Ruby
Hello, everybody. I'm here with Klaus from Infinigate, Klaus lovely to meet you. And Klaus is the CEO of Infinigate and Infinigate is a value-added distributor of cybersecurity solutions. With over a thousand employees across 50 countries covering the EMEA region, he's been doing that since 2018. He's got over 30 years of experience in the I.T. Channel industry. He's worked for the likes of Tech Data Nortel, and Logitech and is currently on his second PE journey, having gone through the sale of Infinigate from HIG and they were recently acquired by Bridgepoint.
Ruby
Lovely to meet you. Thank you for making the time to have a conversation with us.
Klaus
Thank you very much. Nice to meet you, Ruby.
Ruby
So, my first question to you is how did you prepare for your first CEO position as part of the PE Backed software company considering you hadn't had that experience before?
Klaus
Yeah, very good question. I mean, I was really trying to find my way through to figure out how a PE Backed company works. You know, I was reaching out to people who did it before. So, I was talking to people who have worked in the PE-backed business, not necessarily software business, but high transaction business.
Klaus
And I was reaching out for advice. And luckily, I have a broad network of people and I got some really good advice and I think that's the best preparation to talk to people, reach out to them. And I've been reaching out also to people outside of my network. And usually, you know, people are very helpful when you ask for help.
Klaus
And that was actually very valuable for me to get that advice from people who have done it.
Ruby
Well, interesting enough, in previous positions, you've led the EMEA arm of large international entities rather than being the chief in charge of the whole outfit, what counsel would you provide others that are in a similar position to you but the position, similar position to what you were in then and are looking to embark on a first time CEO role?
Klaus
Yeah, it's a huge step obviously, you know, when you work for a large corporation and you have partly a responsibility, but not the full responsibility. So that's a huge step I think it goes along with the first question a little bit, you know, look for advice from people who have done it. But I think, you know, the big step, what you do is basically that you're responsible for virtually everything there is.
Klaus
At the same time, you know, you don't work a lot operationally anymore. So, the key, I think is to have great people around you who are capable and willing to do the job. You know, the first advice would be to create a great team around you and stay away from operational work because you need to work through an organization, you know, rather than, you know, running operational work by yourself.
Klaus
So that team, you create around yourself is basically the basis for your own success later on.
Ruby
OK, that's very interesting. And do you think creating a team that understands the PE hustle is important or is it more important that they understand how to get the business to deliver its outcomes?
Klaus
I think it's a twofold, you know, solution there. You need people who understand PE'S because PE'S act obviously different than when you work in the private sector in a public company. And obviously, people need to get the job done. And I would say the speed of execution is a lot higher than in the companies now which are listed.
Klaus
And also, I would say the requirement to deliver is obviously also very high because you're constantly exposed to people who want to know how the business is running and you're exposed to people who know the business and that basically, you know, know practically every number. And I think that's super important that you have people who understand the PE side that that's also one piece of advice.
Klaus
I would say, you know, and look for people around you who understand the PE side.
Ruby
OK, interesting. And one of the things that you obviously experience during this journey with the two PE houses, HIG and then Bridgepoint is just to throw a curveball in there. You're obviously going through the pandemic. Yes. Which meant the way we work and interact with our clients and customers and in turn changed and when I speak to people, they say that certain learnings have gone from that.
Ruby
So my question to you would be what learnings have the virtual environment engendered coming out of the pandemic environment? What changes did you see that you made that remained permanent going forward?
Klaus
Yeah, that's a huge change from my perspective. You know, we are in software distribution mainly. And so, there's you know, only a virtual product overall. I would see from the organization's point of view, that productivity increased massively. People are contributing wherever they are at home, in the office, on the road, and travelling. And also, collaboration actually has increased a lot because people are used to video calls and always people from different locations at any time as often as they like.
Klaus
You know you don't need to hop into a plane and fly somewhere. So I think productivity has massively increased. I think people have more freedom, you know, where they work and what they do. But also on the other side, I've noticed that you know, people who are a bit introverted, need help to have their voices heard much more than in an office environment.
Klaus
So, I think that's always important as a leader, you know, to encourage people to contribute in this virtual environment. And what has certainly changed is that people are now you know, coming into the office or staying at home. And you need to find a way, obviously, how that's organized. But there's much more freedom for people to spend their time, whether they want to spend it in the office or at home.
Klaus
But from a pure, I would say, organizational point of view, the productivity has for us increased massively.
Ruby
Interesting. And just on that question, because you have a great EMEA footprint, it's a little bit of an unfair question, but I'm curious, are they certain geographies that have adapted to that hybrid model better than others?
Klaus
They are different, obviously, if that's a country based or because we have, you know, just different characters as leaders in those different countries. Very hard to say but there are differences. Obviously, I would say in Germany in general, people like to get back in the office. When you look at the UK, for example, I think people, you know, they're much more flexible when it comes to where they want to work.
Klaus
So there are certainly differences. But I think at the end, what I see across the whole organization you know, people want to achieve something. So the drive for results has basically stayed or even increased during the pandemic I think the pandemic was a bit of a motivation for people to really, you know, try to drive results as hard as possible because in the beginning, nobody knew how this is going to end, you know, and people were very motivated.
Klaus
They saw that the results came in and they were even more motivated to, you know, drive results and I think that is across all geographies visible. But from flexibility, I would say some countries are different from others.
