When Rick Jordan was initially searching across the nation for areas with high concentrations of managed service providers, he expected the usual suspects — New York, California and Texas.
While those popped up, so did a new player: the Tampa Bay region.
"Florida wasn’t particularly what we expected at first," he said in an interview with Tampa Bay Inno. "I've always loved Florida. It's been a great vacation spot for my family, everything is down there; it's a central hub for the space and I love the economy. It's a great place to go next."
Jordan is the CEO and founder of ReachOut, an Illinois-based information technology services provider. The company qualified in November to go public, which Jordan expects to happen in the next few weeks.
With the public status comes the next step for Jordan: growing through acquisitions. He wants to be the first publicly-traded managed service provider to boost the sector, which he believes is currently stagnant.
"It's really helping the industry, and forging the industry into its next phase," he said. "It was stagnant and it's hard to scale. I got to that point where it's very hard to bust through the $1 million in revenue ceiling."
ReachOut will be looking at companies with less than $5 million in revenue, with the "sweet spot" being between $750,000 to $2 million in revenue. Those with less than $5 million, Jordan said, make up a majority of the industry.
"We made it past that mark with $5 million in revenue; I know the struggle it takes to get there," he said. "And if I can have a platform and a household name, I can help. It's not just for the managed service providers, it's for the owners, the customers and even the country."
He plans to have 15 companies acquired across the state in the Gulf Coast, which could trickle beyond Tampa Bay and reach toward Sarasota and Orlando as well.
Beyond that, he hopes to serve as an educator on behalf of the managed service provider industry, which many are still hesitant to invest in. He brought up the example of speaking at an IT Nation event last year, which is hosted by Tampa-based managed service provider ConnectWise.
"I brought up that we were going public and half of the audience were hesitant to clap; it was like, 'Wait, an MSP can go public?'" Jordan said. "It's an education issue. There is a different way, a better way for funding, especially from private equity. And it's just about educating the public — even with accelerating groups, they don't have MSPs."
