MSP platform vendor Syncro added Microsoft and Datto veteran Marc Brown to its board of directors.
Brown has 25 years of strategic leadership and value creation experience. As corporate VP at Microsoft, he oversaw acquisitions of LinkedIn, GitHub, and Minecraft. He was also a Datto board member from 2020-2022, a period when Datto went public and then was acquired by Kaseya for $6.2 billion. Brown is chairman of cybersecurity vendor Rapid7’s board.
"Marc is a proven architect of exponential growth and value in the global technology ecosystem," Syncro CEO Michael George said. “Marc’s decades of strategic leadership, especially his tenure at Microsoft, provides an unparalleled depth of insight as we enhance and extend Microsoft’s critical enterprise functionality for the SMB. This experience, combined with his sage advice, will be crucial in guiding Syncro as we continue to innovate and expand our unified platform to power the next generation of MSPs and internal IT teams."
Microsoft made more than 185 acquisitions and 80 equity investments while Brown worked for the IT giant.
Syncro in the past seven months has launched an XMM (Extended Monitoring & Management) platform, unifying RMM, PSA, and Microsoft 365 management and Syncro Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 and Entra ID environments.
Brown said he was attracted to Syncro mainly because of its CEO and private equity investor firm Mainsail Partners.
“I don't know how much time you spent with Michael George, but he's a force of nature,” Brown said. “He's ambitious. He is a people-oriented CEO, so that's sort of where it starts. I love the positioning of the company and its growth prospects as well. But Michael certainly was key number one, and then key number two was Mainsail Partners.”
Marc Brown
Brown joins a Syncro board that consists of George, chairman Peter Gyenes, Michael Anderson and Tara Zahiri of Mainsail, and Hernan Asorey, founder of private equity firm PVC Turing.
Brown’s experience with M&A – as a buyer and seller – and an IPO can help a private company such as Syncro in whatever direction it goes. But for now, the company is in growth phase and is more likely to look to buy than sell.
“I think right now, it is about continuing to build the business that exists,” Brown said of Syncro. “There may be M&A to do within that construct for the company. I'd like to think I can be helpful there, not only on doing the deal but the integration and the rest, if that comes up.”
He said Syncro’s challenges now are similar to those faced by any vendor that sells through MSPs.
“I think it always comes down to the MSPs and their customers,” he said. “How can you best support them? How can you deliver products and services that they need as business entities. That’s business 101, right? It's all about understanding your customer. And I think that’s particularly true in the MSP segment.”