Framework Communications' John Fakhoury: A Richard Branson-esque Story

**Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of profiles featuring Channel Partners advisory board members. Meet Fakhoury and the rest of the board by attending Channel Partners Evolution, Aug. 14-17, in Washington, D.C. Register here.**

For a guy whose background was in finance, John Fakhoury’s decision to start a managed service provider was simple: He hated IT.

The founder and CEO of Chicago-based Framework Communications says he set out with the goal of reversing the sometimes onerous task of interacting with IT departments.

“No one ever went home and said, ‘Hey honey, today at work I called IT, and they were awesome!’” Fakhoury told Channel Partners. “… Most organizations are scared of IT; most organizations are hindered because IT is like the big, scary, ugly, costly gorilla.”

He reports that things are going well with the company eight years into his first entrepreneurial stint. There’s been an evolution of challenges and opportunities for a company providing IT services in Framework’s nearly 10 years in business, he said.

First, workforces are becoming younger and thus creating demand for new technologies.

“They expect everything to be connected; they expect to be connected from wherever they are in the world and they expect simplicity of interfaces, if you will,” he said.

Another significant shift is how cloud adaptation allows you to start a company with less capital than traditionally needed. It’s giving entrepreneurs opportunities they might not have had before, Fakhoury said.{ad}

A third big change has come with what Fakhoury calls the “explosion of bandwidth,” which impacted the capabilities of CLECs and telcos. There’s been a domino effect in which bandwidth growth allows for more connected endpoints, and as a result increases the need to take care of the “800-pound gorilla”: security.

“Security has always been a concern, but people are finally starting to monetize in that area. Mostly because CNN becomes your biggest advertiser every day with a news story,” he said.

Going Over the Falls

Like many people who have gotten involved in the channel, Fakhoury came out of school with little expectation of …

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… working in technology.

“It’s very similar to someone who goes to Niagara Falls and takes the kayak over the falls,” he said.

He graduated with a degree in accounting and finance 2006 and spent two years working for companies like Ernst & Young and Alvarez & Marshal. But during those two years he experienced something he said was similar to British businessman Richard Branson. Branson founded an airline after getting frustrated with British Airways, the biggest airline in the U.K. Fakhoury, on the other hand, had grown more and more frustrated with the way IT functioned.

“I felt like technology was awesome, but technology didn’t work awesome,” he said.

He was 24 years old at the time he founded his own company.

“Certainly I was the youngest guy in the room more times than not and laughed at more times than not,” he said. “I didn’t come up with a chip on my shoulder to prove anyone wrong. I was just trying to drive value and make some money and keep customers, employees and everyone happy.”

And being young wasn’t the only obstacle. Fakhoury was running a technology company – a field in which he had little experience.

The remedy for him – which he recommends to all – was to “stop focusing on being right.” That is, to emphasize doing the right things as opposed to trying to prove to others that you have the correct answers. He said letting go of that desire has helped him and his fellow workers to find their sweet spot.

“If you’re not worried about being right, then you’re going to be OK with hiring people that are smarter than you, and you’re going to be OK with being the stupidest person in the room,” he said. “And when you’re the stupidest person in the room and everyone’s on the same team, then that’s as good as your team can possibly do.”