More Channel Involvement to Come, Says Axcient’s Incoming CEO
For the last 25 years, IT industry veteran David Bennett has been working with channel partners in a string of roles with Webroot, Lenovo, Sony and Kingston, helping to drive the businesses forward. Now, in his new role as the incoming CEO of Axcient, a cloud migration and business availability vendor in Denver, Bennett says he will work hard to find new and improved ways to help MSPs and other partners increase their business as they serve their clients.
Bennett, who will start his new post for the company on March 4, was formerly the chief revenue officer at Webroot, where he saw that company achieve 19 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth under his leadership. In an interview with Channel Futures, he said he will bring that same fervor for success to his new role at Axcient and its more than 3,000 MSP partners.
“The team here at Axcient and I have already talked about this,” he said. “We are committed to the MSP space.”
That means reviewing what is being done today and how things can be done better in the future to work more efficiently with the company’s MSPs, he said. “We’ll look at how we are doing things to meet need of MSPs. It’s a key point. Just like the industries I came from, Axcient works in a wide marketplace with a lot of players in there. Our absolute focus is to provide the best service and support through our MSPs.”
His new job with Axcient is Bennett’s first gig as a CEO, but he says he’s been training for the job through other roles for years, gaining leadership experience and learning about scaling operations and more.
“I’ve had sales and marketing elements, running products and other roles,” he said. “It’s been a pretty well-rounded experience. As the CRO at Webroot, I had marketing, operations and pre-and post-sales experience.”
To prepare for his new post, Bennett has been talking with CEOs from other companies and gaining insights from their experiences. “Any new opportunity is always going to be a huge challenge,” he said.
“My background has always been about people,” he said. “Here, I’m the conductor of the orchestra. It’s all about leveraging people. I’m actually confident that I can step into this role because we’ve got a great team already.”
His main job, he explained, will be finding ways of helping that team become even more successful.
Bennett, who was born and grew up in the United Kingdom, is married and is the father of five children. He collects and builds…
- Page 1
- Page 2