Kaseya announced today that Jim Lippie, former CEO of SaaS Alerts, which Kaseya acquired last fall, has been appointed chief product officer, replacing Ranjan Singh who left the company. As CPO, Lippie will help set the company’s innovation agenda and product strategy and lead development for the Kaseya 365 platform.
Lippie, who served as SVP and GM at Kaseya prior to taking the helm at SaaS Alerts, has over 20 years in the MSP ecosystem, including serving as CEO of Thrive Networks, a Boston-based MSP that experienced exponential growth during his tenure.
In this interview with MSP Success, Lippie says success in his new role requires “bifocal vision”—the ability to focus on improving current products while simultaneously driving innovation. He shares his plans to balance both perspectives, drawing on his experience as an MSP. From advancing the Kaseya 365 “franchise” to improving the customer experience, Lippie outlines a roadmap rooted in a drive to deliver what MSPs need. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
MSP Success: When we talked at DattoCon last fall, your role at Kaseya was still TBD. What led to you taking this position and what do you hope to accomplish?
James Lippie: After SaaS Alerts was acquired, I became chief innovation officer shortly after that, with a focus on running the security suite and the RMM suite, getting my arms around that portion of the business while still maintaining my leadership position at SaaS Alerts. It was great coming back to Kaseya and understanding all the things that had changed in the 4-1/2 years I was away.
Then the opportunity came up a few weeks ago to take on the role of chief product officer. It’s an opportunity to have a significant impact and what we do for our customers and our community.
We continue to operate SaaS Alerts as an incubated innovation hub around what we do on the security side. The team is fully intact. We’re releasing a lot of exciting new developments at Connect and the team is flourishing and doing quite well.
Ranjan [Singh] is moving on to a great opportunity that he felt like he couldn’t pass up. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ranjan and what he’s done for Kaseya. We wish him the very best.
MSP Success: Was former CEO Fred Voccola, now vice chairman, involved in your appointment?
Lippie: No.
MSP Success: What’s your first order of business?
Lippie: It’s going to be an extreme focus on innovation and transparency, starting with the Kaseya 365 franchise, making sure that we’re enhancing the features and functionality inside of 365 User and Endpoint while also enhancing the integrations. That’s a big focus and will always be.
Then we’re releasing a new Kaseya 365 license type at Connect [the Kaseya Connect conference taking place April 28-May 1 in Las Vegas], and will be releasing another portion of the Kaseya 365 franchise in September.
We’re also going to look at some strategic acquisitions to enhance what we’re doing with Kaseya 365 and other areas our customers have been asking us for.
MSP Success: When Kaseya announced the initial 365 license, we were told there was a four-part strategy. Is that still the case?
Lippie: Yes. Right now it’s four parts, but I view it as cornerstones, and I call what we’re doing with Kaseya 365 a franchise, just like a movie franchise like Star Wars. Each one of them builds on the last. There’s something new and different about each one, but there’s a thread weaved between all of them.
MSP Success: MSPs loved working with SaaS Alerts, and as you know, Kaseya doesn’t always get that same kind of love from some in the community. Will you be leveraging that SaaS Alerts goodwill to spread to the greater Kaseya community?
Lippie: The best way to put it is, we’re going to be looking at and evaluating all of our policies in how we interact with our customers in the community. Innovation isn’t just about product; it’s about the customer experience and the policies that dictate what a customer experience is. We’re going to evaluate everywhere that we can to make a meaningful difference in the lives of our customers That is something that I am really focused on because I was a customer. I started my journey 20 years ago in this space as a customer, so that’s the lens through which I look at every decision we will make, not as an employee of Kaseya, but as a customer first.
I don’t want to get into a lot of specifics because some of these things we’re going to be addressing on stage at Connect. But high level, [we’ll be] enhancing innovation around some of the products that we have today. One thing that’s frustrating for folks is that when they buy a product it doesn’t always work as advertised. I call that availability. So the best ability is availability. The availability of the features and functions they expected from us when they signed up. Making sure that is a priority is really important to our customers and certainly Kaseya. That’s something we’ve definitely heard and have taken to heart.
MSP Success: Let’s talk about the competitive landscape. As you know, ConnectWise has had leadership shakeups just like Kaseya. NinjaOne has a ton of money to spend and they’ve been spending it. N-nable made an acquisition not long ago and their leadership has remained stable. Is this a time for Kaseya to take advantage of what’s been going on out there?
Lippie: Kaseya needs to stay focused on what Kaseya can do best for our customers. We understand that there’s a lot of really good companies in our space. I’ve dealt with a lot of them over the years and have a lot of respect for those. We have to run our own race and be maniacally focused on what we do every single day. Everything else will take care of itself if we do that.
When you look out there, there’s a lot of competitors that are starting to adopt some of the philosophies that we have at Kaseya in terms of aggregating products and they’re even using some of our terminology. We feel like we’ve got a massive advantage in the fact that we started down this path so many years ago. We now have 42 different products and as we look to evolve into AI and bring some thoughtful product concepts to market around AI, we need to understand what the key to AI is—and that’s data. And nobody has more data. Think of how many products that we have and the data sources that we can reconcile and correlate.
MSP Success: Can you give me an update on the CEO search, and are you involved?
Lippie: I cannot. I am talking to some candidates. I will only I will say this. The response has been overwhelmingly positive in terms of the folks who are interested in this job, so we should all be optimistic.
MSP Success: Will you be giving the keynote at Connect?
Lippie: I will be involved in the keynote.
MSP Success: Will you be doing the “Hot Ones” on-stage interview with Sean Evans?
Lippie: No, there’s a rumor Gary Pica will be doing that. If it’s true, I will be in the front row for that one!
MSP Success: Anything I didn’t ask you that you feel our readers should know?
Lippie: I’ll say this. It’s really important in this role to have to have bifocal vision. What I mean is, make sure that we’re enhancing the quality of the existing products while innovating new ones. Those are two different skill sets, but they’re both very important. I know how important it is to understand, as a customer, that my partners have that thought process. That’s something that I’m looking forward to bringing to this role.
