Inacomp Acquires MSP 22Vets To Expand Mission To Reduce Veteran Suicides

‘I didn’t buy [22Vets] for financial reasons, and they’re very profitable. I bought it because I wanted to be able to evangelize what [it has] has done for several years within the Inacomp Group companies. … It’s not a financial windfall. It’s something much bigger than I am, much bigger than Inacomp. It’s a cause. It’s a mission,’ says Inacomp President and CEO Michael Kanan.

When IT solution provider Inacomp Technology Services in March acquired fellow MSP 22Vets Technologies, it wasn’t for the typical reason of expanding its customer base, its technology capabilities, or its geographic base.

Instead, the goal was purely philanthropical: Inacomp wanted to help prevent U.S. military veteran suicides.

Michael Kanan, president and CEO of Southfield, Mich.-based Inacomp, told CRN that he acquired a team of people who not only had strong IT backgrounds but who also were veterans dedicated to helping their fellow veterans.

“I acquired the people,” said Kanan (pictured above). “When I started down this journey with 22Vets, I found the people were as about as kind, human, genuine, and authentic as anything within any of the companies that I own. As I started to learn more about what they do, not from a technology perspective, although they do have a very, very good business in some of the practices that CRN writes about every day, they have a mission and a purpose. That is something in my 43 years I have not really been part of.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

22Vets is the founder and primary supporter of the 22Vets Foundation. The name of that foundation, as well as the solution provider itself, stems from the fact that 22 veterans were committing suicide each day in 2017, when they were founded, Kanan said.

“The focus on helping prevent veteran suicides was one of the driving reasons why I acquired 22Vets,” he said. “Other than, we also looked at the people, obviously, which was significant because they were a cultural and a meaningful fit, and they certainly have all the tactical skills. But the majority of their profits after expenses are put right into what they call Operation Wild Horse.”

Operation Wild Horse is a program of the 22Vets-sponsored non-profit Veterans R&R, or Release and Relief, Kanan said.

“Operation Wild Horse brings these two kindred spirits who really don’t have a means to be part of society,” he said. “One is a wild animal dealing with apex predators every day, all day. And there are veterans who are dealing with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and have real challenges dealing with society. And when you bring these two together, it is the most remarkable thing you have ever seen.”

The acquisition of 22Vets wasn’t all about the mission. Kanan said the company, which was listed at No. 85 on the CRN 2024 Fast Growth 150, provides IT services primarily around cybersecurity to the SLED (state and local government and education) and is profitable.

“I plan to enhance their particular cybersecurity and physical security managed IT services into what the Inacomp group of companies does today,” he said. “And they will be able to take advantage of the assets that I have from a manufacturing perspective, from a human perspective, all the skillsets we have which will amplify what they do. And the Inacomp group companies will also be able to utilize what they bring to the table.”

Even so, the mission is the most important part, Kanan said.

“First and foremost, the mission is to eradicate suicide among our servicemen and women that’s averaging 22 per day,” he said.

Kanan has been in IT for 43 years and is credited with pioneering the retail business of personal computers, but this mission more than anything has touched his heart, he said.

“Rob [Purcell, 22Vets president and chief mission officer] is the mission officer who is trying to eradicate suicide of these men and women who have served in the Army, and he can articulate it in a way that will just pull you into it. And I’m just going to say this: There’s not anybody that I know in this space, small or big, from the CEO of TD Synnex to a small MSP, who does not want to be part of this.”

Indeed, TD Synnex CEO Patrick Zammit is the executive sponsor and executive chairman of the 22Vets Foundation and the Rosie Network. Both organizations are also sponsored by TD Synnex, Kanan said. Operation Wild Horse is the primary recipient of funding from 22Vets Foundation’s, but the organization supports other organizations including R&R Outdoors and the Rosie Network, which is a 501(c)3 organization that trains and mentors active-duty personnel and veterans and their spouses to become entrepreneurs.

Kanan expects to evangelize the work 22Vets does with those various organizations well beyond the Inacomp Technologies business.

