Kaseya's Fred Voccola: Platform Update to Make Kaseya 365 'Look Small'Kaseya's Fred Voccola: Platform Update to Make Kaseya 365 'Look Small'

Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola's decision to step down as leader resulted from a months-long process of transition that he hopes will usher in one of Kaseya's biggest years to date.

Voccola shocked the industry with what appeared to be a sudden decision last month to step down as CEO after a 10-year run without a clear successor in place, leading many to speculate about the executive's plans and what led to the decision. Was he stepping down due to personal issues, or were there conflicts of interest elsewhere?

The Kaseya CEO dismissed the claims, stating that it was simply his time and that his departure was done for transparency for partners and customers alike. Without revealing future plans beyond serving as vice chair of the IT software management's board, he told Channel Futures that he's excited about what Kaseya has planned in the coming year, teasing something "even bigger" than the successful launch of the Kaseya 365 subscription service last year.

Channel Futures got a chance to sit down with Voccola to discuss his departure, the company's transition plans and its future.

Channel Futures: What's the story behind your decision to step down as CEO of Kaseya?

Fred Voccola: While the announcement may appear sudden, it's been a process that was seven or eight months in the making. This journey has been over 10-and-a-half years, almost an 11-year total journey, because it started before I took over as CEO, and it's a legit 80-hour-a-week job. When we took over Kaseya 10-plus years ago, it was a very different and struggling company, and it's been a long journey. So after we released Kaseya 365, I told the board, "It's about time that I go make a change, and I should start looking at stepping down." So that was around May 2024. A week or two later, we started putting things in place. Over the last nine months, we've upgraded our executive team substantially with a new COO, CRO, CPO and a new CMO. We brought on 15 or 16 people through promotions and from the outside to shore up the team.

Related:MSPs Praise Fred Voccola Post-Departure, Urge Change

At the beginning of the year, we announced my departure before hiring my successor. And that was done intentionally for the sake of transparency.

CF: What will your new role as vice chairman look like going forward?

FV: I will still be responsible for strategy, product direction, company direction and all of that. I'll also be leading the efforts to hire our next CEO, so as we don't shock people and freak them out when the decision is made. But we are actively running the business as usual. These include board meetings. I'm just not involved in things like the reviews of developers, the standups or the day-to-day things that a CEO does. These will be handed off to the new CEO.

Related:Kaseya CEO Steps Down in Sudden Change

CF: Do you expect ever to step away from Kaseya?

FV: I'm Kaseya's largest individual shareholder. It's my baby, and I have a very significant financial incentive to make sure that my baby grows up to be a very, very successful business. With the change in roles, my hours have decreased from 80 hours a week to 50 hours. However, I still have customer conversations and am very involved in looking at Kaseya's M&A decisions and strategies.

CF: What are Kaseya's plans for hiring a new CEO?

FV: We've decided to look outside [Kaseya] primarily. One of the things that we are very proud of at Kaseya is that we have a culture where we develop people and take chances on people that others would not hire. We did look internally, but I think there are maybe four or five people in the world who have run a company like this. Whoever comes on board, this is their company. They're the CEO, so they're going to run it as as as they see fit. But when they join us, they'll come into an extraordinary situation where the team is strong and the momentum is fantastic.

Related:Kaseya CEO Voccola: MSPs Deserve Better Margins

CF: How do you imagine your relationship with the new CEO will look like considering your term of more than 10 years at the company?

FV: When the new CEO comes on board, they're the CEO, and I'm the vice chair. My job is to make sure to help that CEO in any way that I can. It is not to manage the company; it's to guide the strategy and the direction, overseeing it as any board member would. So this should be easy to do.

CF: What are some key decisions that you made during your tenure that helped really define Kaseya?

FV: Our latest product, Kaseya 365, is one of the biggest changing factors for the company. Kaseya 365 changed the unit economics of the MSP industry forever. MSPs that are powered by Kaseya 365 are running at about a 35% profit margin. It totally changed the industry. This one thing is something that I'm most proud of since we delivered on our promise to fund to deliver an all-in-one, purpose-built solution for MSPs that changes their unit economics. I think when we look at two or three years from now, if an MSP isn't using Kaseya 365, I don't know if they'll be able to survive. I don't believe that the MSPs that are not entirely on this platform will be competitive in three years from now.

CF: What should partners expect from Kaseya the rest of the year?

FV: 2025 might be the second most crucial year in the company's history. The first was in 2015, when we first unveiled, unveiled our strategy for what would become Kaseya 365. This year is just so important because we have to make Kaseya, and we will make Kaseya, as a company, the easiest organization to do business with. We have an announcement coming in Las Vegas at our customer conference about a key part of our platform that will make the announcement of Kaseya 365 Endpoint and User look small. This will be the end game of end games. This will finally deliver on the capability for MSPs to automate 50-60% of what they do at a fraction of the cost of what they're doing for them.