Interview with Erik Degiorgi, Founder and CEO of NetSpeek
Tell Us About Your Journey
Yeah, it’s definitely a bit circuitous. I’ve worn quite a few hats in my adult life, but I’ve always been really interested and building things. So I spent some time early on as a young man in the military, and then I got out, and actually my father and I started our first company. It was a hardware company that evolved into a kind of hardware-software company, but embedded computing. I did that for quite a while, about a decade and that’s kind of how I cut my teeth kind of in tech and growing businesses. And I actually took a step back from that and decided I wanted to build furniture. So I did that for a while, started a furniture business. And then I was drawn back into tech a few years ago, and that’s, you know, kind of around the time where we came up with the idea for what’s become NetSpeek, and we got that company off the ground, launching it last year, and kind of here we are today, fully in the market.
What Is the History of NetSpeek?
We’ve developed a vertically integrated AI that deploys into those networks, and can observe the technologies, can control the technologies, and can work alongside human operators to essentially assume a lot of the kind of mundane and redundant Tier 1 and Tier 2 support activities. And so how we kind of came into that was in my previous experience, I was in a tangential industry, and we were aware that there were a lot of problems with people trying to manage those spaces. And so we started to try to build tools for those operators. We took a step back and realized we could actually build, in some sense, the network operator. So what we did is we started building software technology in a SaaS platform that could be deployed into those networks that was centered around this kind of superhuman AI intelligence that could monitor and manage all of those technologies kind of 365 days a year.
What Motivates You?
I’m not a kind of person that can ever be bored. I’m the kind of person that always wants to go and learn how things work and build things, and surround myself with like-minded people that want to do that. That’s really what’s behind my professional work, is wanting to just be in scenarios where you have people sitting around saying, let’s create something that just doesn’t exist and let’s figure out how to do that really intelligently. And in the context of business, let’s bring it to market and create a business out of that. What was really underneath all of that is just the desire and the motivation to, you know, keep learning, keep building, and just be excited around a lot of excited people doing the same thing.
What Challenges Have You Faced?
There’s different things, different challenges at different stages. Certainly, discipline is a big challenge when you’re doing something new, and you take some of that kind of creative energy and creative mindset, and you’re building things that don’t exist. It’s very easy to be pulled in a lot of different directions. And so being able to have that North Star and say, this is what we’re going after, and not be totally removed from the opportunity to pivot and move and adapt— of course you have to do that— but to still main, you know, develop and maintain that North Star and be disciplined enough to not chase the next exciting thing that comes, because there’s a lot of them. I mean, even just with our platform and product, we’ll bring it to a lot of customers, “hey, this is amazing, we want this, but can you also do this, or can you do that?” And say, well, maybe, but right now let’s just solve these problems at hand. And, you know, not just having the internal and personal discipline, but building an environment where the entire team stays disciplined, I think, is very challenging.
What Advice Can You Offer to Other Entrepreneurs?
I honestly find it challenging to answer that question a lot of times because, you know, who am I to offer advice? But while you want to surround yourself with an extraordinary team and people and hear— and even especially, you know, fundraising — how many times you’re trying to start a business, you’re going to go through this dozens and dozens of times, and you’re going to hear lots of different feedback from different people and different perspectives. But you still have to kind of follow your instincts and, again, drive things forward. Hear everyone, assimilate all the information that you’re getting, filter through it, but press forward as much as possible. In that same sense, there’s no way to accomplish anything of meaning really alone, so surrounding yourself with the best people, be discerning, like with who you let in. My best days end when I feel like the team has everything under control.
Where Do You See NetSpeek in 3-5 Years?
Thinking 3 to 5 years ahead for an early-stage AI company is really challenging. We have this kind of first-to-market or, you know, first mover advantage in our market. So hopefully we can exploit that as much as possible and become the market leader in this category that we’re defining. And then, you know, are there opportunities to move into tangential markets? You know, we’re talking about collaboration spaces, you know, building management is right there, you have a harder IT. So you have — there’s lots of opportunities where you have these kind of networks, unified application to bring them all together. So I think there’ll be a natural move to expanding into some of those different applications.
What Value Has Gesmer Updegrove Provided to NetSpeek?
We could do a whole interview on just the value with Gesmer— I’ve been involved with the organization as a client for over a decade in different businesses, and, you know, there’s, there’s the very kind of tangible kind of tactile, hard business things. But I think there’s so much more that I’ve gained over the years. Gesmer is very clearly thinking long-term. They’re investing in their partners, in their clients, and I have definitely benefited from that. When I might need something that is not— I may just need advice and guidance and mentorship, and I’ve felt very fortunate to be able to. I’ve gotten to know many of the partners over the years, and everyone has been supportive whether or not it’s on the clock. And I think that’s unique to the organization. Always, always answer the phone, always picked it up, even if whether it is or isn’t a billable hour is almost like secondary to that. So I’ve felt very supported from the very early days.
Why Go With Gesmer?
Why I go with Gesmer is really because I feel it’s the center of a community. I can go and I can, you know, call up someone here at Gesmer and it has nothing to do with legal advice. I might need accounting help or something like that, or I might need to find a new office space and I can say, who should I be talking to? And they’ll be, here you go, here’s the person, here’s the contact, here’s the person within the community that can help support you. So there is very much this, this long-term, let’s rise the tide, let’s do it for companies and individuals, but let’s just do it for the overall community, irrespective of whether there might be an immediate kind of tangible benefit. And that’s, I think, that’s very special and very unique.