“I’m a serial entrepreneur,” he said. “I own everything from car dealerships to cannabis businesses to multiple tech companies and funeral homes. I probably own 13 or 14 different companies, and a bunch of them are under the Inacomp Group of companies. But now, for the Inacomp Group companies and all of the other entities, I’m going to have 22Vets in the middle of it all, evangelizing it northeast, south, and west with each and every one of these companies and the people that are in them so it becomes something that will make everyone feel great about being part of Inacomp.”

22Vets’ Purcell (pictured directly above) told CRN that he and a Marine veteran started the non-profit Veterans R&R to help local veterans deal with PTSD and combat stress disorder. Over the years, that program grew to serve thousands of veterans and military family members. In 2017, it created a new program called Operation Wild Horse which works with the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management to adopt rescued wild mustangs.

“Through that program, we have one of the top mustang horse trainers in the country,” he said. “Her name is Patty Gruber, and she wanted to build a veterans program around connecting veterans who may be going through some of these challenges with these mustangs. You take an animal who’s been running from apex predators their entire life whose only other option is getting rounded up and taken to kill pens, and you have a veteran who is transitioning back into civilian life, trying to figure out what their purpose and identity are.”

During the COVID pandemic, Purcell and his partners started 22Vets, a for-profit company that could leverage their channel relationships to earn money to support their non-profit organizations.

“At the beginning, we were a very traditional value-added reseller, but we’ve quickly transformed into focusing in cyber, physical, managed, and integration services,” he said. “We came up with the name 22Vets because of the 22 veteran lives that are lost each day to suicide. We were concerned at the time that we might be leveraging somebody else’s tragedy to help grow our business. But we decided to be unapologetic about it and talk about it. So we put it right in the name. Our mission is to end veteran suicide.”

According to the American Military University, while the figure of 22 veterans committing suicide daily is commonly used, it was based on an old report and is actually much higher.

Purcell said his vision, along with that of Kanan, is to have veteran facilities or community centers all across the country.

“We’re not only providing a post-service purpose for our veterans, men and women, who took an oath so we can have freedom and opportunities we have, but also for students,” he said. “We learned through COVID that 12 million students didn’t have internet connectivity to get their homework done. We can solve some of these problems by doing business the way we traditionally do, because if all things are equal—us versus our competition, price, availability, solution sets—knowing that we’re making an immediate social impact for those heroes, why not give us the opportunity? We’ll earn the business. If we don’t earn the business, that’s mission failure for us. But if all things are equal, and we earn it, then we can continue to start seeing some of these issues in our community solved.”

Typically, 22Vets sends about 70 percent of its profits to its foundation, but last year sent 105 percent of its net profit to Operation Wild Horse, Purcell said.

Kanan said he expects to continue that kind of investment in the foundations supported by 22Vets.

“I didn’t buy it for financial reasons, and they’re very profitable,” he said. “I bought it because I wanted to be able to evangelize what Rob and company has done for several years within the Inacomp Group companies, because its purpose is at the fabric of what each and every one of us want to be part of. We want to tell that story in an authentic way because people stand up and they’re proud to be Americans, and they’re proud of what men and women in the services do for us. So it’s not a financial windfall. It’s something much bigger than I am, much bigger than Inacomp. It’s a cause. It’s a mission.”

With the current U.S. administration’s cutbacks in services to veterans, including cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), there has never been a better time for 22Vets and its foundation to exist because of the lack of veteran treatment that is happening today, Purcell said.

“Part of what we do is working very closely with the VA,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of good friends and folks over there where we do get some inside information on what’s happening. And regardless of the political strategy or whatever may be behind it, the fact is one out of three Federal workers is a veteran. There’s a lot of veterans now who are going to be unemployed. This will also impact the level of health care from the VA because of the lack of people they have. The VA, in the veteran community, is good or bad. I’ve never had better treatment than I received there, but we’ve talked to a lot of veterans that don’t even want to go in there. There’s a lack of resources for those veterans. That’s why there’s organizations like us.”