Morgan Huber details the journey from the US to the UK and the successful launch of Pax8 EMEA.
The best ideas typically start as a doodle on the back of a napkin (or ‘serviette’, as we say in England). That is precisely where the dream for Pax8 EMEA was born. In 2019, Cole Knuth, then Director of Sales, and Wyatt Clay, who had recently joined Pax8 as a Cloud Generation Specialist, went for a coffee and noticed something. As US partner numbers were growing, so too were their email inboxes, full of requests from MSPs in the UK and Europe, eager to sign up with Pax8 and get a taste of success.
The pair suddenly realised that to truly become ‘the world’s favourite marketplace for technology professionals to buy cloud products’, they would need to expand the company’s availability on a global scale. So, working early in the mornings and late into the evenings to understand what it would take to support partners outside of America, this ambitious duo boarded their first flight to Bristol in the summer of 2020.
The demand was certainly there. After meeting with prospective partners and representatives from local government, it was clear what Bristol had to offer. As well as great university connections, strong links to London and an infectious creative energy, the city’s tech reputation was building. Fast forward to today, and Bristol has just been named the top city in CompTIA’s annual Tech Town Index, highlighting their ability to spot a trend.
In the following months, more eager expats followed suit, equipped with sales success (Matt Resch), training passion (Ryan Brown), solutions engineering (Thomas Welton), and all things partner and technical support (Anthony Tonetti).
Together, with Bristol-based sales leader Aaron Watts and Welsh entrepreneur Phylip Morgan, this small but determined team established the foundation of what we now know to be Pax8 EMEA.
I know how many late hours this team spent deciding how best to tell the Pax8 story to a new and rapidly growing channel market in EMEA. What’s always impressed me about this group, is their determination and hunger to achieve something special. Yes, there were challenges, like setting up the phone systems, but with every hurdle we found a solution and I believe this attitude and team culture are the fabric that makes our organisation what it is today.
Following a major acquisition in Farnborough and then two more in the Netherlands and the Baltics, the EMEA machine was up and running. Since first launching, our UK team has operated out of a shared workspace. Now, 20 months later, sitting in our brand new, dedicated Pax8 office space; it reminds me what it really takes to follow a dream – and for us that was passion, hard work and ambition.
As Matt Resch, Pax8 Channel Account Manager Team Lead, said to me recently, “The work was challenging, and the hours were long, but I truly felt like we had a dream team that brought all our unique talents to the table. It was what we needed to get it out of the park and into first gear.” I couldn’t agree with him more.
This is the team who lit the match and now, less than two years later, we are surrounded by nearly 300 regional team members who have joined this journey in pursuit of being the world’s favourite place to buy, sell, and manage cloud products. Shoulder to shoulder, we are all on a mission to bring a world-class Pax8 experience to partners across the globe and we are honoured to know that started here, in Bristol.
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