edge data center provider in in in the in the years to come and that's that's what we're focused on and that's what our goal is and it's all about bringing best-in-class services into those markets for the customers that are in those markets and we want it we want to meet the need at point of demand and that's really what we're all about incredible incredible vision and your strategic growth plan sounds absolutely solid so I'm sure our viewers really want to know where can they go to learn more about Dark Points yeah I mean this is what I I always say right I the best in and you know for first and foremost is hit hit darkpoints.com that's we we work very hard we work very hard with with Jamie your team and we try to provide as much information and that's that's always the best point of entry on anything you want to learn and any knowledge you want to gain about dark points there you go darkpoints.com guys oh Scott thank you so much you got so much going on so much growth so much acquisition work you are incredible to give us a little bit of your time for this live breaking news we appreciate you thanks again and thank you viewers for tuning in here to JSA TV and JSA podcast everybody as always stay safe and happy networking