When Derek Apanovitch was chosen to take the helm of tech startup Global Safety Management, he made it a priority to meet each of the 16 employees face-to-face, shake their hands and get to know them.
A few weeks later, it was a scenario that would no longer be possible. The coronavirus pandemic swept the nation, causing the company — along with many other businesses in the region — to move completely online for an unknown amount of time.
"This was starting to happen as I arrived — I really had a week or so," he said. "For me, what was very important and what I spent a lot of time on was meeting with each and every employee. That dominated the first couple weeks, then all this happened."
Apanovitch quietly took the role of CEO for Global Safety Management in February. The Wesley Chapel software as a service company was founded in 2004; it provides risk management software and services.
Julia MacGregor-Peralta is the founder and now-former CEO of the company, which was chosen as a Tampa Bay Inno Startup to Watch in 2020. She will remain on Global Safety Management's board, along with other tech heavy hitters: former Tribridge founder Tony DiBenedetto and Richard Nicholas, an operating partner at Florida Funders.
"The progress we have made as an organization with our product and customer base makes this the right time to augment our executive leadership team to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us,” MacGregor-Peralta said in a statement. “I am so proud of the GSM team, products and culture we have created. As we look toward our next stage of growth, I’m thrilled to continue providing support to the team as well as deepening GSM’s role as an industry thought leader.”
Leading a company during a global pandemic came with some choices: Apanovitch had to lay off five full-time employees, leaving the company with 16 full-time employees and 10 to 20 contractors.
"We've had to make some tough choices like a lot of others in the community," he said, adding it was not one specific department that was impacted. "It's very tough for us to plan ahead and to make assumptions of what's going to happen to all those customers, so it's just tough because of the diversity of the business [which spans across multiple industries]. With a restaurant, if it opens up [after the pandemic] they may have a better sense of what their needs are. We're keeping in touch and having an open mind — I don't want to set any expectations we can't meet."
However, he is focused on helping current customers while looking ahead to the company's hopeful expansion into both more industries and bigger, enterprise customers.
"It's tough to generalize what normal will look like — we will have to wait and see," he said. "We have a sales process that's remote and a support process that's remote. We've been able to pivot as a company because of the variety of customers. Right now we're getting thorough this tough time and then we will focus on product development. We have a great platform and want to continue to make it better and serve more segments of the market we’re in."
Apanovitch previously served as a principal for consulting firm Thoronder LLC and president of Ultimate Medical Academy. Before that, he was the executive director of customer acquisition and retention at Kaplan, an online educational services provider.