Ruby
OK, and, you know, CEO with two PE-backed organizations and the business has really grown the footprint has significantly sort of scale. I mean, if you wouldn't mind, could you just highlight that scaling journey from when you first took over Infinigate to where it is now? And from that added to that, I'd probably ask you, what's been your most significant learning as a CEO?
Klaus
Yeah. Very good question. I mean, we had a real elevator journey in terms of growth going from 300 million to 2.2 billion within four or five years. So that's, that's a huge change. So, the biggest change is actually the organization and people need to get lifted up to the new level of, of a company when you have a 2.2 billion business across 50 countries versus 11 countries and 300 million, you need to have the systems in place.
Klaus
You need to have the structures in place. You need to have, you know, a more complicated governance model, for example. And I would say in the beginning I was just standing at the coffee machine with my colleague, and we discussed things and then we did it. You know, today we have steering committees, governance rules, et cetera, et cetera.
Klaus
So that change is massive. And I would say either you have people who have been in that kind of a size of the business already, or you need to bring people in and, you know, let them contribute to that growth. Also, you would need to have some advice, you know, from outside you know, how companies are run on that size.
Klaus
I mean, I've been running a business of that size when I was at tech data. So, I knew where we were getting in. But the changes are massive on people, organizations, systems, structures, and governance model on every level. And it needs to be managed very tightly
Ruby
So, Klaus, some would say PE houses are all the same. And now having worked for both HIG and Bridgepoint, how would you differentiate them? How would you say that differently?
Klaus
Yeah, Ruby very good question. Again, there are huge differences obviously between those companies and both are great. You know, HIG and Bridgepoint because they focus on certain areas. You know, HIG is more for the mid-cap and Bridgepoint for bigger companies so that differentiate themselves, obviously based on, you know, the size of the business. And I would say the biggest differentiation is when the big business becomes bigger as we went through this massive growth, you basically need to deliver to your private equity on a much more granular basis.
Klaus
You know, the business analysis, you need to think a lot about how you give all the analytical data in the right fashion and shape and form to the private equity so you can steer the business together and I think that's the biggest differentiation HIG I think did a great job in understanding the business and guiding us through certain areas like small acquisition and, you know, backing us really up on that area because we didn't have a lot of experience in doing that.
Klaus
Whereas on Bridgepoint, you know, they guided us through to become a more professional company in the sense of having the systems, the reports, the processes, the governance structure in place. And they helped us massively to become a much more professional structure and professional organization. And that's really helpful for us as a fast-growing company to have people around us who have seen that probably many times already the in a similar fashion.
Ruby
Thank you. I think I'd like to ask a quick cheeky question, if I may, which is against the economic political backdrop that we're sort of all experiencing across Europe.
Ruby
If you look at the value creation plan that you have in place today, how do you think it will be impacted or do you think there'll be any significant impact on your growth over the next well, under this journey, but specifically over the next 12 to 24 months?
Klaus
Yeah, I mean cybersecurity is and is an area which has tremendous growth and with the, let's say, geopolitical environment currently it accelerates. And yes, that will be of course tougher times when it comes to financing business and interest rates are going up. But at the same time, you know, the threat landscape in the whole cybersecurity area is almost exploding and it really reaches into the small and medium businesses in the meantime.
Klaus
So, there's a lot of space for growth. We are set up for growth and I think we can grab a lot of that growth, even though maybe that's a storm outside, the inherent growth of the cybersecurity space will give us already between, I would say ten and 15% growth naturally. And then that's the market growth, you know, and let's say you execute your business a bit better than your competitors.
Klaus
You know, you're easily in the range of 20, 25% growth. And I would expect that we deliver that even though there's maybe a tougher economic geopolitical crisis, we should not be affected by that in a massive way. You should continue growing the company quite significantly, even though there are headwinds ahead of us.
Ruby
I like that positive optimism as we're heading towards the storm and what's next for you. Klaus, after you've concluded this journey with Bridgepoint, you know you've got some real wealth of experience. What would you say you can see yourself doing at the end of this term?
Klaus
Yeah, I will obviously continue with the company for a while, you know, to take the company to the next level. But there will be at some point in time, you know, the time coming up there. I want to do something different, obviously. And yeah, I've been blessed with the experience I've been able to accumulate over time, you know, would obviously like to go more to into non-execs executive roles, you know, boards, board roles to help companies who maybe just go through the same kind of cycle and, you know, help them to manage the growth and their organization the challenges.
Klaus
That would be certainly one of my future, you know, tasks I would like to take on and profit basically from the experience I've been going through in the last couple of years to get into this new phase of my life at some point in time.
Ruby
Thank you. I think, you know, if I look at most of the tech companies we work with today, there isn't a geographical barrier I mean, you are European. If you're a single territory, you know, your customers aren't you know, you are expanding and you know that transatlantic link is developing and becoming stronger and stronger. I think there's a wealth of experience with the size and scale of business that you run, that you could bring.
Ruby
And that situation, the experience you've been through would be interesting. Well. look, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much for your time. And, you know, I look forward to seeing how Infinigate continues to grow and prosper.
Klaus
Yeah, thank you very much. Ruby was always very nice talking to you and yeah, let's see how it evolves. But I'm very optimistic. This company offers a lot for the future and looking forward also to the next couple of years.
Ruby
Thank you.
Klaus
Thank you.
