Syncro CEO On Helping MSPs, M&A And Diversity In The Workplace

‘We have a large partner base and we listen to them. They talk to each other, they support each other and it’s wonderful to see all of us come to work every day to help make MSPs’ lives better. You’ll continue to see us investing in helping them be more efficient with their time and achieve their business goals,’ says Syncro CEO Emily Glass.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a main focus point for Emily Glass, CEO of Syncro, the Seattle-based software company specializing in next-generation MSP platforms.

“We have a really diverse leadership team, which is important to me,” Glass told CRN. “[DEI] is one thing that you can lose focus on or it’s easy to put to the side, but I truly believe that if people in the company can look up to leadership and see themselves, that is a hugely powerful symbol.”

Glass, who came on as CEO in October 2021, said she will continue to focus on diversity in the workplace and enhance workplace culture.

Going forward, her focuses also include strategic initiatives to grow the company as well as helping MSPs.

“You’ll see us continue to listen to our customers, build the features that they need as they grow and continue to be actively involved in our community,” she told CRN. “We have a large partner base and we listen to them. They talk to each other, they support each other and it’s wonderful to see all of us come to work every day to help make MSPs’ lives better. You’ll continue to see us investing in helping them be more efficient with their time and achieve their business goals.”

Glass started with an engineering background but came to the MSP space through an acquisition.

“I fell in love with how it uses technology, which is a passion of mine, but also how it solves real-world business problems,” she said. “I fell in love with the MSP space and at Datto is where I got to talk and meet many MSPs. I worked on customer experience, I worked with a product group and I really got to know their pain and also their growth opportunities.”

Glass spent five years at Datto, holding multiple positions including chief product officer, customer experience officer and vice president of customer experience before becoming CEO of Syncro.

In her newest role, Glass spoke with CRN about M&A, helping MSPs grow and how every new Syncro hire must take a racial healing course.

You’re very passionate about diversity in tech. How are you making strides at Syncro regarding diversity, equity and inclusion?

It’s always been a focus at Syncro to have a community of belonging. We have a really diverse leadership team, which is important to me. [DEI] is one thing that you can lose focus on or it’s easy to put to the side, but I truly believe that if people in the company can look up to leadership and see themselves, that is a hugely powerful symbol. It’s also a motivator to help everyone feel like they belong and feel like they can achieve their goals. One of the things we spend a lot of time on is personal development. [We have] professional development and trainings to make sure everybody knows the product, but we spend a lot of time on personal development. We do a racial healing course for every new hire and leadership development for everybody in the company, not just managers. We believe that it’s about the whole person and we want people to bring their ideas to the table, and they have to feel safe in doing that. We want everyone to have a baseline of acceptance and a common language, so we spent a lot of time establishing those norms together.

Tell me more about the racial healing course.

We do a course talking about the history of white supremacy and racism in this country, learning common language to use and how to talk to people about it. There’s a lot of journaling and self-reflection of where you’re at in that journey. Everybody goes through a monthlong training on that. It’s these tangible changes that you can implement that really have the cascading effect on generations. In this course, our employees are in it, but then they talk to their wives or their husbands or their kids or grandparents, and it just propagates from there.

What are your top focuses for 2022?

We‘re really focused on our customers and our partners and solving their biggest pain points. That revolves around two things: providing quality technical solutions to help solve their customers’ needs and helping MSPs operate and grow their business. We want to have the most complete and automated solution that lets them monitor their customers at scale so they can focus their time on growing their business and being more efficient.

What is one of your biggest challenges right now, and how do you plan on tackling it?

MSPs are being viewed as the trusted advisers to their customers. One of our biggest challenges is helping them stay on top of the latest trends and use their time in the best way possible. A lot of MSPs starting out don’t prioritize their time, so it’s incumbent upon us to automate this stuff so they don’t have to think about it.

What's your M&A strategy?

I don’t know that I have a comment on that. We acquired Watchman [Monitoring] last year and we continue to offer that product. We’re still supporting that product and adding to our own so I think right now, we‘ll see if any opportunities arise.

What are your thoughts on the metaverse and how it can help business operations?

Syncro is a remote company. We’ve been remote since 2017 so it’s not new for us. We do think a little bit about the metaverse and how we could use it to interact with each other as employees and with our customers one day, but I think that’s on the distant horizon for us. But I think it could be useful as a way to connect messages to people and people to people in the future.

What will be the biggest revenue driver for Syncro this year?

Definitely our growing customer base. We continue to see interest from emerging and growing MSPs. We spend a lot of time thinking about what they need because they’re growing and we want to grow with them.