 This month’s four-minute FirstMile Founder interview features Nick Ross, co-founder and CEO of CloudCapsule, a FirstMile 2020 portfolio company. A respected voice in the MSP space, Nick reaches tens of thousands through his YouTube channel, T-Minus365, and was named a Microsoft MVP twice in 2023. After moving to Colorado in 2017 to join Pax8 as employee #40, he led product management for PSA and Microsoft integrations before later serving as an executive at Sourcepass. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I dreamed of being a comedian when I grew up. I carried a journal around for joke notes and told dad jokes to anyone who would listen. Ultimately, though, I moved on from that dream in college when I realized I was not suited for the role - I am an introvert. I was also in school studying business and entrepreneurship, and getting far more excited about possibilities in that arena. My first job out of college was as a stockbroker for Charles Schwab. While there, I started my first blog on financial management. It was my first venture where my voice was the product. I had lighter side ventures over the years. I eventually started what is my main YouTube channel while I was at Pax8, focusing on tech and the MSP market, called T-minus 365. This grew to a point where I was making more money from my content than I was as an executive at Sourcepass. Was starting CloudCapsule an "aha moment" or a "gradual realization"? I’d say it was gradual. I always thought that at some point, I could build a business behind one of my content channels. I started out producing very general content about Microsoft 365, from “hacks” to security. It evolved over time to be far more compliance and security-specific. I explored different content types like e-books and checklists. When my Microsoft security assessment e-book was downloaded over 2000 times in a month, I knew that there was a real business here and I had to take the leap and build it. If you could go back to when you first started CloudCapsule and tell yourself something, what would it be? Yeah…I wish we had started the company as a C-Corp. Instead, we began as an LLC, and it's been a painful headache to transition it since. But outside of that, I would say that I should have moved faster on this idea. I had the idea, the online following, and the resources to execute on a product. But impostor syndrome and mental blockers slowed me down from jumping in full-time. What is the best constructive feedback you have gotten, and how bad did it hurt when you first heard it? The best constructive feedback I received was that I “was too agreeable.” It is part of my personality, so it kind of hurt. I have since tried to develop my assertiveness and say “no” more often. It also hurt because it came from people I respected. At the same time, it was a good motivator for me to refine my decision-making capabilities and stay focused on my goals by turning down non-critical tasks. Why is Colorado a great place to start a company? As I mentioned, I moved here in 2017 from Florida to work for Pax8. It was very clear eight years ago that a massive tech talent pool already existed in Colorado, with more talent moving here from the coasts or emerging from universities. We work in the Tech Center area of Denver, so we see it daily. At Pax8, we went from 40 employees to 1500 in less than five years. And it was an in-person office. Colorado also has the added benefit of being home to great team-building opportunities with our outdoors and a warm culture of good food and drink. Rapid-fire questions:
Comments are closed.
|
