Scott Chasin And Pax8’s New Chapter: 5 Things To Know

‘We talk internally a lot about being a $300 billion market cap company by the 2040s, and we don't think that's far-fetched,’ said John Street, Pax8 founder and former CEO. ‘We really are in good shape, the star of this show is the total addressable market.’

Scott Chasin taking over the helm as Pax8’s newest CEO isn’t the only change for the Denver-based cloud distributor as the company enters into the next chapter of innovation and growth.

On Wednesday Chasin, who has been Pax8’s CTO since 2021, became CEO as founder and former CEO John Street stepped back. A new CTO for the company has not been chosen.

Street has known Chasin for 30 years and met up with him in New York in the spring of 2021, “and I started explaining in depth what I wanted to do with Pax8.”

“I knew Scott would be a huge addition because we really needed to take it up another notch and Scott is a genius technologist,” Street told CRN.

At that time, he asked Chasin to come on board as CTO but had other intentions percolating under the surface.

“He’s been one of my true business partners all along and I kind of missed him,” he said. “I twisted his arm and said, ‘At some point here, you can take this over and take it to a whole nother level.’ And now we're here.”

As a serial entrepreneur, Chasin has founded and led multiple successful technology startups including USA.NET, MX Logic and ProtectWise.

“A lot of the DNA from Pax8 actually started at MX Logic, which John and I started back in 2002,” Chasin said. “It's a culture that when I joined [Pax8] I was intimately familiar with and, in a way, felt like coming home.

“My appointment is going to send a message that this is a product-led technology company that is going to continue to disrupt and innovate the channel,” he added.

Street, who will remain as chairman of the board and help with strategic initiatives, said Pax8 is moving towards profitability, “but we first have to focus on certain things.”

Those things include becoming profitable, innovation around the future of its revamped cloud marketplace and possibly going public.

Here are five things to know about what’s to come for Pax8.

Going Public Is ‘On The Table’

Street said that as an entrepreneur the “golden ring” is to build a company and take it public and that an IPO (initial public offering) of Pax8 is on the table.

“There’s no real plan around that that we talk about but we should take this company public,” he said. “I think it’s on the radar [but] I don't think we have a certain time frame. It does make a lot of sense to go public when the markets are really in good shape, but we need to be profitable. We're getting close to profitability but we're not profitable, so we certainly want to be profitable when going public.”

‘Our Plan Is To Get Profitable’

While not profitable yet, Street said Pax8 continues to grow and will grow by 40 percent this year.

“We talk internally a lot about being a $300 billion market cap company by the 2040s, and we don't think that's far-fetched,” Street said. “We really are in good shape, the star of this show is the total addressable market.”

In 2022, the company saw 100 percent year-over-year growth and hit $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.

Chasin said a lot of investment has been going into R&D the last three years, which the company plans to showcase the results of at its upcoming Beyond conference.

Despite the wins, the company implemented layoffs in April that impacted about five percent of its workforce.

Going forward, Chasin said there are no plans for additional layoffs.

“We're not going to slow down in terms of continuing to invest in the future where we're going to take this marketplace,” he said. “We're excited about this year in terms of the events, in terms of the announcements, the innovation and to get Pax8 profitable. This is the year of profitability for Pax8.”

The Future Of The Cloud Marketplace

At this year’s Pax8 Beyond conference in Denver in June, Pax8 plans to reveal a launch date of its revamped cloud marketplace that was unveiled at last year’s inaugural show.

With the power of data and AI, the marketplace will act as a customer acquisition engine for its partners and enable Pax8 to help MSPs get matched with end customers who are looking to buy direct through Pax8’s vendor partners.

“A marketplace is about relationships and understanding the lifecycle of those relationships, whether it's a customer, a vendor or a partner,” Chasin said. “There is a massive opportunity to innovate the future of marketplaces. We have a pretty good idea and a really interesting roadmap that takes us out years in terms of value creation for both our partners and Pax8. Our number one goal is to bring continuous value to our partners but do so as a technology-enabled marketplace.”

A ‘Big Strategy’ Around Adding Vendors To The Marketplace

While Chasin wouldn’t divulge his strategy of adding new vendors to Pax8’s line card, he said it will be part automation and part innovation.

“We have a big strategy around that and this is something that once we get beyond Beyond, I want to share some of our thinking around that,” he said. “It's a fascinating opportunity for us and one that I think really paints the fuller picture of what the marketplace of the future is going to be about.”

Pax8 ended 2023 with about 100 vendors on the marketplace and added more than 16 last year alone. With a heavy push on cybersecurity, Pax8 unveiled it was adding Crowdstrike to its line card ahead of its Beyond conference last year as the cybersecurity company looked to further its footprint in the MSP market and help enhance protection and mitigation around cyber risks.

At the time, Ryan Burton, vice president of product strategy for Pax8, told CRN there were about 400 vendors on a wait list to join the marketplace and that five new vendors reach out per day.

A Renewed Commitment To Partners

With a technology-focused background, Chasin said he and his team will have their heads down focusing on innovation and execution to deliver more value to MSPs.

“We keep hammering this message, and it’s a first principle for Pax8, their growth is our growth,” he said. “This is why Pax8 Academy has been so successful, this is why Beyond is successful, we really mean it and we believe it. It's all about how do we make our partners more money, how do we save them money and how do we reduce the risk. That is, of course, the universal guidebook for any business but it's something we're passionate about in terms of how we can deliver value that addresses that for our partners day in and day out.

“The old model doesn’t work anymore,” he added. “The opportunity is here to paint the picture of the future and actually deliver it, and that's what we're going to do.”