Part 2 with Brandon Bruce, Co-Founder of Cirrus Insight and Uncat

**Brandon Bruce** (0:03)
I mean, we just had a tremendous fun at work. I mean, I always remember, oh, it was on a second floor in Merrillville where we started the company, so you had to go up these wooden stairs to get into the building. I always remember, I always ran up the stairs. And it's like, okay, because I'm young and I have plenty of energy, but also like, I was eager to bust in the door, right? And it's like, let's go. Like, it's the morning, let's get into it. We already got 100 emails from customers in the inbox, we've got sales increase, we got customer support to do.
And then we've got just hacking. Let's go try to figure out, how do we get out to more customers?

**Paul Sponcia** (0:35)
From the IT Company, it's Made Right Here, the stories of East Tennessee founders, creators and builders. From the idea behind it, to the impact it had on the community, their employees and their personal lives. We're taking you behind the scenes of the movements they built.
I'm Paul Sponsia. And on today's episode, we have part two of my chat with Brandon Bruce, co-founder of Cirrus Insight and Uncat. Today, we get to hear the story of building Cirrus Insight as well as Exit, and now the launch of Uncat.

**Brandon Bruce** (1:10)
You know, I mean, I think the biggest challenge that we faced and having talked with a lot of entrepreneurs around the country, it's really the same here as it is everywhere, is connecting with the best and the right talent. You know, for us, it wasn't a matter of looking around at the other software startups and trying to attract some of the people from there to us, because there weren't a lot of other software startups when we were coming up. There are a lot more now, which is exciting, I think. You know, fast forward eight, 10 years, there's a lot more software startups in Knoxville than there were when we launched. But at that time, I think, you know, really it was, it was a matter of matchmaking. So I always said, you know, we're out looking for people that want to be part of a high growth, exciting, let's work all the time and see where we can take this thing company.
And for those people that were looking for the same thing, and so it was just a matter of us putting the word out and looking for those people and making sure they knew where to find us. You know, as a result, I think that we were very lucky in that respect is that there are a lot of great, you know, hardworking, talented folks in our community because we have colleges and universities here, because we have a lot of other great companies. So, you know, our team came in and they were just excited. Like, let's go hit it. And they knew this is something that's gonna be exciting. We get to serve customers. Customers are excited to use our application. So it wasn't, it's not a hard sell type company. This is what we do. This is how we can help.
You know, do you wanna join us on this journey? Kind of approached it. Chip on shoulder can be interpreted as kind of a bad thing, but I think it was a motivator. It's like, hey, we're gonna run a software company. We're gonna run it from where we want to, and that's gonna be here, and we're gonna go out and provide the best possible service. And I found it was a great way to connect with customers. Like, sure, 25% of our customers were in San Francisco.
Another probably 10, 15%, maybe were in New York. Some of our largest customers were in the UK and France and Australia.
But the long tail of our customers were not in those big areas. These were companies from all over the country doing all sorts of interesting things, professional service companies, manufacturers, banks, et cetera. And so, you know, they're located in Oklahoma City and Omaha, right? So when they call them, we're like, hey, we're in Knoxville. It's like, oh, awesome.
You know, we're also in a similar place. Like, so we get each other and we're gonna have great customer service. We're gonna be here 24 hours if you guys need anything. I think people really liked to work with our team because of that. I mean, on the one hand, in a bigger city, there's just more people, full stops.
With more density comes more choice and there's more folks that may apply or be interested in joining. At the same time, you know, we never really had to deal with the challenge that many of the companies that I talk with in those big markets deal with, which is attrition and poaching, right? So someone joins company A and then two months later, it's like, oh, company B looks more exciting. I mean, jump over there and it's just across the street and there's ample jobs there. You know, we didn't have that. So we had tremendous, you know, loyalty.