Update On Channel Angels' First Investment: Q&A With Zorus CEO Ian McChord
The initial seeds for Channel Angels were planted in 2019, and our first group investment arrived in Q1 of 2020. That first deal involved seed funding for Zorus, a cybersecurity startup focused on the MSP industry.
Four accredited investors — namely, Gerwai Todd, Kevin Blake, Lloyd Wolf and Joe Panettieri (that’s me) — embraced the Channel Angels funding model. Indeed, we pooled our money to invest in Zorus in early 2020, and we publicly announced the funding in June of 2020.
Fast forward to July 2023. Channel Angels has now invested in more than 20 technology startups that sell to and through MSPs, MSSPs and IT service providers (ITSP). Meanwhile, Zorus has grown and evolved quite a bit. Among the key moves to note: Datto veteran Ian McChord joined as CEO in October 2020. And ConnectWise veteran Brett Cheloff arrived as CTO in March 2022.
As we push into the second half of 2023, our angel investors wanted to know what’s truly “new” at Zorus. Seeking answers, I caught up with CEO Ian McChord over email. Here’s a recap of our conversation.
Interview: Zorus CEO Ian McChord
Channel Angels: You and your team recently provided Channel Angels with some impressive business updates. But the last time I publicly shared updates about Zorus was in December 2021 — when Zorus announced the series A funding round. How has the company evolved since that time?
Ian McChord, CEO, Zorus
Zorus CEO Ian McChord: The quote I gave in 2021 ended with the sentence “What we can do to protect users and their businesses on top of the Zorus filtering agent is almost limitless.” In the year and a half since then we have built a tremendous amount of functionality to our core products. As the IT world has shifted to a “connected everywhere” landscape we have added features that expose a user's engagement with the technology stack.
Channel Angels: That word ‘engagement’ can mean different things to different people. From your point of view, what is engagement and how can it help MSPs?
McChord: Engagement is essentially how a user interacts with software and how they use technology to do their job. In the past most MSPs center their business around the hardware and software that a client needs. We at Zorus feel the future of MSP is a more user centered focus. The software and security needed to protect the business should be tailored to the users and their specific needs and usage patterns.
Channel Angels: Tell me a bit about your R&D. What new innovations has the team developed?
McChord: We recently released Zorus Network Security — network level filtering which allows MSPs to protect devices they may not manage or that our agent is not deployed to on networks they need to keep secured. Common examples of this are guest networks MSPs set up for their customers or IoT devices on networks they can deploy to. The network filtering is easy to deploy and billed at the same price as agents. This is an important milestone for us to guarantee MSPs of all sizes that they can go fleetwide with filtering protection no matter what devices they support.
Channel Angels: In addition to delivering that release, what were your key priorities for Zorus heading into 2023?
McChord: This year is all about expanding our MSP base and helping MSPs protect users plus gain more insights into how clients use the IT stack that the MSP deploys. This can differentiate MSPs plus expand the opportunity for project work down the line.
Channel Angels: Have you evolved those priorities in recent months? If so, what evolved and why?
McChord: We have gotten more aggressive with pricing so that MSPs can switch to Zorus without needing to go to the client for more resources. We also have added new reporting capabilities to enhance the value that MSPs can bring to clients during their QBRs or SBRs.
Channel Angels: For partners that want to test the Zorus platform, what first-steps do you recommend?
McChord: Head to zorustech.com and grab a time to 1:1 demo the product. Its really incredible how different we are from other DNS vendors. We are taking a product which I think other vendors have stopped innovating on and added tons of new ways to protect the user as well as track their engagement. Having more data on users helps MSPs build a smart stack for their clients. We do all of this for a similar price to just DNS filtering.
Special thanks to Ian McChord for this interview, and to the Zorus team for sharing regular business performance updates with Channel Angels.