Active vs. Joined Partners: The Overlooked Risk in Vendor Programs

Dave Sobel (0:02)

Nancy Henriquez looked at a backup company and saw a crowded market she had no interest in entering. Then she looked at its partner list and put her life savings into it. This is The Business of Tech, I'm Dave Sobel.

Before we start, a disclosure. I own Small Biz Thoughts and IT Service Provider University, which sell community and education to MSPs. Today's argument is that the channel doesn't measure whether its partner survived and my business benefits from that argument. The person at the center of today's story also leads a community in the space where I compete. So discount my conclusion as much as you like. Keep the facts. They're sourced.

Most of what this show covers starts as someone else's reporting. Today's starts with ours. Start with Dr. Backup, the cloud backup provider Mitch Rom founded in 2002 It has been sold. The buyer is Hasvara, a Dallas-based company that Nancy Henriquez and Thomas Reichten created for the deal. The deal was announced September 18th and terms were not disclosed. The company keeps its name and now operates as Dr. Backup, a Hasvara company. Rom stays on as a strategic advisor for a year. Reichten is chief operating officer with a 15% stake. Henriquez did not want to buy a backup company. She told Business of Tech she saw a crowded category full of good products and large competitors. In her words, I didn't see myself as a David among Goliaths.

The partner program changed her mind. Truly, she said, the partners is why.

So look at the partners. Dr. Backup's marketing describes a pro-partner program of more than 300 IT consultants. Enriquez told us about 125 are active today. The 300 figure counts everyone who has joined since the program began. The rest retired, closed their businesses, went back to corporate jobs, or went to work for other MSPs. More than half of everyone who ever signed up is gone, and the public number still counts them. Enriquez treats that gap as the reason for the deal. If those partners had had someone to mentor them, to guide them and build a community around them, she asks, would their stories have been different? Her plan is to rebuild the program through an MSP owner's lens, with coaching built in, so partners get help growing their businesses and not just a product to resell. For now, the program runs as is. She describes what backup means from the operator's chair. An incident hits a customer, and the first thought is, when was the last time I tested the recovery?

Now, the money. The acquisition is bootstrapped. Enrique said she put her life savings into it, and she turned down an early investor because she wanted full control over direction. I didn't want this story to be told from a perspective of capital, she said, but that of community first. She says Dr. Backup is profitable and has been all along, and those profits go back into the partners. We asked whether competitors could use that financial structure against her in partner conversations. Her answer was short, quote, competitors will always compete on what they can, and I will focus on building up our partners, end quote. Then the timing. Before the deal, Enriquez stepped away from work to care for her grandmother, who entered hospice and died in January. Enriquez had been interviewing for community roles in the channel, and her grandmother made her promise to return to ownership instead. The doctor backup opportunity arrived about a month later. There's one question she didn't dodge. Enriquez is head of community at MSB Unplugged, and she has publicly criticized vendors who build communities and then turn them into sales channels. Now she owns a vendor. She says she'll keep that community independent, and she has asked the community to hold her to it. The test she has set herself is measurable, whether those 125 partners stay, grow, and run better businesses. We'll check back in a year. So one company has two numbers, 300 who joined, and 125 still there. Almost nobody else in the channel publishes the second one, and that's worth asking about.

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This episode is supported by U-Secure. Across your client base, you have identities with exposed credentials, excessive access, and higher target value. The hard part is seeing where those conditions converge on the same identity.

U-Health from U-Secure connects these risk signals around each identity and surfaces high-risk combinations as toxic combinations. It shows where human risk is concentrated across your tenants, helps your team know what to fix first, and provides evidence of progress over time. U-Secure works with over 2,200 MSPs and 16,000 organizations worldwide. Know where human risk is concentrated and what to fix first. usecure.io/u-help.